Page 116 of The Single Dad Project

Firming his lips, he bent over, shut down his computer, grabbed his car keys and, instead of heading for the exit, strode past the empty cubicles toward the closed door.

Enough of this, he growled to himself.

He briefly knocked on the door, and once her, “Come in,” filtered through the wood, he turned the knob and entered Brooklyn’s office.

Brooklyn glanced up from her computer, and surprise didn’t flash through her eyes. As a matter of fact, he couldn’t decipher anything from her gaze or expression. That bothered him. In the years they’d known each other, he’d always been able to read her. But now she’d shut him out.

Unease crept through him, and he had to force himself to stay on this side of the office and not round that desk, cup her chin, tilt her head back and demand she talk to him. Order her to let him in.

He thrust his hands into his pockets, fisting them.

“Hey, Patrick. What’re you still doing here?” she said, voice pleasant, nice.

He detested it.

Snap at me. Argue with me. Show me you feel something...for me.

“I could ask you the same thing. You’ve been pulling longer nights lately,” he said instead.

She leaned back in her chair, setting the pen clutched in her hand on the desktop.

“With City Hall hiring us to promote Yulefest, there’s more to do than usual. But nothing I can’t handle.” She tilted her head. “Everything okay?”

He considered leaving her to it and walking away, saying nothing. But he couldn’t. He wouldn’t.

“Cole just called,” he informed her. “He has the annulment papers ready for us to sign. Once we do, he can file them with the court. And we’ll be done. The marriage will be over.”

His gut tightened to the point of pain just uttering the words.

She slowly nodded and exhaled a low, long breath.

“Okay. For some reason I thought it would take longer,” she murmured, as if talking to herself. Shaking her head, she met his gaze. “That’s good. When are you going over to sign them?”

He shrugged, a flare of anger igniting inside him at her seeming eagerness to end them.

There’s no us. There never has been, he thought, and mentally scrabbled away from the resentment in his own head.

It wasn’t her fault she couldn’t reallyseehim.

It wasn’t her fault she didn’t love him.

“Probably tomorrow during lunch,” he said with a shrug of a shoulder. “Did you want to head over together?”

“No, that’s okay.” She picked up her pen again, fiddling with it, and he focused on the tell before lifting his gaze to hers again. She avoided his eyes by shifting her attention to her computer monitor. “I plan on working through lunch, so I’ll call Cole and arrange a time for me to go.”

“Why are you avoiding me?” he bluntly asked. “And don’t lie to me and say you’re not.”

“How can I avoid you when we work together?” she tossed back.

He chuckled. “This is how you want to play it? Okay, I’m in.” Approaching her desk, he quietly laughed again, and to his own ears, it sounded hard, sharp-edged. “For the last week, you haven’t talked to me unless it’s work related, and you make damn sure you’re not alone with me. When I call, you don’t answer and reply by texts. You’ve been working late nearly every night and, though Yulefest is one of your favorite festivals, you haven’t been to one activity since the lighting.” A frown marred her forehead and her lips parted, but he shook his head. Hard. “Don’t bother with an excuse. It would only be bullshit, and we both know it.”

“I don’t know what you want me to say,” she said, rising from her office chair.

Pride and a bolt of lust lit him up like a lightning strike. This was the woman he’d come to know and secretly love with a need and passion that, at times, scared him. She didn’t back down from anything or anyone, and that stubbornness, that strength, that fierceness, was hot as hell. It stirred a lust in him that had only grown over time, and damn if he didn’t think it would drive him out of his mind.

“The truth. Be honest,” he snapped, purposefully goading her. Wanting her to unleash her fury on him. Mark him with it. “Tell me why you suddenly find it too hard to talk to me, to be with me.”

Be with me.

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