Desire Me

by Kayla C. Oliver

  “Two, please,” Trent told the man easily, then paid with cash and tipped as the man offered him a bowl.

  Trent grabbed two spoons, then waved goodbye to the vendor. He presented the cup to me. “Two scoops, vanilla bean ice cream. Because there is nothing better in this world.” He paused, then smiled. “Except maybe the company.”

  I rolled my eyes but couldn’t help but grin in return. I scooped up a hearty spoonful, then popped it into my mouth. “It’s good,” I told him.

  “Yes, it is.”

  We traded bites as we continued our walk. We passed the dancing statues that were dressed with scarves and hats, their wardrobes changing even as the dancers remained the same. The bridge up ahead went up to let a boat pass underneath, and a streetlight flickered off, then back on several times as we passed.

  He told me more about his grandmother. I told him that I’d never known mine. We talked about the movie and the stupidity of being wrapped up in a name.

  When we were done with the ice cream, he found a trash can to dispose of the remains, then turned to me. “All right. Next on the agenda—”

  I stopped him before he could offer up skinny-dipping in the park or something else crazy and fun. “Wait, no. I’m sorry, but the date has to be over now.” I glanced at my watch. It was almost one in the morning. “I need to go home.”

  My words weren’t as harsh as they had been at the start of the date, and honestly, I’d warmed to him in the hours we’d spent together.

  But was it enough?

  “You’re sure?” he asked softly, taking a small step closer to me.

  I didn’t back up but nodded. “Yes. It’s late. I need to get home.”

  He didn’t say anything, but his hand lifted and I felt his warm fingers brush against my cheek. His eyes didn’t leave mine, riveted. And when he leaned forward… I let him. His lips brushed over the top of mine as my eyes fluttered closed of their own accord.

  When his mouth pressed more firmly, I felt something warm coil low in my gut. My hands found their way to his shirt, gripping the fabric there, and his free hand went to my waist.

  I didn’t stop him.

  My lips parted when his tongue asked for entrance, and I decided I liked the way he tasted. Sweet like ice cream and a little salty with a hint of spice. It was perfect. The perfect night, the perfect kiss, the perfect everything. Heat slipped over my body like silk, and as I clutched his body to mine, I admitted I wanted more.

  I wanted the kiss to deepen.

  I wanted his hands to find bare skin beneath my clothes.

  I wanted him to take me home.

  And that was why I had to break the kiss. We were both left breathless, gasping for air with wide, wild eyes. He looked like he wanted to dive back in, and a big part of me wanted to let him.

  But I had to remember that a perfect night and a perfect kiss weren’t the same things as a perfect man. He was still Trent Harvey, the player who had lied to me about his identity.

  A perfect kiss couldn’t change any of that.

  “Courtney?” he asked, hopeful still.

  I shook my head. “I’m going home. Don’t call me.”

  Then I walked off, heading for my car. I felt his gaze burn into my back, but I didn’t turn around and I didn’t glance over my shoulder back at him. This was the right thing to do.

  You couldn’t trust a man like Trent Harvey.

  Chapter Six

  Courtney

  Monday rolled around and yes, I, Courtney Hughes, was still in my pajamas. It was eleven o’clock in the morning, my hair was not done, curlers still haphazardly wound in my hair, and thank you very much, I was eating donuts. Lots of them. The kind with chocolate frosting and sprinkles and Bavarian filling. The whole nine yards. I was brewing more coffee despite having already had an entire pot to myself, and I was flipping through the horrible TV channels that had absolutely nothing on.

  It was glorious.

  And horrible.

  I stopped my channel surfing on one of the soap opera stations. There was a woman with her identical twin arguing about who was responsible for murdering one or both of their fiancé for cheating with the good and/or evil twin while the other was in a coma.

  Seriously, two minutes in and I’d gotten all of that drama. It was a wonder anyone watched, because it was way too hard to keep any of it straight. In fact, it was downright madness.

  But it was the only damn thing on, so I left it.

  I was debating between another Bavarian donut and one with powdered sugar when my phone buzzed again. It had been doing this all morning.

  When I checked it, I saw that I had another text. It was from Marnie. Again. I threw my phone on the cushion beside me and settled back in my jammies.

  I’d done the good-person thing and told her that I was taking a sick day today. It was my first one in years of work, so I felt pretty damn justified in cashing it in. Marnie, however, seemed a little freaked-out by it.

  Probably because she can’t run her own damn schedule without me, I thought with a snort.

  It wasn’t entirely fair. Marnie was an organized, capable person. She just excelled in different things than I did, and God knew that I kept her world in order. But she had to know that even I needed a break.

  Was it a coincidence that this break happened after a horribly wonderful date with Harvey, who she was meeting with today to discuss his manuscript? No, it wasn’t. But she didn’t need to know that.

  My phone went off again, and I cringed.

  Marnie wasn’t the only one barraging my phone with messages. Harvey had been calling and texting a thousand times. He wanted another chance. He wanted to say he was sorry. He wanted into my panties.

  Okay, he didn’t text that last one, but he might as well have. I had already made it up in my mind that that was all he wanted.

  I was trying to ignore my phone by becoming absorbed with the soap opera.

  Twin A was talking about getting out of the country, so I assumed she was the murdering evil one.

  Twin B decided this was a stupid plan and that they could just make it look like a mugging, so now I wasn’t sure who the murderer was.

  Then the doorbell rang and it was actually the guy they supposedly killed, so maybe neither of them was the murderer.

  “Jesus Christ, who can keep up with this crap?” I muttered out loud.

  I struggled through several more minutes of ridiculous explanation for how he wasn’t dead—can we say deus ex machina?—before I finally gave in to the undeniable urge to check my phone.

  Please, call me. Give me another chance.

  I sighed. Yep, it was Harvey again. Apparently, they were out of their meeting today, because I’d received a text from Marnie and Harvey. Somehow, I doubted they were texting me together from her office.

  Throwing the phone back on my cushion, I tried to bury myself farther into the couch.

  “How pathetic have I become?” I asked the TV. Which pretty much answered my question.

  The twins were being blackmailed for killing the guy who wasn’t actually dead, and that was around the time I just gave up on the whole ridiculous show. Who wrote this crap anyway?

  I flipped the TV off and went to the fridge. Donuts weren’t doing it. I needed the hard stuff. I pulled out a tub of Ben & Jerry’s, planning on mollifying my patheticness with real ice cream. Unfortunately, it reminded me of Harvey.

  “Bastard’s ruining ice cream, too.”

  In the end, I ordered a pizza. I debated showering before the delivery guy got here, but vetoed that thought. I was doing the sick day right, damnit.

  About thirty minutes later, the doorbell rang. I was starving, despite my donut binge earlier, and I headed eagerly to the door. Except that when I got there, it wasn’t the pizza guy.

  “What. The. Hell.”

  I winced. “Marnie, what are you doing here?”

  “I came to figure out how you could have contracted Ebola, since it’s the only damn thing I can th
ink of to make you miss a day of work!”

  Sighing, I opened the door wider and let her in. “I ordered pizza. Want some?”

  “Jesus, Court, you don’t even do junk food!”

  She stepped into the apartment, and I momentarily felt ashamed of how messy it was. But then I remembered that it was my sick day and she was intruding on it. Besides, the couch and a little slice of the kitchen were the only truly messy things in the place. I was a bit of a neat freak, so my apartment tended to be on the cleaner side of things.

  “I just needed a junk food day,” I told her defensively, crossing my arms over my chest. “I’m allowed a junk food day.”

  “Your version of junk food is margaritas.”

  “They have so many calories!” I whined.

  She put her hands on her hips and fixed me with a hard stare. “Seriously, what’s going on? This is definitely not normal-you behavior.”

  I pursed my lips together. I did not want to talk about Harvey. At all.

  “I just needed a little me time,” I told her, hoping to dodge the truth.

  Marnie’s arms shifted until they were crossed over her chest. “Nuh-uh. I don’t buy it. What’s going on?”

  I ran through a list of plausible answers, but there were none. She knew me too well. Any lie was going to fly like a lead balloon, and damnit, it meant I was going to have to give her the truth.

  Letting out a heavy sigh, I bit the bullet. “Remember I told you I had that date on Friday?”

  “Yeah, sure.” She paused. “Wait, is that what this is about?”

  I nodded.

  “Jesus, did he not show?”

  “It’s a little more complicated than that.”

  She stood there, waiting, lifting her eyebrows to show her impatience.

  “He showed… It’s just… it wasn’t who I was expecting.”

  “Was he hideous?” she guessed sympathetically.

  “No. He was Trent Harvey.”

  She blinked several times, her expression blank for a long moment. Finally, “What? I’m confused. Harvey showed up for his agent’s date?”

  I shook my head. “No. There is no Malcom Resner. Trent Harvey doesn’t have an agent.”

  Her mouth turned down in a frown, deepening each moment as the truth began to sink in. “Wait. Are you saying… Malcom Resner is Trent Harvey?”

  I nodded.

  “You’re saying that you’ve been seeing Trent Harvey? My fucking client?”

  “What? No! I mean, yes, sort of. I didn’t know it was him, and we weren’t really seeing each other. It was all through text messaging and phone calls.”

  She threw up her hands dramatically in true Marnie fashion. “You spoke to him on the fucking phone, and you couldn’t tell it was him? Jesus, are you stupid?”

  And just like that, I felt my features harden. Stupid? No, I was a lot of things, but I was not stupid. “Excuse me? I told you I didn’t know. I haven’t exactly had a lot of interaction with Mr. Fucking Harvey.”

  “He’s got a pretty distinctive voice, don’t you think?” she threw back at me. “Jesus, you can’t mix business with pleasure like this, Court! Just look at yourself!”

  “I’m sorry, are you telling me not to mix business with pleasure? At least I didn’t knowingly sleep with the fucking enemy!”

  Marnie’s eyes narrowed and I felt a moment of regret. It was quickly replaced with renewed anger, however, when I remembered that she’d basically called me an idiot. Fuck her and her feelings.

  “At least I was smart enough to know who I was sleeping with. I always thought you were the smart one, Court, but now I’m starting to think you don’t know what the fuck you’re doing.”

  “Get. Out,” I told her plainly.

  Anger rippled through me. I wanted to wring her tiny little neck until her freckles turned purple and her eyes rolled back in her head. She didn’t have the right to say shit like that to me. She was supposed to be supportive, like a good friend. Instead she comes here and personally attacks me.

  I wasn’t having it.

  When Marnie didn’t move, I stomped over to the door, threw it open, and yelled, “Get the fuck out!”

  A second later I realized the pizza delivery guy was standing on the other side of my door, prepared to knock. But it didn’t matter. Marnie marched to my door and left, shoving past the delivery guy and not giving me so much as a backward glare.

  There was an awkward moment of silence before the delivery guy asked, “Is this the right place?”

  I paid him quickly, then shut the door. Suddenly, I wasn’t so hungry. I threw the pizza on the counter, then stared at the TV. My best friend, I decided, was a complete and utter bitch.

  How did my life get this tangled up?

  Chapter Seven

  Marnie

  I glanced at my wristwatch. It was exactly thirty minutes after eight, and I was resigning myself to the fact that Courtney was not coming in today. After our blowout yesterday, I wasn’t all that surprised.

  “Goddamnit,” I muttered to myself.

  There were several manuscripts spread out on my desk—none of which belonged to Trent fucking Harvey, which did not help my mood—and I hadn’t done more than glance at any of them. My whole life seemed to be in shambles, a patchwork of poor luck, but I tried to remind myself that a lot of good things had happened recently, too.

  I’d made partner at S&W Publishing, which I’d been gunning for for years.

  I had a sexy new boyfriend who got my panties in a twist for all the right reasons.

  And whenever Harvey got around to giving me his damn manuscript, I’d be editing one of the next bestsellers.

  So what if there was a hiccup with the manuscript and Courtney was being a pain in my ass? These were minor bumps on my road to professional success and happiness.

  There was a knock on my door, and a moment later it opened. Dorian, my sexy boss, poked his head in. “Hey, Marnie. I hate to interrupt, but there was no one outside to let me know if you were busy.”

  I winced. “Uh, yeah. Courtney’s taking another sick day.”

  His eyebrows rose high on his usually smooth forehead. “What? Is she okay? I mean, does she have Ebola or something?”

  “That’s what I said,” I replied dryly.

  “I don’t think she’s taken a sick day since the start of the company!”

  I nodded. “She hasn’t. I think she just needs a couple of days.”

  Dorian’s eyebrows may have lowered to their normal positions, but his full mouth was carefully tugging downward into a frown. When I didn’t add anything more, he shoved his hands into his trouser pockets and asked, “Is something going on?”

  I tried not to wince. “What do you mean?”

  “It seems like everyone’s on edge. Like there’s something in the air.” He paused, then asked, “Is there?”

  I hesitated. The last thing I wanted to try and explain was what had been going on with Courtney and Harvey—or with myself and Callum. Although Dorian was a good guy and a great boss, I highly doubted he would be okay with me sleeping with his longtime rival, Callum Reid. The two had been at each other’s throats since the development of S&W Publishing. It was as much between S&W and Tarvish Press as it was between Dorian and Reid, but there wasn’t much I could do about any of that. They had different views on how the publishing world was supposed to work, and honestly, I tended to side with Dorian.

  But I was sleeping with Callum, meaning I wasn’t exactly impartial about the whole thing.

  Ultimately, I said, “I don’t know about everyone, but… well, there’s a little bit of drama going on between myself and Courtney. It’ll all blow over, I’m sure.” I hoped, anyway. “She just needs some time.”

  His expression eased slightly. “Is this about a guy?”

  This time, I did wince. “Um, yeah. It is.” I didn’t tell him who or how things had come about, because regardless of any arguments we were having now, Courtney was still my best friend, and I w
ouldn’t throw her under the bus.

  Dorian nodded sagely. “I figured. Well, if Courtney needs some time off, she should take it. As much as she needs. God knows she’s saved up enough vacation time to take the next year off.” He grinned at me, then winked. “I’d rather have her well rested and in fighting form than upset and doing a poor job. She’s a great employee.”

  I smiled small but nodded. “Yes she is.”

  “Send her my best, and let her know if she needs anything, I’m there for her, 100 percent.”

  I felt some of the tension in my body ease, and I considered telling him about Callum. It was on the tip of my tongue, but it wouldn’t quite roll off. I caught myself several times and ultimately couldn’t bring myself to disclose the truth: I was screwing the enemy.

  “How are things with Trent?”

  I froze.

  What? Who said anything about Trent? Holy shit, did I just fuck this up?

  My mind came up with all of the ways that I’d just cost myself and Courtney our jobs until finally it clicked.

  I was Trent’s editor.

  It was the damn reason I made partner.

  Dorian was asking for a status update.

  Strangely enough, despite the fact that I had no damn manuscript, I felt a little better. He didn’t know what was going on with Trent and Courtney—whatever the hell it was—and that meant he definitely didn’t know what was going on with me and Callum.

  Everything was fine.

  No problems.

  I laughed a little. “Trent’s a pain in my ass, but I’m sure it’ll all work out.”

  Dorian beamed at me. “That’s what I want to hear. I have faith in you, Marnie McKenna. You’re gonna do great things.”

  Chapter Eight

  Trent

  I stared at my manuscript, which constituted a blank white page. Again. Everything I attempted to put to paper turned into a load of crap that I ultimately erased. Hell, a couple of times I’d printed that shit out just so that I could crumple it up and toss it into the wastebasket. As a result, I’d filled up my wastebasket and I still had a blank manuscript saved on my computer.