Page 18 of A Grinchmas Delight

“I know,” he whispers, kissing me again.

Neither one of us speak another word. We separate and he goes upstairs while I go out the back door. And somehow, all is right in my world again.

CHAPTER SIX

ZANE

“The numbers are looking good.You and Mark have a good thing going with your team in your district. I think you two should look at opening up a new position, one just beneath the two of you. Someone to work hand in hand with you and run things so that you can take a step back, in a sense. Have more time to mingle with the clients, that sort of thing,” Rob says from our zoom meeting on the screen of my computer.

“I have a few candidates in mind, but Zane isn’t a fan of some of them that I find to be more qualified than the others,” Mark says, cutting me a glare from the screen in front of me.

Dayra. He means Dayra. Just thinking her names has my dick twitching and I’m glad no one can see it from this webcam angle. All I can picture is her pinned against that concrete wall beneath the stairwell. And fuck me if I didn’t wish I was back to hating her just as much as I did before. What can I say, watching her come undone around my cock gave me a soft spot for her.

“Zane?”

Rob comes storming through my fantasy with his scratchy voice, calling me out.

“Are you having connection issues? It looks like you froze.”

Instead of doing the right thing, I play along with it and move in slow-motion before ending the call. He had some good points but my head is pounding. I pushed through my hangover in the stairwell, not letting on to how shitty I feel today, but I feel like death warmed over.

The drive to get my truck this morning was very interesting and filled with plenty of jokes on Mom’s part and a lot of silence on mine. She had too many questions about Dayra and I somehow weaseled my way out of answering most of them simply because, well I don’t really know what the answers to some of those questions are.

How do you classify it? Hey mom, this is Dayra. She works for me and I’ve hated her for years because she’s too perfect and now I am so attracted to her that it blurs all of the lines that I believed to be solid?

I don’t think that’s any kind of answer.

I glance over at the clock in the corner of my computer screen. Five after five. I should’ve left earlier, after the stairwell, but I didn’t want Dayra to think I had only come back inside to talk to her, although I did.

I was done here earlier today but I needed to see her. I needed to hear her make some snarky remark about me being drunk or to give me a death stare. What I got was way fucking better, though.

I check my phone and there are no notifications. I wonder if she’s not texting because she thinks we’re back to normal. I type out a text and stare at it for a moment before I decide to press send.

Zane: If that’s how you treat someone you hate, I’d love to see what your affectionate actions look like.

Just snarky enough to sound like myself but also opening up a line of communication. I grab my things and head to my truck. I’m going to a drive-thru on the way home and then I’m dying in my bed.

The traffic in the city is thick and it takes the drive-thru at the burger joint an extra ten minutes for bacon on my burger, but I waited. A burger without bacon is blasphemy. My food is still hot by the time I walk in the door of my house. I bump the thermostat up a few degrees, since I keep it lower during the day when I’m not home and there’s a chill in the air.

I strip off my suit and opt for a pair of flannel pajama pants and my undershirt. I sit at white marble countertop island bar in the kitchen and scarf down half of my burger and all of the fries. I was starving and there’s no better hangover meal than a greasy burger and fries.

I check my phone to see if Dayra responded but find nothing. I lock it and crawl into bed. I’m so tired I don’t even bother turning the tv on. I fall into a deep sleep until sometime in the middle of the night when I wake up sweating my balls off. I peel out of these flannel pants and sleep naked the rest of the night.

I must have forgotten to set my alarm because when I wake up, I’m sprawled across the bed with my mouth wide open and my phone ringing back to back across the room. I run a hand through my hair and yawn as I stroll across the room and grab my ringing phone from the top of my chest of drawers.

Dayra’s name is lit up across the screen. I swipe it to answer.

“Hello?”

“Ugh! There you are. Are you okay?”

“Yeah?”

“It’s ten-thirty and you missed the management meeting that you scheduled and that’s not like you.”

I chuckle. “Yeah, I’m fine. I forgot to set my alarm.”

“Great. Can you let me in? I’m at your front door and it’s fucking freezing outside.”

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