The Billionaire Boss Next Door(19)

Realization in…

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1


“Are you kidding me?” Quince snaps when he connects the dots of Cap’s passive innuendos. “You slept with my ex-girlfriend?”

“Dude.” The big bastard raises both hands in the air. “I promise you we didn’t sleep at all.”

Quince looks at me and then back at Cap before an annoyed laugh escapes his throat. “You’re a real asshole, you know that?”

“I do, actually.” Cap nods, and his eyes turn apologetic. “Honestly, Quince, I didn’t know. I mean, she looked kind of familiar. Her name sounded familiar, but I had no idea she was your ex.”

“I think your dick is stealing your brain cells,” Quince retorts, and I laugh.

“Yeah. That, right there, is a likely scenario.”

Cap just shrugs. “He does have a mind of his own.”

“Trent,” my dad says after peeking his head in my office without knocking. “I’ve got someone for you to meet.”

“Gotta go,” I say and hit end on the conference call without giving Quince or Cap time to interject.

But they’ve been around long enough to know about the tense, tumultuous relationship between my father and me. They know he can be a demanding, controlling bastard and that I spend most of my time trying to keep the fucking peace between us. They also know I’m not completely above hiding one of their bodies if they ever decide to ride my ass about it.

Without another word, my father steps back out of my office with the expectation that I’ll follow.

And, of course, I do.

Always the fucking peace-keeper.

I shove back in my chair, grab my suit jacket from the rack I keep behind my desk, and head out the door.

I would have loved to have a minute to prepare to meet the group of people I’m going to be spending all of my days and many a long night with over the next nine months, but Trent Turner Senior waits for no one, least of all his son.

Tight-jawed and tense, I make my way down the hall toward the conference room as quickly as possible, bumping carelessly into a woman as she’s stepping out of the break room.

“Ow,” she umphs, groaning as I step on her toes.

Shit.

Instantly, I grab her by the waist to keep her from falling. “I’m sorry. Are you okay?”

She flips her hair up and out of her face, a smile prepped and ready to forgive me, when our eyes meet.

“You,” she growls.

And at the exact same time, I spit “You” through a clenched jaw.

It’s her. The woman from the gym. The smartass in the Metallica T-shirt with the all-consuming hate for my father’s prize hotel. I’ve been thinking about the flippant way she talked about everything my family’s business is built on ever since she sauntered out of the fitness center, and seemingly, it hasn’t done anything to diminish how annoyed she makes me.

Not to mention, she didn’t even wipe down the equipment she was pretending to use, and I had to spend the last twenty minutes of my workout inhaling her sweet fucking perfume.

I mean, it was a good sweet. A soft and seductive kind of sweet.

But fuck, she should’ve stuck to gym etiquette.

“What the hell are you doing here?” Once again, our timing and our words are completely in sync.

“I asked you first,” she argues snottily and settles her red-painted fingers into the perfect crook of her skirt-covered hip.

I snort. “I think not.”

Her impressive blue eyes turn cold, and my blood pressure skyrockets. Today of all days—the beginning of the next phase of my career—I have to run into her again. Talk about the last thing I fucking need.

“What are you doing here?” I demand. “At my company.”

“Your company?” she shrieks, her wavy brown locks swaying with the agitated forward motion of her upper body. “I work here.”

My heart pumps twice instead of once, and my vision tunnels around her words. Her awful fucking words. “You…you work here?”

“Oh good,” my father says, appearing out of nowhere. Apparently, the strength of my surprise and disdain at the sight of the rude woman from the gym was enough to completely block out the action of him walking down the hall toward us. “I was hoping I’d get a chance to introduce you two before you meet the rest of the team.”

His smile is as radiant as the sun, and sweat drips appropriately down my back.

“Greer, this is my son, Trent. And, Trent, this is Greer Hudson. She is going to be heading up the design in New Orleans.”

Heading up the design in New Orleans? At my hotel?

You have got to be kidding me.

“Trent,” she sneers.

“Greer,” I snarl, memorizing the name that goes with my enemy’s face.

It’s a showdown worthy of any old Western, and I can practically hear the clank of our spurs as we take our positions opposite each other.

High noon and the fastest draw, winner take all.

Oh man, if only office politics were that simple.

Reluctantly, knowing my dad is watching, I stick out a hand for her to shake. She takes it roughly, digging a fingernail into the back of it. I’m almost certain her attempt at skin mutilation is on purpose.