Page 18 of Falling For My Best Friend's Brother

And when he grabbed me during our little spat in front of the thermostat, my body had never felt so hot.

Much like now.

Knox was staring at me through dark, hazy eyes, and I found myself clenching my pussy, seeking some sort of friction to ease the throbbing in my clit. Something was happening between us. Something decadent and strange, yet tantalizing.

And if I wasn’t wrong, Knox felt it, too.

Was he going to say something? Would he address the elephant in the room? Or was he going to—

The stool scratched against the ground as Knox jumped to his feet, chest heaving, eyes jumping frantically from me to the plate. “Thank you for the food.”

He quickly reached down and grabbed his suitcase, and I swear he sped across the room like “The Flash,” and I didn’t even get the chance to say goodnight.

Chapter seven

Knox

The foodhadbeen edible. I didn’t lie about that. But was omitting certain information considered lying too?

If I was being completely honest, the spaghetti was half-done. The sauce was too thick and salty, and my taste buds were angry at me for subjecting them to such horrors. But I didn’t mind any of that because Nina cooked it. For me.

It was crazy how pleased I was. Seriously. I’d had to stop myself from smiling like a fool when she said it before I remembered it was probably one of her elaborate hoaxes to convince people she was the opposite of who they thought she was.

Still, the look on her face seemed genuine.

I had no idea what propelled me to humor her. Didn’t I swear that I’d rather chew broken glass than eat anything she cooked?On a normal day, I would have run as far as my legs could carry me. But today was an odd day.

First, when I got to the office that morning, Sean had been particularly excited for some reason. Apparently, his girlfriend had learned some new, to-die-for trick with her tongue, a story I’d begged him to keep to himself. He had a weird knack for oversharing sometimes.

Then, we presented our proposal to the directors of Cornerstone Corp, and they liked it. At least, it seemed like they did. There had been some unexpected questions thrown at us, but I’d been preparing too long for this to be taken unaware. I think we did well, actually, because I felt pleasantly relieved afterwards.

That was until Stacy Wilkson, our head crisis manager, informed me of a rumor she heard about us not being the only firm in the running for Cornerstone’s corporate positioning project.

They were keeping their options open then. It was smart, even I would admit that, but all it did for us was create a sense of insecurity that would no doubt grow as the days progressed. I asked Stacy to keep her ears to the ground in case she heard anything else.

I still didn’t know how to feel. On the one hand, if there was any proposal we’d ever presented, this was the best. I genuinely felt like we got through to them. But on the other, the news of their open-mindedness left me reeling with different possibilities.

As CEO of Coleman Media, I implored my team not to think about negatives and keep their fingers crossed. It was the only thing we could do at the moment while we hoped for the best. I understood their concerns. They were mine as well. This was make it or break it for us. We already lost one major client; we couldn’t afford to lose another.

If we got this deal, then we would all keep our jobs. The job market right now was tight as fuck. No one wanted to start from square one again.

Coleman Media was my baby. I started the company when I was twenty-eight, and it was like a dream come true. Years of hard work and sweat had been dedicated to making the company what it was today. I just couldn’t imagine seeing it washed down the drain.

So, yes. Landing this project meant way more to me than anyone would ever know.

With this company, I’d been able to see Lindsay through college at NYU and take care of Mom back in California. Claire Coleman never really recovered from her husband's death. She never spoke to Lindsay and me about it, but I knew she hurt every day she spent without him. I couldn’t take away the pain; I could only ease her burdens. And so from the moment my dad died, I took charge of the financial responsibilities of the house. I worked menial jobs as a twenty-three-year-old fresh out of college, then eventually interned at a local PR agency that took more from me than it gave for a few years before I could start my own company with a few friends.

Because of this, most of my young adult years were spent constantly working and searching for the next best thing. Sean once told me I seemed to have lost an appreciation for the present because I was always in pursuit of a better future.

He was probably right. For all his faults, Sean was wise. Sometimes. Still, it didn’t change the fact that this was the life I was used to. The need to be certain thatthiswasn’t all there would ever be, and onlyfinancial assurancecould give me that.

Some might call me a workaholic, and they would be spot on. I’d dined with poverty, and my pallet had not liked the taste. My biggest fear in life was being a failure, which ultimately translated to being poor. There was nothing remotely poetic about it. It was a terrible place to be.

My father hadn’t been rich. His father before him was even worse off. As a construction worker, he only made enough for his family to eat, his children to go to school, and to cover the house expenses. But that was about it. I’ve been working for my own money since I was sixteen.

Once, I would have said that my father had been fulfilled with his life. He had a wife who loved him and children he loved and cared for. I mean, what else could a man want? He left every morning to whatever site he was at after a kiss from Mom, and when he came back each night, she was all huge smiles and hugs. The perfect picture of contentment and domestic harmony.

But the truth was, Warren Coleman was just not ambitious. He’d been too comfortable with his life and his situation ingeneral, never striving for anything more than what he already possessed. And in the end, it cost him. When the accident happened, we’d been too broke to pay his medical bills, his insurance too insufficient to cover much of anything.

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