Quietly, I move toward her, the sound of her typing growing clearer with each step. She still hasn’t noticed me, and I can’t help but grin at her inevitable reaction when she finally clicks that I’m here.
Another couple of steps, and I’m less than twenty feet away when the floor creaks beneath my left foot, and her head whips up, eyes wide.
“Hey,” I quietly greet her, voice a little hoarse.
It’s a couple of seconds before Drew’s face breaks into a smile, and I stalk toward her, fingers itching to touch my girl.
She goes to stand from her chair, but I get there first, wrapping my palms under her ass so she can loop her legs around my waist.
Drew’s breath wafts over me in sweet waves, and it’s then I notice the empty mug of hot chocolate sitting by her laptop. She has an email from a huge French fashion brand pulled up on her screen, and a sense of privilege rolls through me. I get to hold this smart woman in my arms on the daily while she kicks ass on my behalf.
“Busy taking over the world?” I ask, nuzzling my face into her neck.
Her pulse point thrums against my lips when I set a chaste kiss there.
She just sighs, although it’s more despondent than happy.
I sit her down on the desk, crouching between her parted thighs so we’re eye level.
Today, she’s wearing the light-blue suit she wore to the Repeet meeting in New York. Drew in a skirt is hot as fuck, but there’s something about fitted pants and heels that just … yeah.
Gliding my hands up and down her thighs, I softly exhale into the room. “Shall I interpret your sigh as the reason why you haven’t been replying to my messages?”
Drew doesn’t need to answer for me to guess that it is, and my heart sinks an inch in my chest. Did she hear about Candice leaving the team, or has Coach already convinced her to pull away from me to save her career?
“I haven’t felt much like talking all day, if I’m being honest.”
My thumbs rub anxious circles over her pants. “Why?”
Drew’s eyes drop from my face to the floor, like she’s ashamed of something. “You’re looking at a First Line employee on her first official warning.”
Fuck.
I tip her chin up to look at me. “Did Colton find out about us?”
Drew shakes her head slowly, and my heart kicks back into life.
“I think if that was discovered, I wouldn’t be employed at all, don’t you?”
Coach’s warning to protect Drew’s career bounces around in my brain.
“Then what happened?”
Drew’s shoulders slump. “Lydia fucking West is what happened. She made an official complaint about me not reporting Silas’s request to transfer to my management.” Turning animated, Drew randomly points ahead like she’s reliving the moment when it all went down. “In front of all my colleagues, she accused me of stealing her clients and then lodged a formal grievance. Obviously, Colton had to take it seriously because it is a breach of code of practice, but …” Hereyes are narrowed in anger as she looks at me again. “As if I wasevergoing to go behind her back. I already told Silas that working together wasn’t a possibility. Lydia is out to get me, and this was an excuse to exercise the vendetta she’s had since I started working here.”
As the first tear runs a track down her cheek, my already-troubled heart cracks clean down the center.
How the hell am I supposed to tell Drew about her dad now? Or his comments about us stepping away from each other either personally or professionally? I know nothing about PR, but even I can see that the seismic deal she’s working on is enough to catapult her career once again. And that’s precisely why she’s still in the office at past eight in the evening.
We’re a team in every sense of the word, and I can’t—no, I won’t—be the one to shatter my girl’s dreams all because some fucking clause in our contracts says I can’t hold her like this or lie down next to her in my bed tonight.
“Baby, look at me,” I whisper, pointing at my eyes.
Drew’s glassy gaze reluctantly finds me.
“Hurt people hurt other people because it makes their shitty lives feel less painful for a few minutes.”
Drew sniffs and shakes her head. “But why me? Sure, it was a mistake not to report Silas’s inquiry, but I’ve only ever tried to be honest. When I joined First Line, I actually referred a client inquiry to Lydia because I thought she would be a better fit for them than me.”
