Total pages in book: 113
Estimated words: 110360 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 552(@200wpm)___ 441(@250wpm)___ 368(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 110360 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 552(@200wpm)___ 441(@250wpm)___ 368(@300wpm)
Lofton had said it had been a while since she’d gotten together with them, but judging by the loud laughter coming from their table, not a minute had passed without her. Even if the smile never quite hit Lofton’s eyes.
Throughout the night, her gaze would inevitably drift to mine, double checking that I was still there. She tracked my every move as I ran my perimeter with slow, deliberate loops along the edges of the room, pausing at the windows long enough to clock the street outside before moving on. Chris and I would silently communicate across the room. A small nod. All clear. He’d mirror it back, and we’d both go back to business.
Lofton watched it all, quietly monitoring as if she found something settling in the rhythm. Like she could read that my movement meant the room was still secure, but the moment I stilled meant it was time to worry.
She wasn’t wrong about either.
I hated she was struggling, but I took immense pleasure in the way my presence eased her. I wished I could have said the same for myself, but each time we made eye contact, it only got harder to pretend I wasn’t losing my footing with this woman.
Thankfully, she hadn’t dressed in full sexual-terrorist mode that night. But fuck me, that short red dress she’d paired with strappy black heels taunted me all the same. Her brown hair was pulled half back, loose waves falling around her shoulders as her freckles made a rare appearance beneath her barely-there makeup.
Ungodly sexy.
Understated.
Her.
“Grant,” Leo snapped in my ear. “You saw it, right?”
I exhaled slowly. “As helpful as it was for you to send it to me seven-thousand times today, I lived it. I don’t need to watch the video.”
I made a mental note to check on that backhoe Lofton had mentioned, because Apollo Park’s days were numbered. There were only two options for how Leo had stumbled across the surveillance footage of Lofton and me intertwined in the feed room two days before.
Apollo had shared it, or he’d pointed it out to someone who had.
Neither ended well for him—or me.
“Good,” Leo snapped in a tone that told me absolutely nothing was good. “Then how about you fill me in on why the hell it looks like you’re catching feelings.”
My gaze cut back to the woman in question as she tucked a strand of hair behind her ear, her smile softening as her friends giggled.
Catching feelings.
It was too simple a description for the clusterfuck brewing inside me. The truth was, I didn’t know what the hell was going on.
I hadn’t made a move on her. Nor would I. But I was failing miserably at resisting hers.
And make no mistake, that woman knew exactly what she was doing. A confident woman, boldly going after something she wanted, only made her advances that much sexier—and torturous.
“I’m doing my job,” I said flatly. “Shit went down. It upset her. She cried, and I hugged her. The end.”
“You really gonna bullshit me about this? I got my wife pregnant with less physical contact.”
“Feel bad for Sarah.” I winced, knowing better than to poke the bear.
“Grant,” he warned in a deep growl.
Careful to keep my voice quiet so I wouldn’t interrupt the ladies, I replied, “Look, I gotta say you’re giving some seriously mixed signals on how you want me to handle this. I came in hot, hell bent on keeping my distance, and you handed me my ass for cutting her while she was bleeding. So, then I take a different approach, soften things up and try to be there for her in order to stop that bleed before it drains her, and now you’re giving me shit about that too? What exactly do you want from me here?”
“I want you to be focused.”
“I am focused,” I seethed.
And it wasn’t even a lie, because every minute of the Goddamn day, all I could think about was Lofton.
Her mouth.
Her hands on my chest.
The breathless way she said my name.
That woman was in my head, under my skin, and, I was starting to believe, a fast pass to ending my career.
Leo’s voice got low and ominous. “You can’t risk blurring lines on a job like this, Grant. Not with the threat we’re dealing with.”
“I’m not blurring anything. For fuck’s sake, I hugged her, Leo. That’s hardly cause to call in the ethics committee.” I thrust a hand into the top of my hair. “Are you done bitching at me yet? Currently, the only thing distracting me from this job is you.”
There was a long, loaded silence, and just when I thought he was gone, Leo dropped a nuke. “She’s not Levee.”
My ears rang and my vision flashed red. Those three words ricocheting inside my head, each rebound more deadly than the last.
How fucking dare he throw that in my face. He knew the years of torment, regret, and self-loathing that woman had caused me. And yet, to prove his point, he’d used her name like a crowbar to my knees.