The Billionaire Boss Next Door(24)

I shrug again, and it only amps her up more.

“Greer!” she shouts, and when I don’t respond right away, she reaches across the table and smacks my arm.

“What?” I ask with annoyance in my voice. “It’s not like it’s going anywhere, you possessed nutcase. I don’t live in New York. I don’t know who he was. I don’t even know his fucking name! All I know of him is his knowledge of Walter White and Breaking Bad and that he’s not a complete moron like Albert Einstein. For all I know, he hated every moment of our interaction,” I huff out, but my brain reminds me of his sexy words and even sexier mouth in a rebuttal.

Stupid brain. I shake off those pointless thoughts. It doesn’t matter what he said or how good the kiss was. Or that he talked about putting his face between my legs. It was a one-time thing.

Plus, he was the one who walked away, not me.

Emory scrunches up her nose. “Okay, half of what you just said doesn’t even make sense, but you’re forgetting something else you know.”

“What?”

“That he’s a good kisser.”

I groan and drop my face into my hands. I don’t want to be discussing this at all. In fact, I’d rather be harpooning myself with one of those guns they use to tag sharks and shit.

She smacks my arm to get my attention. “That’s a pretty important detail, friend.”

“Sure. Whatever you say,” I agree just to make her happy and lift my eyes to hers. “But you really need to wrap your mind around the fact that there’s nothing else there, E, no matter how much your romantic heart wants there to be.”

Her only answer is a frown heard ’round the world.

And if I’m honest, I’m kind of sad too.

But I don’t have time for a man, and I don’t have the investigative skills to find one I don’t actually know. This is a job for a Sherlock, and I’m really more of a Shirley.

Fuck, that’s not even true. I’m a Laverne.

Regardless, I need to focus on my firm, the hotel, and turning things around with my new boss.

It’s going to require long hours and personality adjustments and a lot of hard work.

I don’t have time to stop and smell the roses, and I don’t have time to fall for someone random, good kisser or not. Especially not someone who walks away before I can invite them to sleep with me.

Love, it seems, will just have to come later.





Trent



Greer Hudson.

The new designer for the hotel in New Orleans, the snarky—albeit gorgeous—woman from the gym, and my waking nightmare.

She made pouty, disapproving lips at me for the entirety of the meeting with the new team, and the weight of her stare makes me want to shove it off and slam it to the ground like body builders do after snatching.

Well, probably something less violent, but just as visually significant.

The more she stared at me with those big, blue, judgmental eyes of hers, the more annoyed I became and the heavier my chest felt. My mind might as well have been a hoarder’s house for all the clutter and garbage filling every thought.

Perhaps the worst part? This is just the beginning.

In less than a week, we will be spending all of our days, week after week, month after month, working as closely as two people can work.

It’s intimate and inescapable, and the whole idea of being crushed by inexplicable ire and manic, annoyed thoughts for the next nine months is nearly unthinkable.

I retreated to the familiar feel of my office to contemplate my options, but the gray walls and clean lines of my desk haven’t had anything to say.

Paper clips litter the reclaimed wood surface in a trail generated by my anxiety, and three empty coffee cups sit mockingly in the corner. Busying my hands and readying my mind felt like the only options since the moment that meeting ended and my new staff left for the day, but all I’m left with now is an overexaggerated coffee buzz and no idea what to do about Greer.

It’s only taken two interactions for me to know she’s outspoken and obstinate and her every opinion appears to be the opposite of my own. She hates the design of the Vanderturn Manhattan, one of our most successful hotels and the crown jewel in my father’s empire. She’s beautiful, sure, but trusting her taste for every single element in this hotel feels like a career death sentence.

What am I going to do? Can I really do my best work like this?

Everything is on the fucking line—my career, my relationship with my father, the success of Turner Properties, my mother’s happiness—and making sure this hotel is everything it should be and more is the most important thing I will ever do.

And I’m supposed to just, what, rely on this infuriating woman to design it?

My phone pings from in the middle of my desk calendar, and I pick it up to check the message.

The name Caplin Hawkins fills the tiny bubble, beckoning me to open it, but the action it sparks is different altogether.

Fuck the message. I need to see him in person.

I shove back in my desk chair and rise, turning in one fluid motion to grab my suit jacket off the coat rack behind me, dropping the phone into my pocket, scooping my keys out of the top left-hand drawer of my desk, and striding out of my office with a new sense of purpose.

Caplin may have texted me as a friend, but he’s about to get a visit as my lawyer.