Page 28 of Forbidden Bond

“Thanks, Tess.”

She hangs up and I hurriedly get ready before stepping out of my room and into the living room. Jameson is passed out on the couch. I roll my eyes, walking over to poke him in the ribs.

“What is wrong with you, Jamie?” I ask softly.

“I’ve got a raging headache, Kat. Talk later?” he says, rolling over to continue his sleep. He didn’t even open his eyes.

‘I’m going to work.”

“Alright, I’ll see you when you get back,” he mumbles sleepily.

I sigh softly, staring at him for a little while longer. He wasn’t always this bad. The drinking and the partying have always been a part of him, but these days, it’s like he can’t bring himself to care about anything else other than that. He’s absent in every way, and I miss my best friend.

I also know the exact moment everything changed. When he changed.

Two years ago, when my sister walked down the aisle and said “I do” to Kyle.

* * *

Topher pulls up to work on a motorcycle. I never used to be one of those girls who swooned over bad boys in leather jackets, but as he pulls off the helmet and kills the ignition, my heart skips several beats. He’s the embodiment of a man that’s bad for you. And yet, I can’t help but be a little drawn to him.

Clearing my throat, I choose to focus on something other than the man sauntering toward me.

“Is that a Harley Davidson?” I ask excitedly.

He blinks, looking back at his bike before turning to me. “Yeah… So you really do know a lot about vehicles, huh?”

“My mom once launched a large-scale fashion show that incorporated sports cars and motorcycles. I was twelve, and seeing the models leaning on the vehicles or driving them was pretty damn cool,” I tell him.

Topher nods, moving to open the garage door. “Your mom’s a designer?”

“Yeah, she has her own fashion brand.” It does pretty well despite the fact that she has somewhat put it on a back-burner to take care of us and our family affairs so dad could focus on his career, but with me graduating and dad being at the top of his field, my sister’s been helping her out these days. Maybe they can revive it.

“That’s nice. How long have you been waiting outside? And why didn’t you call?”

“I’ve been here since eight,” I inform him. It’s currently 10 a.m. “I did call. I called Cara but she didn’t pick up.”

Topher smiles as he heads inside the building. “She’s not a morning person. She won’t get here until around twelve.”

“Nice,” I mutter. “Way to be an upstanding employer, Toph.”

His eyes narrow at the sarcasm. “How about you try to be a little less… stuck up? None of us ever really shows up to work until around ten. We fix cars, no one’s coming here for surgery. There don’t have to be any rigid rules involved.”

I can appreciate the relaxed environment he has but it’s certainly not the way I was raised. I believe in structure and enforcing rules that everyone can follow. But Topher has probably lived his entire life breaking rules. I can’t expect him to start conforming to them now, let alone make them himself.

“So you were waiting outside for two hours?”

I shrug. “I went to a café not too far from here for a while. Read a little on my tablet.”

His eyebrows go up at that. He’s standing in front of me now and although we’re separated by several feet, he still feels impossibly close.

“Just one question, princess,” he starts and I gesture for him to go on. “What did you study in college?”

“I got my degree in archaeology,” I reply, wondering where he’s going with this.

He looks even more surprised. “So, let me get this straight. You love cars, reading, apparently, and despite all those hobbies, what you studied in college was archaeology. I mean, where did that even come from?”

I assist him in turning on all the lights and he shows me to a desk in the corner of the garage. It’s pretty sparse apart from the computer and a landline. I’m guessing this is to be my work space.

---