Page 37 of The Thing About My Rival

And instantly my warm sense of satisfaction is gone. The pleasure at teasing Wilcox wiped away by the words that slice through me like an ice-cold blade.

You ruin everything. The phrase I’ve heard a thousand times. If I could remember the first words anyone ever said to me, odds are it would be those three.

To help shut out the flashbacks and calm the tightening in my gut, I take a sip of wine.

“I’m sorry,” Wilcox says, her eyes shifting from my face to the base of her glass as she turns it around and around. “I shouldn’t have said that. It was needlessly cruel.”

Perhaps she could see the pain etched in my features. Or perhaps she’s just a good person. Actually, I already know she is. She fucking loves that club and is only bringing in the maintenance methods that annoy me so much because she cares deeply about the team. The game runs through her veins exactly as much as it runs through mine. Just in a different way. It’s something we have in common.

“No one deserves that.” Her gaze slides back up to mine, a glint in her eye. “Not even someone who’s stratospherically annoying.” A mischievous smirk plays at the corner of the mouth I dearly wish I could recall kissing.

It’s a flash of the little I do remember seeing in her at the club that night—a flicker in her eyes that sparked an instant flicker in mine. That part of the night six years ago did come back to me. As did the dancing and me jokingly grinding against her hip and being worried she might have felt Mr. Happy getting jolly.

“Look,” she says, “after that talking-to we had today, it’s obviously in both our interests to work together so they don’t put one of us on administrative leave.”

“So they don’t putyouon it, you mean.”

“Oh, for God’s sake.” She slumps back in her chair, causing the neckline of her dress to gape a little. “I was trying to be nice, be the bigger person. But if you simply refuse to call a truce, there’s nothing else I can do.”

Her long blond hair, curled from about halfway down—also new—falls forward over one shoulder, pointing theway to her left breast. A breast I might very well have held, a nipple I might have thumbed or even had in my mouth.

Fuck, what did she feel like? My best guess would be firm with baby-soft skin.

“Well?” She stares back at me in an I’ve-totally-had-enough-of-your-bullshit type way. God, she’s cute.

She’s also right.

“You’re right,” I tell her.

She slaps her palms on the table, sits bolt upright, and looks around the room. “Hear that, everyone?” she says in a whispered mock announcement. “Hugo freaking Powers thinks I’m right about something.”

Unfortunately, I think she’s probably right about a lot of things. And that’s dangerous for my job prospects. I need to be the Fab Four’s choice at the end of the season. If I screw this up, I’ll be even more unemployable than I already was.

I rest my chin on my hand. Maybe that’s flirtatious, but what the hell. “You’re hot when you’re being superior.”

“Then I must be hot all the time.”

She’s not wrong.

“Okay, then. You win. This game anyway. If you don’t want to talk about Paris, we won’t talk about Paris.” I make eye contact with the server and give him the we’re-ready nod.“Let’s order dinner. And keep the conversation to how we can best prep the team for Saturday. Then we can get this evening over with, relatively pleasantly, and go home.”

She raises her glass in agreement. “Deal.”

Jesus. Now I have to actually work in harmony with my rival for the job, whose methods are the opposite ofmine, and who I once did God knows what with in a Parisian closet.

There was me thinking I had problems when I had no job.

As the server returns to our table, there’s a smattering of applause across the other side of the room. We all turn our attention to the clapping. A man is on one knee in front of a woman who has both hands on her cheeks and is staring down at the small box he’s holding up to her.

Bless them for thinking they can make it work when millions don’t.

“Do men still do that?” I ask the server. “The one-knee thing?”

“Happens in here about once a month,” he says.

Wilcox watches the happy couple, a faint smile on her lips. Why do girls love that shit?

No one will ever catch me on one knee, that’s for sure. Unless I’m doing up my boots.

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