“Oh, did we have a buddy meeting?” I asked, my unanswered text to Fritz leaving a hole in my heart. I asked if we could talk this weekend. Nothing more or less than that.
“Nope. Just wanted to eat lunch with you.” He sat in one of the chairs on the other side of my desk. The folder with all the information for the conference the next weekend was there, and he picked it up. “This one looks fantastic. Hillary Jones is one of the keynotes. Her passion for differentiation is incredible.”
My heart clenched at the longing in his voice. I was excited about the conference, but not in the same way he spoke about it. “Are you a fan of Hillary Jones?”
“Yes. I’ve read all her books and got to hear her speak when I lived in Chicago. She’s inspiring and data driven. There are too many gurus who are focused on the emotional piece, which is important, for sure, or those who are all numbers and data. Hillary Jones, though, she uses both.” He took a bite of his sandwich with one hand and set the information sheet down on my desk. “You’ll have to tell me all about it. Maybe get a photo with her and let me see it? I could use a new desktop background.”
I snorted, really needing the humor, and we shared a smile for a beat. The eye contact, the slight curve of his lips, and his foot resting under my desk, an inch from mine, brought me back to the car where his lips were on mine and his hands on my body. I cleared my throat, refusing to let my mind go there at work. “Yeah,” I said, shaking my head a little bit. “I’ll get a picture, sure.”
“Great.” He smiled again and studied the wall behind my desk. His attention stopped at a photo of Grace, Fritz, and me with our arms around each other and covered from head to toe in mud. “You three are close, huh?”
“Yes.” The guilt crept back in, and I checked my phone. Fritz still hadn’t answered me, and I hated to think Samantha was the reason. If he found out from her, there would be irreparable damage done to our relationship. At least if I told him the truth, there was a sliver of hope. “Grace forced us to do this mud run. It was awful, honestly.”
He laughed. “You look happy in the photo.”
“Because we were done.”
His amusement warmed my face, and I tried eating a bite of my salad. I loved homemade dressings with oil and vinegar, but it tasted off. Everything had tasted off since Samantha had visited the night before, and I forced myself to swallow. My phone buzzed, and my heart leapt into my throat. My brother had finally texted me back.
Fritz: Is it an emergency or can it wait? Need to go out of town. Camping with some colleagues.
Gilly: Oh, good. When you get back then.
Fritz: Deal.
There went my plan to tell him soon.
“Things not better with your brother?” he asked, reminding me that he saw right through my emotions. His soft and kind voice was the same one he used on students, and a part of me wanted to crawl into his lap and have him tell me it’d be okay.
But that wasn’t his job, and I’d caused this mess.
“Not yet. He’s going out of town this weekend, so we’ll have to talk after that. It’s just eating away at me.”
“I get it. If it’s one of those conversations that needs to be in person, it’s hard to wait, but it’s the right thing to do. You clearly love each other, so I know he’ll forgive you. Try not to be so hard on yourself, Gil.”
Gil.
The stupid, one-syllable nickname that everyone called me should not have elicited a full body shiver, but it did. My face heated, and I bit my lip to prevent a smile. He would not be calling me that or being so nice if he knew the truth about what I did, or what I kept from him, but that was filed into alaterfolder. “I appreciate you saying that,” I said, meeting his warm gaze. “Thank you.”
He shrugged and dived into his food again, repositioning himself so his foot rested against mine, and instead of moving, I kept it there. His large foot and my small one, sitting side by side, felt intimate. “What are you doing this weekend?” he asked after we ate in silence for a few minutes. “My college roommate has this bro bachelor party up in the city for the weekend. Food trucks, paintballing, the beach. I’ve been saving up for it for a while, and I’m excited to be back up there.”
“You miss living there?”
“Yes and no. I moved here to be with family, and I have a few friends from here, actually. It’s a different lifestyle for sure. Everyone drives everywhere, and the nightlife isn’t nearly as fun, but it's homey. I want a family someday, and this is the kind of town perfect for that.”
It was undeniably sexy to hear a man say he wanted a family and be upfront about it. Too many crappy dates or horror stories from Larissa clouded my mind when it came to the opposite sex. The fact he said it all, just like that, made me like him even more, and that was dangerous.
“This is a great town for a family. I loved growing up here and only going to college a short drive away.” I took another flavorless bite and felt his stare like a caress. “Um, your weekend sounds fun.”
“I don’t do it often enough, so I’m excited. But, I gotta admit, it’s been nice running into you after school.”
“It has been…nice,” I said, letting the word hang between us. It was more than nice, and if I thought about him, about us too much, it’d mess with my already muddled brain.
He grinned, like he knew my mind was a hot mess when it came to him, and he finished his sandwich. “All good with your car? Hopefully it didn’t cost an arm and a leg.”
“Yeah, it’s…good.” I forced a tight smile, but he didn’t notice. He gave me a lazy grin that made me think of his lips on mine, and I looked down. Someone knocked on my door, making us both look up, and APD was there.
“Gilly, got a minute?” he asked, his voice serious as he clutched a folder to his chest. He rarely wore smiles, so nothing should’ve raised the hair on the back of my neck.
