Page 36 of The Wrong Boss

I glanced at the invitation again. It looked fucking gold to me. “Yeah.”

“Last few are coming out of the printer,” the clerk said with a sigh of clear relief. “I’ll pack everything up for you.”

Ten minutes later, Carrie had a bundle of invitations, envelopes, and labels tucked under her arm. When we got to the car, she tried to hand them over to me.

I blinked at the package.

“Don’t you want to take these home?” she asked, frowning. “I can jump on the subway and head back to the office.”

Oh. Right. I’d forgotten why I came on this little field trip, probably because there was no real reason to be here other than the fact that I’d needed to be close to her.

I took the parcel. “I’ll take them home tonight. We can head back to the office together.”

She nodded, curt and businesslike. “Works for me.”

Thiswas the shape of our new relationship. It was coldly professional and utterly appropriate. It was exactly the right thing to do, and it made me feel like shit. As we drove back to my office building, I watched pedestrians on the street, bike messengers, and the never-ending flow of traffic, but I saw nothing—not even the car speeding down the cross-street on Carrie’s side of the car.

Not until our driver tried to swerve out of the way, jerking me back to the present. A moment later, the crunch of metal and rubber and fiberglass rent the air.

THIRTEEN

CARRIE

The car jerked,and my temple smacked against the window. I yelped as pain split across my head, then flailed to grab the seat in front of me as our vehicle fishtailed. Cole’s arm flew across my abdomen to catch me as my seatbelt jerked and held me in place.

The whole thing lasted no more than a couple of seconds. My ears were ringing by the time we came to a stop.

“You good?” he asked.

Glancing over, I noted his wide eyes, his heavy breathing. I nodded. “Yeah. What happened?” Turning, I looked out the back window to see an old beater of a sedan stopped halfway up the curb. Our trunk was crumpled on my side of the car, and a smattering of broken glass and the red plastic of what used to be our taillight lay scattered across the asphalt.

Cole made a noise, so I looked over at him in time to see a frown wrinkling the skin between his brows. “You’re bleeding.”

I touched my hairline, and the fingers came away red. “Oh.”

The partition whirred as it slid down. The driver said, “All good?”

“No, we’re not all fucking good, Paulie. What the hell was that?” Cole barked.

“He came out of nowhere!”

I didn’t want to point out that Paulie had pulled out into the intersection when the light had just turned from yellow to red. The other car had been going too fast, but we shouldn’t have been in the intersection to begin with.

My hands were shaking.

Cole threw his door open, and I dug through my purse to find some tissues. Pressing them to the side of my head, I jerked when the door on my side of the car was wrenched open. Cole’s thunderous expression filled my vision as he ducked inside the car, reaching across me to unclip my seatbelt.

His scent brought me back to the day we met. The salt of his skin. The smell of his cologne and shampoo. I inhaled deeply, shocked at the visceral nature of my reaction. My whole body clenched, my mouth went dry, and my heart began to thrum.

This time—unlike in his office—when his arms scooped me up, I was fully conscious and aware of how close our bodies were. I felt the grip of his palm around my thigh and the warmth of his arm beneath my knees. Shouting as he lifted me out of the car and into his arms, I wrapped my left arm around his neck while the other kept the tissue pressed to the side of my head. Because my right side was pressed against his chest, this twisted me and made it so our noses were practically touching.

“What are you doing?” I screeched.

“You need a doctor.” His jaw was set, his eyes furious. Maybe he’d noticed the traffic lights and the fact that his driver was at least partially at fault.

“Cole. Put me down!”

He whistled, and a taxi came to a stop in front of him. “I’m taking you to get medical attention.”

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