Page 27 of Royal Bosshole

“Well, that’s definitely us.”

“Sure is. So, before we go down the path of old veterans discussing their glory days, what happened with the woman? What’s her name, by the way?”

“Lily.”

“That’s right.”

“Nothing happened.”

“Liar.” Peter rolled his eyes at me.

“Okay, fine. We kissed again, right when I was trying to get her to sell her business to me.”

Peter scrubbed a hand over his dark buzzcut. “What now?”

“It’s a conflict of interest, as I’m sure you can understand, that she owns a business and a competing one at that. The investors won’t like me working with her. It doesn’t make any sense.”

Peter frowned. “Then why’d you hire her?”

“For the secret, you know that. And clearly, she knows how to get to this community. She’s already upped our site visitors by fifty percent.”

“Whoa, amazing. So, in the course of this conversation, you kissed her. How did that go over?”

I groaned, looking away for a few seconds before I took a big slug of my beer.

“That good, huh?”

“Itwasgood. I mean, the kiss was good. But then she pushed me away, told me I can’t just kiss her whenever I’m trying to hide the fact that I’m being a jackass.”

Peter burst into laughter so loud, heads turned toward us. I slunk even further into my chair. Peter was always the more sociable of the two of us. Sometimes, I wondered how we were even friends. But I was more fun, at least I thought, before. Before so many things happened, in the military, with my family. I had too many dark shadows in my closet, that it was just easier to keep out of the world.

But this time, it was a fierce redhead with a harsh tongue that had me getting my head out of my ass and looking around.

“Oh man, I like her already. She’s got spunk.”

She certainly does.

I tried to keep the image of her bent over my desk out of my mind, but I failed. I wanted that to happen again, more than once. As if I could simply conjure people by thinking about them, Lily walked in the door of the bar with a couple of friends.

“Holy shit,” I said under my breath, finishing my beer and waving down another.

“What?” Peter looked where I was looking. “Damn. Is this why you wanted to come here? All the super-hot chicks?”

“That’s her,” I said hastily. “That’s Lily.”

“Which one?”

“The redhead.” The next beer appeared, and I took a big sip, wondering why in the hell I was so nervous.

I was never nervous. I was both a vet and a prince. The combination meant that I could never ever lose my cool.

“Jesus, she’s hot. Well done, then, James.” Peter clapped me on the back. “Too bad she’s not your lost princess.”

Lily didn’t see me, thank God. So, once the initial swell of nerves had calmed a bit, I turned outward from the bar to watch her with her friends. They all sat in a booth together and ordered drinks.

I could see Peter watching me out of the corner of my eye with a big smile on his face. But I couldn’t turn toward him and give him the satisfaction.

“You should go talk to her,” he said.

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