“Arden! North! Your asses in my office!”
That was the sound I, and everyone else in the office, was greeted with on Monday morning.
“If I had a dime for every time I heard that . . .” The chair across from mine whined as Brooks rose. He waited for me outside of my cube. “Let me take the lead on this.”
I took another chug of my coffee. “Gladly.”
Brooks’s expression flattened. “Was that you agreeing with me? No argument?”
“When it comes to this, no argument,” I said, starting the journey to Conrad’s office, Brooks right beside me.
I knew there’d be some kind of repercussions for this weekend. Quinn and several of my friends had texted me links to the posts and articles outing Brooks’ and my “secret” date. I’d been right about me looking like I was in the middle of swallowing a cat. Beside me, even with that butt-ugly mustache, Brooks looked like the rebel god thrown from Valhalla.
As predicted, Quinn grilled me to the n’th degree as to why I’d agreed to such an arrangement and what was our motive behind the secret dates. I’d given her enough to mostly satisfy her, and not a hint more.
“Think he’s wanting to congratulate us on our latest articles?” Brooks nudged me.
I scooted away discreetly. We’d nudged, shoved, and pushed each other to no end, but lately, those touches felt different. “Well, maybe to congratulate me on mine. Yours was a snoozer.”
“But you read it.”
“I skimmed it.”
Brooks erased the distance I’d put between us. “Liar,” he whispered, right as we rounded into Conrad’s office.
My feet froze when I saw the look on Conrad’s face. I’d never seen a face achieve that shade of red. Even the vein running down his forehead was bulging.
“What the hell do you two have to say for this?” Conrad didn’t wait for us to close the door before tearing into us, whipping around his laptop with a picture of the two of us enlarged on the screen.
It wasn’t one of the photos I’d seen. It was one someone had snapped before we were officially outed. Brooks and I were sitting at our table, closer than I remembered. His hand was reaching out to brush back my hair, but it looked like he could have been caressing my cheek instead. The caption with the picture read: Your Daily Dose of Romance Versus Reality.
“I want an explanation and I want it now!” Conrad’s hand blasted down on his desk.
Brooks stepped forward. “It was my idea. All my idea.”
His confession did nothing to diminish Conrad’s anger. “And what led you to believe this idea was a good one?” He jabbed his finger at the computer screen while I stared at the photo of the two of us.
God, did we really look like that when we were together? A real couple?
“We’re two different people who believe two different things. I thought if we took the time to get to know each other off camera, it would make our on-camera time less stilted.” Brooks’s posture was relaxed, his tone unapologetic. He was wearing the gray suit he’d worn the first day he showed up here. I should have rued the sight of it; instead I found myself imagining what it would look like crumpled up on my bedroom floor.
Because that wasn’t an inappropriate thought right now . . .
“I thought it would up the ‘production value’ if Hannah’s and my relationship ran deeper than just rivalry.” Brooks peaked his brow, throwing Conrad’s own term in his face.
Conrad was quiet, his fingers drumming across the desk. “How long has this been going on? These private meetings?”
I swallowed.
“They just started,” Brooks answered, staring him straight in the eyes.
My tongue worked into my cheek and I kept quiet. Sure, they’d just started. If you considered three weeks “just starting.”
“And they’re just ending too, understood?” Conrad slammed his laptop shut, giving us his notorious Conrad stare-down.
Brooks was already angling toward the door. “Understood.”
He paused at the door, waiting for me. I scurried out of that office as quickly as my wedges would carry me. Once I was in the hall, I let out the breath I’d been holding.
“So? Did I handle that well?” Brooks winked at me.
“It pains me to admit it, but yes, you handled that very well.” I waved at the office that had gone uncannily quiet, half of my co-workers gaping at us like they were surprised our heads were still attached to our bodies.
“Just look at us, would you? Day one, we were at each other’s throats, and here we are two months later, the god damn dream team.”
I didn’t mention that our actual day one, we’d been at each other’s something else, because that memory was better left in the forgone and forgotten pile.
“Who would have thought we could be this close and not sparring insult for injury?” I made an okay sign at Quinn, who was lingering in the break room.
“Funny the way life turns out.” His sleeve brushed my arm, causing actual tingles to erupt down my back. “You think you know the story, you can almost see the ending, then all of that goes to hell.”
We slowed as we approached my cube. “Sometimes you might think it’s all falling apart, when really, it’s all just falling into place.”
Brooks stood there for a minute, contemplation knitting together his expression. Then he shrugged. “Maybe,” he said, backing into his own cube. “We still on for Operation Move Hannah Back into her Apartment?”
My shoulders lowered as I thought about it, when I should have been flipping cartwheels that I was no longer stuck sharing the same living space as Brooks North. “Yeah. I talked to the apartment manager again this morning and he said it’s all ready for me.”
“I’m going to squeeze in a quick run after work, then I’ll meet you at your place to help.”
“A quick run? Let me guess, that’s, like, eight miles for someone like you.” I shot him a look as I fired up my laptop. I had another article due in a few days and all I’d completed so far was opening a new document for it.
“Actually, it’s ten.” He shot me a grin before turning his attention to his own laptop.
“Ugh. Your stamina is sickening.”
“Why thank you. And good to know you’ve spent some time considering my stamina.”
I grumbled. “Can we go back to pretending to be arch rivals who can’t stand the idea of exchanging a single word with each other?”
“You got it, boss.” Brooks was already typing, his keys chattering away like his article was spilling out of him. It was like his muse had gone into overdrive since our dating experiment started, while mine had become mute.
The passion. The fervor. The conviction. All of that had waned into extinction over the past few weeks. I couldn’t consider the reason why. It was off-limits territory. It wouldn’t only spell the doom of my career but of my entire view on life.
No man was worth that sacrifice. Especially not one who had everything to gain if I admitted I’d fallen for him.
I’d already let him get too close. I could not risk letting him any closer.
I stared at the blank page on my computer screen, it practically mocking me while the sound of one hundred words a minute echoed across from me.