Page 19 of The Cocky Neighbor

"Well, you definitely won't find someone with that attitude." He paused for a second, considering something before saying, "You know, I probably shouldn't be encouraging you to try anything with someone who works under you, but you're only in charge of the hotel for a couple more months anyway. And the two of you are obviously attracted enough to each other to disregard your statuses and mess around. Perhaps you could take it slow and see if this thing with him leads anywhere?"

There definitely was enough fire between the two of us to burn down the entire hotel. Being with Eric felt different. There was a connection between us that I hadn't felt with any of my other one-night stands, and that was the very reason why I'd freaked out and ran out on him last week. The feelings I'd had during the hookup felt more real than anything else and that terrified me.

It didn't matter if I had figured it out now. It was too little too late. I'd pushed him away. I saw the hurt expression he had when I'd left him on the bed, and it took everything in me not to play off my words as a joke and fall into bed with him to kiss the hurt away.

Why the fuck did I bring up the linens?

"It's not going to happen. I messed up," I said, running a hand over my face.

"What did you do?"

I sighed and told Noah everything that had happened from the argument we had over the linens to the sizzling energy that was between us that led to falling into bed to ordering him to change to the new company's sheets after blowing him off.

When I finished my story, I was met with Noah's glare. "Wow, you really are a jerk."

"I know. That's why nothing is ever going to happen between us again," I said, hanging my head. It obviously wasn't my best moment. I'd panicked and did the first thing that had popped into my head.

"You're lucky he didn't report you for abuse of power or something. He probably thought the only reason you gave him the blowjob was to get him to follow your orders."

"I know!" I said again with a groan. It was such a dick move, one that I'd regretted since the words had left my mouth.

"Well, did you apologize?" Noah asked, and I stared at him like he had eight heads.

"What?"

"It's been a week. Please tell me you apologized for your behavior. It's the least you could do," he said. His words were very reasonable, but I didn't know how I'd even go about doing that.

"Liam! Please tell me that you at least talked to him." Noah sounded more exasperated now.

"Uh, I've kinda been…avoiding him," I admitted, which earned me another death glare.

"I can't believe you. I thought Wrights didn't run away and faced their problems head on?"

Great. I'd already failed as a boss and now I was failing as a Wright.

Noah bumped my shoulder, and I looked up to find concern in his eyes. "Hey, there's no point in dwelling on the past, so let's look toward the future. From what I see, you have options."

"And what are they?"

"You can either continue to ignore the man like none of it happened, or you could suck it up and talk to him."

Was I the coward who ran away from the man I couldn't stop thinking about or was I going to fight and see where this connection I felt with him would lead? It looked like I had some thinking to do.

FOURTEEN

ERIC

Irritation haunted me the week following the blowjob that I was never going to mention to another soul. Alfred interrogated me on my prickly attitude, asking if it had something to do with a certain Wright.

He was spot on, as always, but there was no way in hell I was going to tell him what had happened between Liam and me. I'd felt so stupid to have fallen for his games, to be used like that by him just so that he got what he'd wanted.

Joke’s on him, because there was no way in hell I was going to follow his order after he treated me like that. In fact, I specifically told my coworkers to put the linens from the new company in the very back of our stock until our current ones were worn out.

If Liam had a problem with it, he hadn't said anything to me. Not that we were on speaking terms at the moment, anyway, not that I wanted to talk to him or anything.

With Ava still on vacation, there was no one else to report to besides Liam. It was a good thing that communicating through email or through Alfred seemed sufficient enough. Thankfully, most of the crucial part of the hotel integrations had already been implemented over the last few weeks, so it wasn't necessary for Liam to come to the hotel every day.

Today just so happened to be one of the days he came for an inspection. I figured it would be like every other time he'd been here this week. He'd take a look around, make notes on things to complain about, and send me an email of said complaints later.

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