Finally, the line began to dissipate and he said goodbye and disappeared down the hall, no doubt to his office to do whatever he did on his computer for hours at a time. Not that she paid much attention to what he did. She worked there. It only made sense to know what was happening and who did what.
Still, she was thrilled when August came to take her place when her shift was over. As far as she knew, she hadn’t made any serious mistakes, but her mind had only been half attached to her work. The other part had been preoccupied by the man who’d stood next to her and said what he’d said. Declared. That she was his girlfriend. Which made her feel like she was in high school, wondering if the boy she’d gone on a date with liked her enough to want to be official. Not that she wanted that with Donovan. Jumping into a relationship made no sense when everything in her life was so uncertain and unsettled.
She was free to leave. She should leave, but for some reason she stopped outside his office door. It was closed, which was good. He couldn’t see her standing out here looking like a fool. Bright side.
“Everything okay?” Nicholas asked. He’d come out of the bathroom, which was two doors down.
Jada coughed. “Yeah, I was about to go talk to Donovan.”
He pointed at the door. “Don’t let him intimidate you. I don’t think he realizes his, uh, starchy nature can be a little discomfiting for other people. His bark is way worse than his bite.”
Jada lifted her chin. “I’m not scared.”
He winked. “Good to hear it.” He made a right, heading back to the kitchen.
She hadn’t lied. She wasn’t scared. She was terrified. Which was ridiculous. He’d had every opportunity to send her packing, to never hire her in the first place, and he hadn’t. No, he’d declared to the whole world that they were dating, and she needed to find out why. So yeah, time to get it together. She knocked briskly, her hand only trembling slightly on the doorknob at his commanding “come in.”
She opened the door and rocked back on her heels. For once, he wasn’t sitting behind his desk like the principal waiting to give a misbehaving student detention. He leaned against the desk, his arms crossed across his wide chest, the material of his polo pulling against his mouth-watering biceps like he’d been waiting for her. His eyebrows quirked. “You going to come in or just stand there?”
She lifted her chin. Show no fear. Brazen her way through this, just like she did every day of her life. She stepped forward. Toward him. Toward the man who could torpedo her already-shredded reputation with barely any effort. Toward the man who studied her with a hard, unwavering gaze.
“I was wondering how long it would take for you to show up.” His voice, deep and mesmerizing, sent a thrill racing through her. But she had to ignore that.
She let out a little laugh. “It’s not every day a man who declared that he wouldn’t lie and say we were dating did exactly that less than twenty-four hours later. I was thrown for a loop.” She took another step forward, drawn to him. “The question is why. Why did you do it?”
Chapter Eleven
That look on her face. She tried, but she hid nothing. Every emotion showed. When that woman had called her a heartless bitch, before she remembered to school her features back into a calm, unbothered veneer, he’d seen the devastation, the hurt on her face. And the words had flown out of his mouth.
Again, she was trying to hide what she was feeling, but it was there, swirling in her eyes—confusion, uncertainty, and a glimmering, flickering hope. She wanted people to think she was a worldly, sophisticated character—and she was—but that wasn’t all she was. She was a red-blooded woman with insecurities and hopes and dreams like everyone else. Like him. And she didn’t want anyone to know. Just like him. He coped by making his life as orderly as possible and staying as even-keeled as possible. She made it through with some good old-fashioned gumption, even as she took it on the chin.
He couldn’t be the one to let her down. He reached for some papers on his desk. “Do you know what these are?”
Her head tilted to the side as she stared at him like he’d lost his damn mind. Maybe he had. “No. Should I?”
He smiled. She made him smile like no else had in a long time. “They’re analytics tracking our website for the past twenty-four hours. We haven’t seen traffic like this since the opening week of Sugar Blitz.”
“That’s great.” She bit her lip like she didn’t know what else to say. And he wouldn’t think about what it felt like if it were his teeth biting that plump lip. The lip that he now had irrefutable evidence was utterly kissable, undeniably biteable.