Page 20 of Stuck On Them

You do not need to check on her.

Ignoring the warning voice inside my head, I walked to her office and knocked lightly on her door. She probably wasn’t even there.

“Come in!” She didn’t sound upset or flustered, so I opened the door and stepped inside, shutting it behind me.

Was it the best idea in the world to shut the door? Probably not, but I wasn’t about to have Ryker see me. “I’m sorry for Ryker’s behavior.”

“I don’t accept your apology for him. But I appreciate your concern.” She didn’t look up from her computer screen. “Did you need something? I’m currently working on getting emails sorted. I took it upon myself to decide that was the highest priority from the list.”

“I’m taking off for the day, so you can skip mine and I’ll go through them later.” I leaned back against the door, watching her.

“Is he really that much of an ass?” She was still avoiding looking up.

I sighed and moved to the chair in front of her desk. “He’s complicated. It’s no excuse for how he treated you, but he goes all alpha businessman when a lot is on the line. We’re expanding into more social media content creation and, so far, our results have brought us several new clients who are willing to spend a lot of money.”

She seemed to consider that for a few moments. “Listen, Garrett, if me working here is going to be an issue…”

“I never told you my name.”

She finally looked up, her eyes a little puffy. Fuck, had she been crying, or did she have an allergy? “It wasn’t hard to figure out.”

“Are you okay?”

She waved her hand in dismissal, returning her attention to her computer. I reached forward and shut it so she’d talk to me. I was treading in dangerous waters, but it was too late to turn back now.

“I’ve never felt so… so…” She looked down at her hands in her lap and a tear slid down her cheek. “I’ll finish out the day, but you’ll have to find a new assistant.” She laughed sadly. “I didn’t even apply for this job. I just wanted a nice easy job in a cubicle doing data entry or something. If I’d looked up information before applying, I wouldn’t have.”

My stomach did some strange twisty action. “But Sue offered you this job instead? And you just know how to go through our emails without training?”

She wiped her tears and sat up straight, grabbing the laptop and lining it up with the edge of the desk in front of her. “I was an executive assistant before I moved here. Going through emails and labeling them is easy.”

I hated dealing with emails, and Ethan wasn’t exactly accurate at sorting through them. “When did you move here?”

“A month ago. A week before we…” She didn’t need to finish that statement.

“Why’d you move? Clearly not for a job if you’re just now getting one. Or did you have one and quit? Fired?” The smallest part of me did have concern over whether or not she’d purposely tracked us down. It wasn’t entirely out of the realm of possibilities.

“Does it matter?” she snapped. “I applied to over a hundred jobs and even with being overqualified, no one wanted me.”

She sounded so dejected and… sad.

“That’s their loss.” My stomach decided at that moment to growl. “Let’s go get lunch,” I blurted, my stomach ruling over any warnings that were floating through my brain.

She looked a little taken aback, and she touched her phone to see the time. “It’s not even lunchtime.”

“Tell that to my stomach. My favorite deli is practically always open.” I was already getting too comfortable around her, but I couldn’t exactly pinpoint why.

This was bad. Very bad.

Was it because I’d seen how trusting she was with her vulnerability? How she blossomed under our stares? It’s not like it was the first time we’d ever done it, but it was the first time Ryker hadn’t seemed detached and didn’t want us to be either.

That was exactly why we needed to fire her.

She stared back at me, uncertainty in her eyes. “What about Ryker and Luca?”

“What about them? They’re probably still down the hall taking cheap shots at each other. Then they need time to kiss and make-up.” I stood and went to the door. “Bring that list and I’ll mark off what Luca put on there for Ethan’s benefit. It can be a working lunch.”

That was what I was telling myself anyway.

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