If she’s taking care of him, and he’s not quite with it, things have got to be difficult. A smidgeon of unwilling sympathy stirs, and I feel slightly guilty about making her work all those pointless hours simply out of spite. She might’ve needed time with Kenny more than the overtime pay.
Then I start to get annoyed over the fact that I’m feeling bad about it. How was I supposed to know? She never explained her circumstances. She just held her head high and acted like she was fine with the abuse I doled out.
Damn it, she wasaskingfor escalation. Just because she’s in a shitty place doesn’t mean she’s not the girl who fucked me over.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Aspen
I yawn a little as I enter the office on Monday after a late night closing the bar. Zack and Satoshi were on the shift with me, but they said I could leave early, since they know I have to go to GrantEm first thing in the morning. But I didn’t want to impose on them like that. Plus, I’m not running at the crack of dawn anymore.
Grant’s already in his office. I try to come in before he does, since I don’t want him labeling me as lazy or making snide comments, but it doesn’t seem possible unless I arrive by five thirty in the morning. And he’s made it crystal clear I’m not to do overtime. The time sheet probably stunned him.
Cheap bastard.
On the other hand, the work he had me on was bullshit. And we both knew it.
I boot my laptop and check Grant’s agenda for the day. I see the name I still hate on today’s calendar, then smile like it doesn’t matter. He’s paying me to do a job, not to have feelings about whom he has meetings with.
I enter his office. He must bathe in the blood of babies or something, because he looks disgustingly refreshed and gorgeous, although he has to be sleeping less than five hours a day. Everything about him glows—from his dark hair to the tanned skin to the sharp eyes that never fail to pin me to the spot, like he used to when I was younger and dumber.
I go over the day’s agenda and a few critical meetings for the rest of the day. He merely nods. I should leave, but I stay because I’m a decent human being—and I hate the fact that I owe him my gratitude. “Thank you for Saturday.”Wow, that sounded pretty begrudging. I can fake better than this. So I say something I wasn’t planning on. “It was nice of you to do that.”
Grant waves a hand. “It was nothing.”
His cavalier tone somehow makes me feel worse. Look at us—fourteen years later, I’m so pathetic that I can’t even get a seat at a restaurant I reserved. Not only that, I had no way to force them to honor the reservation. Meanwhile, all he had to do was look at the hostess sharply and have a word with that manager who magically appeared, and things were immediately sorted out. Even if I hadn’t had a reservation, if he wanted, the steakhouse would’ve come up with a table.
“By the way, is everything okay with your grandfather?” Grant asks.
I tense. Grandpa isn’t somebody I want to talk about, especially with Grant. He’s the only one I have left, and I feel like a lioness standing guard against a hostile intruder. “He’s fine,” I say firmly.
“He didn’t seem to remember me at all,” Grant says.
“It’s been a long time, and he doesn’t remember all my friends.” Not true, of course. My grandfather hates Grant for what he did, but I’m not going to bring up the unpleasant history. Grant isn’t going to admit he did anything wrong. If he was, he would’ve apologized when he saw me for the first time in the office. Instead, he acted like I spat on one of his polo horses.
All I want is get through the workday and have the firm help pay for Grandpa’s care. My personal feelings don’t matter. They can’t.
“He kept calling me Zack. And he confused you with your grandmother.”
“I don’t know why that’s pertinent. It won’t impact my performance, and there’s nothing in the policy that says I have to share my personal life with my employer.”
A muscle in his jaw twitches as he narrows his eyes.
He can give me all the slit-eyed suspicion he wants—I’m not saying another word. “If that’s all…”
“Yeah, that’s all. Go.” He makes a shooing motion.
I return to my desk with a soft sigh. Hopefully he’ll keep his nose out of my business. Doesn’t he realize he lost all right to ask personal questions when he turned me into a laughingstock on campus? Or maybe to him it was as trivially inconsequential as what he did at the steakhouse.
Maybe he wants to make amends…? What he did on Saturday could be an overture of sorts…
Ha!I cut myself off before it gets too ridiculous. The time to make amends was fourteen years ago. He probably decided to be nice on Saturday because his brothers were watching.No, wait—that hostess refused to sleep with him and he’s having his petty revenge.
No matter what he does, I’ll never forget that I can’t take anything at face value. Time spent obsessing about him is better used rereading the memo to make sure it’s perfect. I turn my attention to my laptop screen and glue my eyes to the document. No more frittering away my time and life. I’ve wasted enough on him already.
Half an hour later, the app on my computer alerts me to the first meeting of the week. And sure enough…
Sadie, the pain in the butt from my college years, walks in. She’s in a teal jumpsuit that emphasizes her small waist and flaring hips. Her breasts are at least two cup sizes bigger than I remember. I wish I could say they look bad, but they’re actually fantastic. Everything about her exudes expensive care, including her perfume and a stylish haircut that leaves her blonde tresses framing her expertly made-up face and cascading down her back.
