Page 24 of His Off-Limits Christmas Gift

I frowned, scowling at the copier I stood at. I didn’t see why this had to be a joke. At his expense. Didn’t they have any respect? What business was it of theirs? Nate’s personal life was his business alone. Of course, I’d feel this strongly about it when everyone wanted to be in my face about why Kyle dumped me.

“She’d never get back with him,” the first one gossiped. “I mean, it’s been years. But still. I heard he’s got a really tiny dick.”

I stared at the wall, pissed.

“Hmm, I don’t know. He’s such a tall guy. He can’t have a small one.”

“Hey,” the first one said. “That’s just what I heard…”

“Iheard that he just doesn’t know how to use it,” her coworker said.

“Maybe,” the first one said. “All I know is that he’s got to be faking this happy-go-lucky act. No one’s that laidback. Especially if he’s not getting laid.”

“And especially with how Yasmin humiliated him. It’s got to take a lot of courage to even show his face at those parties.”

“Well, he only does until he’s so drunk that he falls asleep.”

They both laughed.

Oh, for fuck’s sake. That is enough.Thanksgiving night was a blur for me, too. When Kyle dumped me in front of our families, at dinner, it wasn’t only awkward. It stung. A few shots of my dad’s whiskey dulled that night. No one could blame Nate for drinking for a distraction on the repeat party of where his ex-wife ruined his happiness. It was only human nature to want to distract from that.

The urge to stand up for Nate hit me hard. Anger fueled me. Annoyance had me readying to turn around and defend him.They didn’t know him. They were ignorant, making up stuff about him.

I didn’t know everything about him, not this mature, adult version of the guy I crushed on when I was a kid. But I was confident they were all wrong about him.

I was a second away from defending him from this behind-the-back attack. But then I hesitated. It didn’t seem like I should. It wasn’t my place to say anything. Nate, according to them and everyone else here at Malley, Inc., was just my boss for a month or two.

Not a friend. Or a man who wanted to tease me to the point that I was blushing uncontrollably. Definitely not a man I had started to think about far too often, particularly at night when I lay in bed and couldn’t sleep.

I shook my head slightly, chastising myself for not even knowing what my place should be with him. All at once, doubts surfaced about this deal we’d struck. Maybe it was for the best that it never started or happened. Because somehow, over the last couple of weeks while I hid from home and tried to avoid the mess of my love life, Nate had snuck into mattering. A lot.

“Hey.” And there he was, startling me until I flinched. He’d popped in, leaning past the door frame to smile at me. The other two gossiping women shut up really fast and looked busy.

“I was looking all over for you,” he said.

One of those easy, slow smiles covered his face. The real ones, the sweet ones like he was unaware that we were at the office and that he was focusing solely on me. He’d treated me to a naughtier version of this smile when we were at lunch, when he was listening to me and striking up that mentor deal. If a woman ever wanted to know what it felt like for a man to look at her like she was all that mattered in the world, it was this look right here. His, for me.

And it was not fake at all.

A warm glow spread through me at receiving his uninhibited attention like this. I caught myself from getting too giddy, though.

Wewereat work. And nothing, other than this supposed deal, connected us.

“Julie said you’d be down here. I was hoping to get lunch with you.”

“With me?” I asked. He’d been so busy, yet he had me on his mind?

Me? Or this deal?

Now that I’d caught a snippet of the gossip about how humiliating that holiday party had to be for him, it was understandable that he’d want a plus-one to avoid the embarrassment of going through another one on his own.

“Yeah, you and me. Lunch.” He upped the wattage of his grin.

While it should’ve sounded like a date, I knew better. He was only doing this for a lesson. To be my mentor.

The other two women didn’t say a single word. I felt good about their silence. But as they left the room, perhaps to gossip about him some more, I wished that Nate could be asking me out for real.

Not for a lesson or as part of our deal, but just because he wanted to spend time with me. So he could use me to move on from the six-year-old pain of Yasmin leaving him.

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