Page 42 of Mark my Words

“Maybe he wasn’t, you know...”

“Fuck, Sam, I think we’ve spent enough time together to be comfortable saying the word cock without blushing,” she laughed. “He told me he was hard and asked if I’d have a quickie with him in the bathroom.”

“Wow,” I responded—a little shocked—loving the amused twinkle in her eye. “Sounds like a real winner.”

“Yeah, that’s it. Even if I could find his dick with the assistance of a microscope, I still wouldn’t touch it for fear of all the venereal diseases he’s most likely contracted.”

“So, I read too much into that comment about an arranged marriage?”

“Way too much. It was never serious, just a handful of dates with tiny-dicked Trevor and a few others. My mother pushed for it, and my father saw it as a business opportunity. My happiness didn’t matter to them.”

“I’m sure that’s not true,” I whispered, hugging her closer because I wasn’t sure if it were true. If her parents acted like older versions of Gregory, maybe they didn’t have her best interests at heart.

She was quiet for a few moments, holding me just as tightly, her body slightly tense. My mother wanted me to settle down and start giving her more grandbabies, but she’d never try to get me to marry as some business arrangement. It’d never crossed her radar for me to marry for anything but love. She’d probably try to run off any woman who wasn’t madly in love with me. I know my sisters would.

“Are we going to talk about it?” Her fingers had resumed tracing my chest, but she kept her face down, her chin tucked so I couldn’t see her eyes.

“About the promotion?” I clarified a few moments later.

“Yeah, you’re planning to go for the fantasy slot, right?”

Lying to her wouldn’t help anything, and I was planning to throw my hat in the ring for that position, no matter the competition. I knew there was still a chance neither of us would get it, but there was also a strong possibility one of us would, and the other might resent that.

“I am,” I confessed, hating that she tensed up momentarily. It wasn’t personal, and I did want her to succeed, but I didn’t want to push my career goals aside because we wanted the same promotion. It wouldn’t be fair to either of us to step aside, nor would I want her to. If I got the position, I wanted it to be because I earned it, not because I didn’t have competition. “Where does that leave us?”

“They won’t be announcing anything for three to six months. We might hate each other by then.” I could tell by her tone that she was forcing sarcasm into her voice, but she was right; neither of us could predict the future.

“Doubt it.”

“Sam, I’m not pulling any punches on this one, and you shouldn’t either.” She pushed herself up, leaning against the headboard as she looked down at me. It felt like she was already putting up a wall between the two of us.

“Can I ask one question?”

“I’m sure I can guess what it is.” She chewed on her bottom lip nervously, looking adorably mussed with her loose bun and wisps of hair framing her face. “But go right ahead.”

“Why won’t you go for the romance spot? Despite what your dipshit brother said, you excel in that genre.”

She sighed as she looked up toward the ceiling, tucking her legs against her chest and wrapping her arms around them. I wanted to force her to lay back down and stop hiding, but if she needed to hold herself together to talk to me, so be it.

“If I get the job in New York, he wins.”

“Your dad?”

She nodded, looking back down and resting her chin on her knee. “Yeah. He will use it to manipulate me if I have to move back to New York. He already managed to get Greg’s company a foothold with Vivid, and I won’t take a job he is responsible for creating. I’ve met Meg from the New York office, and she loved that job. If she’s moving on already, it’s because someone made that happen.”

“Surely Sloane wouldn’t compromise her integrity or the publishing house’s with something like that.” Sloane didn’t seem the type to let people get away with nepotism. She’d started in our position as a copy-editing intern and worked her way up, which is why she liked to cultivate talent internally when it was possible.

“Not her, Sam. It’d be higher than that. Mason doesn’t lower himself to calling in favors with middle management. He would have approached the executive team, if not higher.”

That almost sounded paranoid, but her world was different than mine. She’d grown up with a rich father who came from what sounded like old money and endless connections. The only nepotism my parents executed was being able to choose my elementary school teachers because my mom was the president of the PTA.

“So, we both want the same job.”

“I guess we do,” she confirmed.

“Am I supposed to say something like ‘May the odds be ever in your favor?’ Tell me what to do here, Kris.”

“This isn’t The Hunger Games, Sam. But I’ll understand if you want to stop doing...”

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