Page 33 of More Than Words

“I don’t know what you want from me. And I hate that I feed into your bullshit attitude. I don’t like the person I am when I fight with you.”

“Can you look at me?”

She hesitated, continuing to spin the grip in her fingers. Knowing it’d probably piss her off, I grabbed the phone and placed it into my cup holder before I tilted her chin toward me.

“I don’t want anything other than your professional help. There’s no manipulation here. I need you, and I don’t want to spend the next few months with you hating me. Is it possible to come to some sort of cease-fire? I’m not the only one picking fights here.”

“Stop the arrogant peacocking, and I’ll try to bite my tongue.” As her eyes met mine, I tamped down my physical reaction because I wanted to be the one who bit her tongue.

A charged moment seemed to pass between us while she looked up at me, her eyes darting around my face and briefly settling on my lips. The physical attraction I’d been fighting felt like another entity in the car, wrapping around us and sending a line of goosebumps up my neck. She kept fighting it, and I knew she’d deny it, but she wanted me too, despite all the antagonistic behavior.

“I’ll try,” I promised, reaching over and pressing the button to unlock her door. She sucked in a breath as I leaned across her body, and I knew I could have easily leaned back and pressed the unlock button on my side, but watching her reaction to my proximity was more fun.

“Let me know when you hear something.” She shoved her phone into an outside pocket of her bag, her eyes nervously darting around the car’s interior, anywhere but where I was watching her intently.

“You got it. I’ll call him in the morning, but I’ll lean on him if I don’t hear back by the end of next week. Thank you again. I do appreciate this.”

“Night,” she mumbled before she pushed the door open, darting across the sidewalk and swiping a key card on the electronic lock outside her building.

As I pulled back into traffic, I wondered if this temporary truce and working together would ever address the elephant in the room. I knew what she looked like when she came, and I wanted to see it again. Desperately.

ISOBEL

Boston

Evan didn’t take long to decide which one of my authors he wanted to work with, and I was pleasantly surprised he chose Chase. She’d also been my first choice because I knew she was easy to get along with and had never met a stranger. I was a little afraid for Evan because of his introverted nature, but if anyone could teach a masterclass on writing a steamy sex scene, it was her. Chase’s writing methods were a little unconventional, but maybe pushing Evan out of his comfort zone would spark something.

Adrian had played nicely during the weekly staff meetings, keeping his snide comments to himself for the most part. Unfortunately, he’d actively antagonized Chase when she’d been in the office for me to pitch this idea of consulting to her. But a few well-placed barbs, aimed directly at Adrian, and she’d calmed down enough to agree to help.

She’d left the city a week ago to help Evan, and it took all my willpower to let her do what she did best without my interference. We’d exchanged a few texts, and I’d forwarded information from Adrian, but things were quiet on her end. It’d seemed important to Adrian that this intervention work, so I was letting it play out naturally.

Kristine, my copy-editing intern, was less enthusiastic about being forced to work with Adrian and Sam, but it wasn’t her decision. I’d just have to find creative ways to keep Adrian’s mouth shut in her presence. Sam could probably handle her prickly attitude. He possessed more tact than his abrasive supervisor, not that it’d take much.

But, of course, Adrian just couldn’t resist riling up my intern and intentionally provoked her in my office when I was trying to explain to her why she needed to play nice during this collaboration. As much as I hated to admit it, Sloane was smart to call in someone internally, because all our authors had signed NDAs in their contracts regarding internal communications from the publishing house.

Which meant that even if she wanted to—not that I thought she would—Chase wouldn’t be able to breathe a word about the reason she was helping Evan polish up his book. The last thing we needed was it getting accidentally leaked to the press that one of our top performing authors was having trouble with his manuscripts to the point where another department was being called in to salvage his work for print. Not to mention that his readers were less likely to take his book seriously if they thought he wasn’t capable of writing what he was putting out without someone more experienced holding his hand.

Now I was left standing in my office, staring down at the man who couldn’t control the filter on his mouth long enough for me to convince my intern to play nice with his.

“What the hell do you want?” I asked after Kristine’s silhouette had stormed past my window. “Surely you aren’t that much of an asshole that you came down here to pick another fight. Because I’d hate to talk to Sloane about cutting you out of your author’s novel because you couldn’t play nice with an intern.”

“What the fuck, Is? That’s out of line. He’s my author and I am not letting you hijack his work. You’ve never overseen a thriller in your career.”

Stepping around him to push my office door closed, not wanting to give the gossips any fodder. “And you were out of line suggesting that my direct report was anything less than a professional. That’s twice now that you’ve picked a fight inside my office, once with my employee, and don’t forget how you insulted one of my authors. That shit isn’t going to fly with me. I know you apologized for what happened when we talked to Sloane, but this is becoming a nasty habit for you. That aggressive bullshit better stop now, or I will no longer be providing my assistance on this project.”

His eyes were comically wide as I laid into him, and he shifted, awkwardly pulling at the seam of one of his pant legs while his eyes were focused somewhere on my face, but certainly not my eyes.

“What?”

“I don’t want to get slapped for telling you the truth, so let’s just move on.”

Taken aback by his comment, I opened my mouth, but wasn’t sure exactly what to say to him.

“It was hot,” he whispered, his eyes filling with mischief.

“What—?”

“When you put me in my place just now. That was hot.” He continued to stare at me, the atmosphere in my office shifting as it had in the car the other night. While neither of us had directly addressed our mutual physical attraction to each other, it was clearly still there, even if I didn’t want it to be.

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