Page 32 of More Than Words

Closing her eyes, she took a deep breath, and I tried to keep my eyes on her face instead of her breasts as she let it out on a shaky exhale. “Fine. I’m sorry. Just…don’t. I can’t handle the dick right now.”

My jaw clenched as I stifled my laughter, trying to keep in the crass commentary about her last statement. She’d handled my dick just fine.

“Shut up.” The way she narrowed her eyes, and the finger pointed at my chest, should have been intimidating. Instead of shriveling my balls, it made my attraction to her flare to life, which I needed to get under control because athletic pants hid nothing.

“I didn’t say anything.”

Her hand reached out and smacked my arm before she shouldered her bag and nodded toward the door that led to the attached parking garage. It still befuddled me she didn’t have a car, but with the cost of gas and parking rising exponentially every year, I guess that using Uber was a solid economical choice. At least that was probably safer than taking the public transit at night. As a woman traveling alone, I wasn’t sure I’d trust people on the T after the evening rush hour was over. While I knew she prided herself on being independent, the world could be a dangerous place for women after dark.

“Did you get my emails?” she asked quietly while we fell into step together.

“I did. Thank you.”

“And have you talked to Evan yet?” Her voice was a little louder, and I could tell she was gearing up for a fight.

“Not yet.” Glancing over at her profile, I could see her mouth open, so without thinking about the implications, I reached out and squeezed her palm before she could get started. “He’s a morning person, so I’ll call him in the morning, but I already had the box of books waiting for same day delivery when I left my office.”

“Oh, good.” She shook her hand out, massaging her palm after I let go, and I had a hard time forcing myself not to react to the jolt I’d felt with her palm connected to mine.

I knew she was saving my ass on this one, and while Sloane’s idea for a collaboration with Isobel was sound, I still wondered if hiring an outside consultant might have been a better idea. Then the tension between us could have some time to dissipate, and I could figure out how to be in a meeting with her without getting a fucking hard-on like a teenager.

“Are you sure this is going to work?” she asked while she followed me up the ramp toward my parking space. One of the only perks I negotiated in my last contract was a reserved parking space included in my benefits package. Parking downtown was a bitch.

“At this point, what harm does it cause? Even if whoever he picks doesn’t work out, this may light a fire under his ass to get this manuscript past the rough draft.”

“Why wouldn’t they work out?”

Rolling my eyes, I crossed to the passenger side of my car, pulling the door open so she could slide into the seat. She opened her mouth to ask again, but I held up my hand as I started to swing the door closed. “Hold that thought.”

Taking a few deep breaths, I tried to psych myself up to spend another half hour trapped inside a vehicle with her. It’d been torturous to ride back to Boston from Bar Harbor. The only saving grace was that she hadn’t worn a skirt on the trip home as she had on the way up there. Honestly, though, my focus had been drawn more to her calm face while she was sleeping more than anything else. Something I don’t care to acknowledge because it would probably make me sound like a complete simp.

She was checking her email as I slid into the driver’s seat, pressed the button to start the ignition, and reached forward to turn down the music.

“You don’t think my authors can keep up with Evan? Then why did you need my help? Several of my authors are just as talented. Just because they don’t have the same mainstream success doesn’t diminish their abilities.”

Clenching my fingers on the leather of the steering wheel, I bit back the quick retort, realizing that one of us had to start diffusing the tension before things got heated.

“It’s not that they can’t keep up. It’s him. I’m unsure how he’ll handle having someone else look at his work. He barely tolerates me sometimes, but I know how to handle him.”

“He is a prima donna, then?”

Laughing at her continued use of the term, I tried to figure out a way to describe my most prolific author. I knew she hated it when I started going into rankings and sales, but behind all that, there was a quiet man I wasn’t always sure how to reach.

“Evan is special, not because of the accolades, but because his mind innately plans out a coherent plot line with little effort. Where some authors take months to construct a book and start cranking out words, he rarely takes longer than six weeks to draft and have a manuscript in my inbox. While we treat it like any other project, he doesn’t need a developmental edit most of the time.“ I paused to formulate my thoughts as I signaled to pull out into traffic. I knew where she lived, so she didn’t need to give me directions, but I still pulled up the street map on my car navigation. “When Sam did the first read-through on this project, he asked me if Evan had sent me his initial unedited draft instead of the rough draft.”

“Well, that’s never good. I can see why you’re worried.”

In my peripheral vision, I could see her fidgeting with her phone grip, but for once, she was listening to me instead of trying to pick a fight.

“While I know this isn’t ideal for either of us, Sam and I have only gotten so far with our suggestions. We need someone to work with him who knows what they’re doing. Someone who speaks author. I know we like to joke that editors are the unofficial co-writers for any book, but sometimes we can’t access that creative process like they can.”

“I’m sorry. I thought you had ulterior motives with this one. I know Evan doesn’t have a reputation for being difficult. I just thought you were manipulating me to make my life more difficult after…”

Biting my tongue until I pulled to a stop outside her building, I turned in my seat. “I get you think I’m an arrogant asshole, and I’ll own that, but I would never go to Sloane to force you to do something. We need your help, and when she suggested working with you, I guess I underestimated exactly how much you hate me.”

“I don’t hate you.” She refused to look at me, continuing to spin the grip on the back of her phone while she stared at her lap.

“Could have fooled me. Once we got back to the office, it was like nothing ever happened while we were together in Maine. You shut me out before we even got in the car to come home. And if the silent treatment in the office wasn’t a sign, the glares aimed in my direction every time I opened my mouth were a pretty good indication.” I didn’t want to continue this fight, but we would have to rely on working together for the next few weeks at the minimum—probably longer as our interns collaborated on the edits for the new pages.

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