Page 59 of Crossing the Line
The Ticking Clock
Paisley Grove
On Monday morning, I make it to my office at eight o’clock. Now I’m resting my head on my desk, trying to catch at least ten minutes of extra sleep before my first meeting of the day. After our talk about being friends, Hercules asked why I hadn’t ever told my grandmother about the letters I found.
“I don’t know,” I said. But just as fast as I’d given him the glib answer, for the first time ever, the truth arrived at the tip of my tongue. “Because I don’t want to ruin the illusion,” I quickly confessed.
“What illusion?” Hercules asked.
I breathed in deeply through my nose, feeling my shoulders rise. Then I freed the air I’d been holding. “Because I want to believe that at some level, my grandparents truly loved each other, and my dad and Leo were born out of that real love,” I said tightly, fighting severe sadness. “But I’m thinking that Leslie and Charles were married out of obligation.”
“Obligation to what?”
I shook my head as I tried yet again to figure out what my grandfather knew that made my grandmother choose him instead of the other man. “I don’t know. But I believe the choice she made had something to do with protecting this Garnet man. And I don’t think his real name is Garnet because I tried to find him, and I could find anyone in the world if I wanted to.”
Lust and appreciation shaped his tapered eyes. “That I know for certain,” he said in a husky voice that melted my panties.
I looked away from him to blush, and when I set my dazzled eyes back on Hercules, he told me all about how he used to sit in meetings at work and think, “Paisley Grove would know how to solve this or that problem.” He even wrestled the desire to reach out to me a few times, he said.
“The only reason I didn’t is that I thought you’d have a boyfriend or fiancé or someone. I was never ready to learn that you were with another man.”
I admitted the same was true for me. I never wanted to know anything about his personal life. It would’ve distressed me for years to come to have known that Hercules was engaged to Lauren.
I told him that. I even confessed that it was a struggle to see him platonically and that it might be best if we kept our distance until he came up with a solution to officially cut ties with his distant cousin.
“But PG,” he said. “The more we see each other platonically, the sooner we might get past whatever this is that makes us want to—you know—make love.”
“That will never work,” I whisper, remembering how as soon as I got home, I grabbed Mr. Man and fantasized about Hercules stroking, licking, touching me, and kissing me until the point of orgasm.
“What won’t work?” Max’s voice booms through my office.
I don’t lift my head right away. Gosh, he sounds so miserable.Will my brother ever be happy?
My eyelids are heavy when I finally look at him. “Good morning to you too.”
Max crosses his arms and widens his stance. “Why didn’t you answer my calls?”
I massage my temples, realizing that my head didn’t ache until he showed up. “Because I didn’t want to be bothered.”
Suddenly, Max bolts forward and flops down in a chair across from me. “I’m not in the mood, Paisley.”
With one eye narrowed, I glare at him defiantly. “Well, neither am I.” And that’s the truth.
“Why the hell didn’t you do what you were advised to do at the hearing? You put us at a disadvantage.”
“What disadvantage? I didn’t perceive there was any disadvantage to answering the arbiter’s questions.”
He glares at me. He’s angry. Max is not one to shout or lose control. Scathing eye contact always does the slicing and dicing for him.
“Hey…” a gloriously soft voice sings.
Max whips himself around to see Lake standing in my doorway. She’s my 9:15 a.m. And I’ve never been so happy to see her. It looks like all the blood has drained from my brother’s face as he seems to thoughtlessly rise to his feet.
“I’m sorry, am I interrupting?” Lake asks, looking like a vision in a white halter dress with red leather closed-toe sandals.
“Not as far as I’m concerned,” I say, studying Max. He’s watching her with ruffled eyebrows as though he can’t figure out whether he’s attracted to the woman who just crashed his lambasting of his heady younger sister, or angry at her for intruding.
“I’ll talk to you later,” he says to me, but he can’t take his eyes off her.
