by Lisa Suzanne
It was the first time I’d ever been able to read the emotion so clearly on his face. He’d always been so disciplined in hiding his true feelings, but clearly seeing me in the flesh in Lincoln’s office had hit him completely off guard.
He looked even more beautiful in person than he’d looked in my memories, and all I wanted to do was run into his arms.
But I didn’t. I couldn’t. It wasn’t my right to anymore.
He started toward me but stopped himself. “Lucy,” he whispered.
I cleared my throat. “Cole.” My voice shook.
“It’s good to see you again, Ms. Cleary.” His voice was soft and sincere.
“It’s actually Ms. Vance now.” My voice continued to shake, as did my hands and knees. I held onto the door frame for support, sure my legs were going to buckle beneath me. He looked at me in wonder at my pronouncement. “And it’s good to see you, too.”
Lincoln cleared his throat, and both of our heads whipped in his direction. I’d forgotten he was even there. “Cole, when you talk about Lucy in every meeting we have, there’s more than a simple professional admiration. I think it’s time for you to talk to each other and figure this out.”
My eyes darted from Lincoln back to Cole. He’d turned to gaze out the window, but his eyes flicked back to mine.
“I’ll leave you two to it,” Lincoln said, gently nudging me into his office. He closed the door behind me, leaving Cole and me alone.
We stared at each other for a full ten seconds before either of us spoke, and then we spoke at the same time. “What are you doing here?” we asked the other in unison.
We both laughed nervously. “You first,” he said.
“I’ve been working with Lincoln as an independent consultant. He asked me here today to interview me for a full-time position. You?”
He looked out the window like he always did during our conversations. “He told me he needed to meet with me regarding his account. I thought it was strange since we just met a few days ago.”
“I’ve become close with him and his wife,” I said by way of explanation—not that I owed one to Cole.
“They’re good people.”
“He knows what happened between us.”
Cole took a second to digest that information, and then he motioned to the chairs. We both sat even though my natural instinct was to move closer to him and to touch him.
I couldn’t believe how strong that instinct was.
It was strange sitting on the same side of the desk as Cole. I was so used to him sitting on the other side, looking down at me, his lowly assistant. As we sat in our chairs, I felt equal to him for maybe the first time since I’d met him. We’d never be equal in the business sense—I’d never aspire to be the CEO of a major company—but at least here we were on equal ground.
“So now he’s in the matchmaking business?” Cole asked.
I shrugged. “Maybe he just wanted to give us the chance to talk things out.”
He cleared his throat. “Would you have…” He paused, as if searching for the right words. “Would you have gotten in touch if not for Lincoln?”
The truth sounded so harsh, but I’d figured he had moved on by now. I shook my head slowly. “Would you have?”
“Not because I didn’t want to,” he whispered.
I wasn’t ready for this conversation. We’d only been in the same room together for a few minutes. I hadn’t expected to see him. I’d expected to go in for an interview for a job I knew was already mine, and instead I was chatting with Cole.
“Thanks for saving me the other night,” I blurted.
“It was nothing.”
“How’d you know I was there?”
He chuckled mirthlessly. “It was purely coincidental. A friend invited me out for drinks after a fundraiser.”
“I’m glad you were there.”
“I’m glad I was able to save your drunk ass once again.”
We were both quiet for a moment, and all I could think about was what his arms would feel like around me. His familiar scent wafted over toward my nose, and my chest tightened with emotion.
“How’s your new assistant?” I asked, changing the subject. I tried to make my voice sunny and bright, but I failed miserably. I wanted to talk about what had happened between us. I wanted to talk about all the months we’d been apart. I wanted to tell him that I was striking out on my own. That I wasn’t married anymore. That I was free to begin a relationship now.
I was finally in a place where I understood that everything had happened for a reason. I wasn’t meant to spend my life with John, and even though the way I’d gone about destroying what we’d had was harsh, it still got me to where I was supposed to be.
“Fine,” he said, answering my question about his assistant. “What have you been up to?”
I wanted more details than fine. Was she more efficient than me? Did she work as hard as I did? Did she take notes as good as me? Was she prettier than me? Was he fucking her?
“Well, my divorce is finalized. I’ve been staying with Kaylee and helping with Madi.”
He hid his reaction to my words well. “How’s your brother-in-law?”
“Completely recovered. Thanks for asking. I needed a place to live and they needed help with Madi, so it worked out.”
“Good. Madi’s doing well?”
I nodded. “She’s great. She actually asked about you a few times.” The words were out of my mouth before I could stop them, which was unfortunate since I was trying to play it cool.
“What did you say?”
“Just that I don’t work with you anymore.”
“Oh.”
His hands rubbed his thighs while I absently fingered the leather armrest of my chair.
“Yeah. It’s more complicated than that, I guess, but she’s five.”
We sat in awkward silence for a few beats, and then I stood and walked toward the door. “Well, it’s been great catching up with you. I better go find Lincoln and see about this interview.”
I turned the handle and opened the door.
“Lucy, wait,” he said, rushing toward me and setting his hand on the door next to me. It shut with a loud click, and Cole Benson was back in my orbit. I turned to face him, my back against the door.
He was close enough that I could smell his body wash and feel his heat. All I had to do was tilt my head back and stand on my tiptoes and our lips would be touching. I could feel his breath against my cheek.
I looked up at him, my eyes round with surprise—and, I was sure, full of lust. He gazed down at me, his eyes full of this tenderness that I’d never seen before.
“She’s terrible,” he blurted.
I looked up at him in complete confusion.
“My new assistant. She’s awful. She’s the fourth one I’ve hired since you left, and not one of them has worked out. Because not one of them even holds a candle to you—to your professionalism, to your efficiency, to your knowledge...” He paused as he gently traced one of his long fingers from my temple, down my cheek, and to my lips, his eyes following the path of his finger. “But most of all to your beauty.”
He moved his finger and stared at my lips. His eyes flicked to mine before refocusing on my mouth. “I want to kiss you. It’s all I’ve thought about for two hundred thirty-six days.”
“You counted?” I asked in wonder.
He bent his head down closer to me, his eyes on mine. “Each day that has passed has been one more day that I kicked myself for letting you walk away. Each day has been a reminder that I’m alone when I could have had everything. I fucked up, Lucy, and I haven’t been able to move on from you. You weren’t innocent in this, but I didn’t fight hard enough, and I’ve had to live with that for the past two hundred thirty-six days. But it stops here. Screw the interview you have today with Lincoln. Come work for me again. Be with me again. I can’t let another day pass without telling you what you mean to me.”
I wanted it more than anything.
But even though he was saying the right words and giving me an amazing offer, I needed time to think.
I couldn’t make a decision like this when he was so close to me, confusing me with his scent and warmth and sexiness.
“I can’t, Cole.”
I ducked under his arm and paced around Lincoln’s office just to put some space between us.
“Yes, you can. You want a raise? I’ll give you a raise. I’ll give you better hours. I’ll treat you like a woman should be treated. I’ll fight for you this time instead of letting you walk out the door.”
“Why, Cole? You know what it was like before. Why would you do all that?”
He walked over to the window and leaned his arms down on the windowsill. He stared out at the city. “Because that’s what you do when you’re in love.”
My jaw dropped. “In…in love?”
He turned toward me and nodded slowly. “It didn’t take me two hundred thirty-six days to figure that out. I fell in love with you in New York. As stupid as it sounds, it was that night you came in drunk and I was so fucking mad at you for ditching me the night before the presentation.” He stalked slowly toward me as he spoke, as if he was the hunter and I was the prey. “I fought my feelings because I had to, and I let you get away because I thought that’s what you needed. But you walk in here today and tell me your divorce is finalized? I’m done letting you get away.”
He stood in front of me. I hadn’t realized I’d been slowly backing up until I was against the desk. I had nowhere else to go, and he knew it. “We’re destructive together.”
“Passionate.” He pressed his body to mine.
I arched back and stiffened. “We hurt other people and we hurt each other.”
He set his arms on the desk on either side of me. “We’ll stop.”
I set my hands on his chest, but I couldn’t bring myself to push him away. “I don’t know what to say.”
“Then say yes. Let’s stop this nonsense and finally be together.” He leaned forward and pressed his lips to my neck.
I didn’t fight him, and speech evaded me as his mouth worked its way up to mine. My only response was a soft moan.
When our lips touched, the fire that ignited inside of me was totally different from before.
Before, our romance had been forbidden. I was doing something wrong and hurting someone else in the process.
But this time, I was clear of all restrictions.
I’d worried that the excitement of having the forbidden was part of what had made my relationship with Cole so fiery. But all that was gone now, and what I found between us was a stronger, brighter, hotter fire.
His mouth opened to mine, and as his tongue started moving against mine, tingles zipped down my spine and the ever-present ache in my core intensified.
My arms automatically went around him as his hands yanked my hips flush against him. He was hard, and I couldn’t help but remember exactly what it was like to have him inside me.
Both of us panting.
Both of us moaning.
Both of us tumbling to the brink before free-falling right off of it.
Terror crept in.
What if we tried this again and I lost him?
I couldn’t go through what I’d gone through in the past eight months again.
And that was the driving force that pulled my arms from around him and directed them to his chest. I pushed him away, and he looked at me in utter confusion.
“I can’t, Cole.” I grabbed my purse and ran to the door. I turned out of Lincoln’s office, not sure where to go but sure I needed to get out of that room.
“Where’s Cole?” Lincoln asked with a grin. He was sitting in one of the chairs in the reception area, shooting the breeze with the receptionist up front when he should’ve been working in his office.
“In your office. Can we reschedule our interview?”
He stood, concern lighting his face. “What happened?”
“Cole wants to get back together.”
He looked confused for a split second. “Of course he does. And so do you. That’s why I arranged this meeting today.”
“But what about the interview?”
“Sweet girl, there is no interview.”
It was my turn to look confused. And then realization dawned.
Lincoln had never intended to interview me. He’d simply concocted a reason to get me to the office so I could make up with Cole.
“Thanks for meddling, but I think I need to get the hell out of here.” I was furious with Lincoln. He had no right to step into our lives that way. He had no right to get my hopes up that he might give me a job that could potentially be my ticket to independence.
I spun on my heel and ran out the door, opting for the stairs instead of the elevator. I heard Lincoln yelling my name after me, but I didn’t bother to stop. I was too damn angry to talk to him.
Tears blinded me as I ran down the stairs. I slowed on one of the landings, wondering for a split second if I was overreacting. Lincoln might’ve just had my best interest at heart, but Cole and I needed to find our own way back to each other. Orchestrating some meeting under false pretenses was just as bad as starting a relationship on a lie, which was exactly what had caused me to end things with Cole in the first place.
I continued down the stairs. Why the hell was the office on the twelfth floor? It was just one more item on the list of things that pissed me right the hell off. The tears started falling harder as I rounded the fourth floor, and then my heel slid on a stair and I tumbled down toward the next landing.
I stuck my hand out to stop myself from tumbling further, and then I sat up, the broken heel on my shoe preventing me from standing up for a minute. “Shit,” I muttered.
“Shit!” I yelled a little louder when I leaned my weight on my left wrist to help me stand. “Dammit,” I muttered, using my right hand to swipe the tears that were streaming down my face as I sat on the landing.
I was one hell of a hot mess.
“Are you okay?” Cole’s voice caught up with me before I felt his arms hauling me up from the ground. “Shit. Your wrist is swelling.” His arm came around my waist to help me since I couldn’t walk on my broken shoe.
“I’m fine,” I said, swatting his arm off of me. “Fuck!” I yelled when I’d used my left hand to push him away.
“You’re not okay.”
“I’ll be fine. Just leave me alone.”
I started for the next set of stairs, hobbling on my broken heel, but he stopped me by grabbing my hips from behind.
“No.” He twirled me around to face him. “The last time I let you walk out of my life, you left me a broken man. I’m not letting you walk out again. Not without a fight, Lucy.”
“We’re better off apart.”
“We never gave it a fair shot.”
“Let me go.” I tried pushing him away again with just one hand, but it was useless. He was much stronger than me even when I didn’t have an injured wrist.
“How bad is your wrist?” he asked, gently taking my hand to inspect it.
“It’s fine.”
“Stop saying it’s fine.” His finger came under my chin to force me to look up at him. “How bad?”
“It hurts.” I couldn’t lie when his eyes were right on mine.
“We’re going to urgent care.”
“I’m not going to urgent care. Don’t be ridiculous.”
He closed his eyes in frustration. “You need to get it checked.”
“It’s fine.”
“Oh my God, you’re infuriating. I realize you’re not my employee anymore and you don’t have to listen to me, but will you go to the fucking doctor to get checked out?”
The frustration in his voice convinced me. “Fine.”
Shock spread across his handsome face. “Really?”
“Yes, really.”
He finally dropped his hands from my waist, and I felt the immediate absence of his touch. Out of nowhere, I was swept off of my
feet and into the arms of Cole.
It felt an awful lot like I was in the arms of the man I loved.
I shook the thought out of my head. I didn’t know if I still loved him. I couldn’t love him. Too much time had passed—or something. I knew there was some reason.
He carried me down the stairs, tossed me into the front seat of his car, and sat with me at urgent care. He carried me back to his car two long hours later with a wrap on my strained—not sprained—wrist, a bottle of mild painkillers in one hand and my shoes in the other. And as each moment passed, the reasons why we were supposed to stay apart drifted further and further from my mind.
But all the reasons why we worked were sure at the forefront of my mind.
Especially the sex.
The sex was right there in the front of my mind.
It may have been the painkillers talking. I’d try to think about things again when I was lucid, but for now, being with Cole felt nice. It felt right.
Something had been missing since the night I’d left John. To be fair, a lot of things were missing, but the only thing that I still missed from that time in my life was Cole.
It wasn’t my husband or the home we shared. It wasn’t the idea of love. It wasn’t marriage.
It was Cole.
“Where to?” he asked.
I yawned. “My car is still by Lincoln’s office.” I leaned my head against the window. It wasn’t a very soft pillow, but my eyes wouldn’t stay open.
He fired up his Audi. “We’ll get your car tomorrow.”
I finally gave up the fight with my eyes and let them stay closed as I spoke. “No, tonight’s fine. Kaylee will be expecting me.”
“Why don’t you text her and let her know that you won’t be coming home tonight?”
“Mmm,” was the last thing I remembered saying.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
A beam of sunlight fell across my eyes, and I woke with a start. I sat up and tried to figure out where the hell I was. I glanced down at the t-shirt I was wearing. It wasn’t mine, and I didn’t really remember putting it on.
Movement beside me in the bed caused me to gasp.
“Morning,” Cole said with a sexy, sleepy smile.