Hate to Lose You

by Penny Wylder

  But with great power comes great scrutiny. The LA tabloids aren’t satiated with stalking celebrities and public figures. They stalk us wealthy families too, with almost as much vigor as they do the movie stars and singers. They covered my disappearance with joy—or so I hear. I was too busy getting shitfaced in Las Vegas by the time the papers started to mock my family back home to notice.

  Now that I’m back, I’ve seen my face plastered across tabloid stands more than once—usually, at this point, with one arm wrapped around Sammy. If I’m going to get photographed by some scumbag looking to make a quick dime off the gossip-mill, I’ll at least use my powers for good—namely to get her family to back off trying to force her to find a husband.

  Still, it’s made me almost as paranoid as I was back when I was being stalked by hired killers. I turn my jacket collar up and keep my face angled away from the windows as I stride into the building, through the enormous 20-foot-high doors that gild our entrance and across the hard marble floors. My shoes clack against it, echoing up the arched 30-foot ceilings, all of it done in a style that would make Wall Street traders jealous. That was the 1920s for you—they built their buildings with panache.

  But it’s due to my keeping my head down and away from any possible pap viewpoints of me that I barrel headfirst into someone halfway across the atrium. On instinct, I grab the person’s arm, and all at once, a staggering, dizzying shock of déjà vu hits me.

  For a second, I think I’m imagining this. It’s all too familiar—the collision, the startled look in those baby blue eyes. The way her lips part in a gasp, as she does the same double-take I’m doing.

  “Daisy?”

  “Bronson?”

  We stare at each other. All at once, seeing her here, every excuse I had for not keeping her in my life flees my mind. All I can think about are those sexy, luscious curves of hers. That pert little mouth, parted in an O of surprise. Her hair’s done up in an elaborate bun, and she’s wearing way more professional-looking attire than I’ve ever seen her in—a narrow pencil skirt and frilled blouse that make me want to tear it right off her, and heels that look like she could spike a few small mammals with them.

  She, meanwhile, is staring at me like she’s seeing a ghost. “What the hell are you doing?” she manages, right around the same time that I burst out with, “How’d you end up here?”

  We both pause. I’m tempted to laugh. But the look on her face is quickly morphing from shock into anger. She yanks her arm from my grasp. “I see you haven’t gotten any better at avoiding trampling on women,” she says, taking a step back from me. The distance just makes it easier to see what I’ve been missing.

  God, she’s even more fucking irresistibly gorgeous than I remember. My eyes catch on her hips, and I have to forcibly tear them back to her face. “What are you doing here?” I ask her, ignoring the dig.

  She plants her hands on her hips. “Me? What are you doing?”

  “I work here,” I reply.

  “Yeah, well, so do I. Apparently.” She tosses her head to glance around the lobby, which is slowly starting to fill up with other people trickling in through the broad open doors of the bank. Everyone who passes us is squinting at pieces of paper or directions they’ve clearly saved in their phones. Because it’s everyone’s first day today, nobody seems to have recognized me. Yet.

  Small favors.

  “Were you transferred here too?” She frowns up at me. Then does a double-take, studying my outfit.

  “Not exactly,” I reply. “Wait, transferred. You’ve been working at Burke Bank?”

  “At the branch downtown,” she confirms. “For the last three months. But then my manager told me everyone out at this branch was let go, and they needed to restaff it, so here I am.” She narrows her eyes. “You’re wearing a suit.”

  “I’ve been told I clean up nicely,” I reply. “Though clearly not as nice as you.”

  She rolls her eyes at the compliment.

  “Seriously, though, Daisy, I had no idea you were out here in LA.”

  “Yeah, well, you wouldn’t, would you?” She plants a hand on one of her ample hips. “You made it pretty clear you didn’t want to keep in touch, so.”

  The words sting. Mostly because they’re true. But I ignore the sting, because I still can’t bring myself to believe that she’s here. “If I’d known you were so close…”

  “You’d have tried to hook up with me so you could callously dump me without a word of explanation again?” she cuts across me, furious. But her voice has dropped to a whisper, because more people are filling the lobby, and while some have begun to follow the instructions I sent to meet in the large conference room through the back, more than a few have stopped to eyeball us, clearly wondering what kind of a show we’re about to put on.

  I make the mistake of side-eying one of the milling people a heartbeat too long, and the guy takes it as an invitation.

  “Mr. Burke?” he asks, striding across the atrium toward us with one hand extended like a sword. “I’m Callum Briggs, from the Echo Park branch. Pleasure to meet you, sir.”

  I shake his hand and force a bland expression onto my face. “Callum. And don’t call me sir. It sounds too much like my father.” I glance over his head toward the doors at the back of the atrium and nod in that direction. “I’ll speak to you soon.”

  He keeps pumping my hand, ignoring the dismissal, until I e my fingers from his and turn a cold shoulder toward him.

  “Daisy,” I begin, but she’s staring at me with fresh horror now, her eyes so wide I can see twin images of myself reflected in them.

  “Mr. Burke?” she says, her voice a stiffly-contained whisper. “Your name is Bronson Burke? As in the same Burke of Burke Bank?”

  “My father owns this company,” I say.

  “Then you must know how terribly your father’s employees are being treated in this company.” She crosses her arms and scowls at me. “How badly everyone at the bottom here is treated.” She clenches her jaw and shakes her head. “But then, how could you know that? Why would you bother to learn what anyone down here at the bottom feels like, when you’re sitting up at the top of the pyramid reaping all the rewards?” With a groan she spins away from me to follow the crowd that’s meandering slowly toward the main conference room. Then she whirls back, as though deciding something, fists balled. “I can’t believe you were some crazy billionaire family heir the whole time we knew each other. This is why you never told me your last name? Why you never talked about a future? You couldn’t imagine a future with lowly little me, because you had a banking empire to come home and run, is that it?”

  “Daisy, I—”

  “Forget it,” she snaps. “See you in the office, boss.” Then she storms away, into the stream of people, and it’s all I can do to stop myself from chasing after her.

  6

  Daisy

  The whole meeting in a conference room large enough that two of my entire LA apartments could fit into it, Bronson keeps trying to catch my eye. Every time he does, I stare determinedly at the ceiling. That, or I lift my informational introduction packet in front of my face to block the view.

  Even if it’s hard to make myself look away from that face of his. And that body…

  Dammit, why couldn’t he have gotten fat or something? But he looks as smoking hot as ever. All chiseled jawline and sharp, piercing gray eyes that seem to hone in on me every time I so much as peek in his direction. And in that suit, with his hair artfully tousled like he just rolled out of bed perfect somehow…

  Ugh.

  He drones on and on about employee retention, about how everyone in this room is an important cog in the machinery of this company. At least his words remind me how pissed I am. Because I call bullshit. He wouldn’t have fired two whole offices full of employees if he gave a damn about us cogs in his big expensive gears.

  After the meeting, I practically shove half the staff out of the way in order to exit first. My introduction packet contains infor
mation on where I sit, and I studied the map all throughout the meeting so that I wouldn’t need to linger and ask awkward directions from anybody. Mostly because I’m eager as hell to get away from Bronson as fast as possible, before I do something I regret. Like talk to him. Or eye-fuck him in that suit. Or, worse, let him draw me into the nearest restroom, since semi-public sex seems to be his thing and fuck I can still remember the way his hands felt all over me, gripping my hips and pressing me up against the sink—

  He’s really here.

  That’s the thing I can’t stop reciting to myself. The reason I need space from him to clear my head, to breathe again, so I can figure out how the hell to handle this. I never thought I’d see him in real life again. Now he works in the same damn office as me—hell, now he’s my fucking boss. A boss who apparently fired two whole buildings full of people before I wound up stuck here underneath him. In a position my previous manager referred to as one that would challenge me.

  One that I’d probably fail and get fired from, just like everyone else.

  I want to get let go from Burke Bank, I remind myself. That’s been my plan ever since I studied my severance details a little bit more closely. But suddenly, I feel conflicted about the plan, because I don’t want to get fired by my ex fucking boyfriend. The ex who unceremoniously vanished from my life with little more than a single unsatisfactory text message to let me know he was still fucking alive.

  And the fact that he did that, he disappeared, right after fucking me in an Ikea bathroom…

  My stomach churns all over again, from feelings I haven’t experienced in months, damn him. Because that whole thing was so damn humiliating. I’m embarrassed for myself, embarrassed that I could possibly have thought I had a real, emotional connection with a guy who clearly just saw me as his sex toy, someone to have fun with but not treat seriously in any way.

  God I am such a fucking idiot.

  That’s the mantra on repeat in my head as I settle into my desk and try to organize it. At least if my desk is organized, I’ll feel like I have some semblance of a grip on reality right now. Some direction in my otherwise veering-out-of-control life.

  That’s what I’m still doing when a delivery person appears in the doorway of the office. All around me, other people are settling in to their own desks, orienting themselves, whispering near the water cooler in the corner about which branch they transferred from and how long they’d been at their previous post, and how long they think it will be before the notorious Bronson Burke has another meltdown and fires everybody here next. So I don’t even notice the delivery girl at first. She blends right in to the rest of the crowd of gossips.

  Until she appears beside my desk and clears her throat loudly. “Daisy Rider?”

  I glance up, startled, and notice that she’s wearing a uniform and a hat, not dressed for the office like the rest of us newbies. “Yes?”

  “Delivery for you,” she says, and lays a long, narrow unmarked brown package on my desk.

  “Uh, thanks,” I tell her as I sign for it, glancing back and forth from her to the package. Obviously I didn’t order anything. Maybe it’s something for work?

  But the moment I cut into the cardboard, my heart does a funny little skip, because it’s clear to me who this is from.

  The lilies are gorgeous. Mingled with sprigs of lavender and geraniums, expertly arranged. But it’s the white lilies I focus on, as a memory nags at the back of my mind.

  “And what would you plant in this garden of yours?” Bronson whispered against the nape of my neck, his lips grazing my skin, making my whole body tingle with that simple touch.

  I was lying on my stomach, and he was curled up against my side, both of us with our heads propped up to watch my crappy laptop screen playing across the bed. There was some cheesy historical romance set in Versailles on it, with poor doomed Marie Antoinette as the star. But it was the gardens that caught our eye, and we were discussing what we’d plant in our own epic castle gardens. “Lilies,” I said.

  He stopped kissing me and rested his chin against my shoulder instead, peering over it. “Not roses?”

  “Too cliché,” I answered with a smirk. “Besides, in Victorian flower language, when you gave someone a lily, it said ‘you are my lover.’ That’s so much more personal than a rose. Roses you could give to anyone; they could mean friendship or pining or desire…”

  “Lilies, hmm,” he said, his voice a vibration against my skin. “Good to know. I’ll remember that.”

  He never bought me flowers, though. He didn’t have time. That night came just one week before our final day together. I assumed he’d forget about that promise, the same way he forgot about everything else we had. The same way he forgot about me.

  But now, I stare at the package, wondering if he might have remembered one thing, at least.

  Or maybe he just picked out the first apology flower arrangement that caught his eye, and he got lucky, answers a cynical part of my mind. I pluck a card from between the petals and peer at the cursive script.

  Dinner. Friday. We have so much to catch up on. And I have an apology to make.

  There’s no name at the bottom. Just an elaborate double B that looks like a monogram of some sort. A family logo, perhaps. I’m surprised I haven’t seen it floating around the bank somewhere by now—the Burke family seems big on putting their stamp everywhere.

  Still. I sigh, leaning back in my chair. I can’t lie. I do want to see him again. Even if I’m furious about how he left things between us. But it’s not like you made any promises to each other, I remind myself. I’ve been reminding myself, for months after we ended, and I felt like a total idiot for still being so hung up on a guy who was only in my life for a month.

  I take the flowers out of their box, snip the edges with the scissors I found in my fully stocked desk, the remnants of whatever unfortunate person used to work from this station before me. Then I fill the vase that came with them with lukewarm water and add a dash of flower food to it. Finally, I prop them up next to my screen and settle back in to finish the orientation PowerPoint that Bronson emailed to the whole office this morning.

  But every other slide, my gaze keeps drifting back to the flowers. Back to the debate that’s been raging inside my skull ever since they appeared. Should I go to dinner with him or not?

  I want to know what really happened when he left. And I want to know what he’s been up to since—and why he fired two offices full of people here, too.

  But I’m also pissed at him. He never trusted me, never told me who he really was, some famous billionaire’s kid. And he left me without so much as a backward glance.

  My mind ticks back and forth. It seems like every other second, I agree with one side of the argument or another. I’ll see him. No, screw him, he doesn’t deserve that. But I’m not giving him a chance, just getting a free dinner and hearing what happened to him earlier this year…

  Back and forth, back and forth. I try to push the decision from my mind and focus on work instead. But it’s not like a lot has come across my desk yet—I’m still reading up after orientation, figuring out my responsibilities. And then a new message blinks, in my personal email window, which I opened from sheer habit.

  It’s from Mom. My stomach sinks again, for a wholly different reason this time.

  Are you okay? I write to her immediately, even though all she offered me so far was a hello. Is anything wrong?

  I’m fine, sweetie. Just wanted to check in and see how this new office seems. Is it any better than the last one? I know you were unhappy there… You can come home anytime, you know.

  Her words sit like a weight on my chest. Because I can read into them. I can see what she’s really asking. When are you coming home? It’s what she wants to know but won’t ever say.

  Recently, my mother’s health has taken a sudden, sharp decline for the worse. It’s nothing immediately life-threatening, the doctors say, but she’s been in and out of the hospital for various minor treatment
s ever since I got to LA. I’ve threatened to fly back at least a dozen times, but she always stops me, tells me she wants me to be really sure that I’m ready before I come home. I think she knows that I needed to get the big city life out of my system once and for all, before I could come back to Georgia with no plans to leave it again.

  But despite her constant encouragements, I also know how hard this has been for her. And it’s only going to get harder—the doctors tell us she’ll probably need full-time assistance within a couple of years. Which I’m more than willing to provide—it’s half the reason I’m out here saving every cent I can to buy us a big house where she can stay with me, I can take care of her and give her the care she needs.

  But every time I talk to her it just makes me want to go home now. Screw this job, screw the severance. Screw the fact that I’ve barely made enough to ship myself back to Georgia in one piece. But those numbers linger in the back of my mind. That severance pay is the kind of dollar sign I can’t just walk away from.

  I’m not Bronson, I think, a bitter taste rising at the back of my throat. I’m not some billionaire’s kid pretending to be a broke normal person when I’m secretly rich.

  Finally, I rest my fingertips on the keyboard to reply to my mother. I’ll be home in less than a month, I tell her. I just have a couple things to settle up here.

  There’s no rush, she writes back almost immediately. I’ll be happy to see you of course, anytime that you want to come home. But don’t hurry back on my account. I don’t want to be a burden on you, sweetie.

  You aren’t, I type so fast it makes my fingers blur. You could never be.