“But taking it further is a bad idea,” she continued.
Her words pierced the haze of lust surrounding his brain. She was right. This was a bad idea. He was her boss and her landlord. She was in a position where he had power over her and he never wanted her to feel obligated.
Especially not with this.
It was almost painful to do it, but Torin stepped back and released his hold on her waist.
“I like working here, Torin,” Nova began. “And I like working with you. But things could get incredibly messy if we get involved and it won’t hurt just you or me. It could affect Addie and everyone else here. I’ve worked in places where the staff got involved with each other. There were always fights, people always feeling like they had to choose a side, and it became a toxic place.” She took a deep breath. “I don’t want to be responsible for that.”
Torin noticed that she didn’t say she wasn’t interested in him. Just that she didn’t want to get involved with her employer.
Even though he knew it made no difference in the outcome, Torin still felt a small ray of hope. She liked him. She was attracted to him. Her reasons for avoiding an entanglement were sound, but they could figure it out.
If she was willing to listen.
“Look, Nova—”
She interrupted him. “I think we should move on like this never happened.”
Torin blinked. What?
Before he could ask her why, Nova continued, “It’s easier to stop this now, before things get too complicated.”
“Complicated?” Torin repeated.
“We obviously have chemistry,” Nova said as though he hadn’t spoken at all. “But the last time I was in chemistry class, I nearly blew up the school, so it’s for the best if we don’t do anything like this again.”
“Nova—”
“Please don’t, Torin,” she said, her eyes meeting his. They were a darker brown now and there was pain there. “Don’t push. Let it lie.”
It cut him like a knife. Why was she hurting?
He wanted to ask. To push. But her emotions were too close to the surface. If he prodded her too much, he sensed that she would shatter.
The only thing he could do was nod.
Nova smiled at him but unlike before, there was a tinge of sadness to her expression.
She left without another word.
* * *
Two days later,Torin still wasn’t sure what to do about Nova.
Now that he didn’t have hormones clouding his brain, he knew she was right to end things before they truly got started.
She worked for him. Period.
The only problem was that he missed hanging out with her in the kitchen during her dinner break, which she’d started taking around the same time as Addie. Addie usually ate at a table in the back corner of the restaurant so she could keep an eye on things and put out any minor fires before they became major.
Nova was mostly herself, and she still made jokes and smiled at him, but it wasn’t the same. He could feel it. The fragile bonds that had been growing between them were broken.
Today was worse because it was Nova’s day off. He missed seeing her, even if he couldn’t eat dinner with her or listen to her joke with Jorge or Matt in the kitchen.
The knowledge put him in a shit mood. So much so that the staff was already avoiding him and they hadn’t even opened for lunch yet.
Torin finally left the prep work to the guys in the kitchen and disappeared in his office to work on orders for the next week. He figured that his mood couldn’t get any worse, but he was wrong.
