Scott nodded. I couldn’t blame Emily for the way she’d reacted. But I was determined to have her. I was determined to make amends.
I was determined to protect her from Snake at whatever cost necessary.
Chapter 19: Emily
It was a slow day at work, the kind in which I had plenty of chances to catch up on email and other menial tasks that I had missed from my week off. Occasionally, a direct report would come to my office and ask a question, but for the most part, the office was relatively quiet. I got to hone in on my duties with ease.
And it was wonderful. It was what I’d missed. Doldrum. Boredom. A quiet peacefulness.
So much of my life had felt like a chaotic mishmash of events that I had forgotten what it felt like to just be in an environment that wasn’t threatening to explode or implode at any moment. And wasn’t this what I wanted at the end of the day? Wasn’t it what we all wanted?
Yes, raising kids would be hectic, but I didn’t think I’d want to live in the nightmare of constant trouble for the rest of my life. I suppose it was all for the best that—
“Sir?”
I looked up for a moment. One of my employees, Chelsea, was speaking to someone she didn’t know. I felt my heart sink and my adrenaline spike. So much for peaceful moments.
“Sir, you can’t be in here, sir!”
I stood up from my desk, reached under for some mace, and—
Burke appeared in the doorway.
And goddamnit, for as much work as I thought I had done in putting all of this in the past, I felt a warm glow looking at him. I couldn’t help but feel arousal and desire for him. I hated it.
And relief.
“Sir!”
“I’ll take care of this, Chelsea,” I said, coming around the desk to him.
“I—”
“Shut up and follow me,” I hissed. “You got a lot of nerve coming here.”
There was bold. There was audacious. And then there was just downright asshole, so much so that it bordered on making me furious—and that’s where Burke was right now. Coming to my fucking office? Making a scene? That wasn’t just affecting me personally, that was affecting me professionally.
“I needed to see you. You think an office is going to stop me?”
I shot him a scowl, but…
Fuck.
There was just something about Burke sounding so gruff and tough that made me feel like I was changing my mind on a dime. Call it the DOM Effect or whatever the hell you wanted to. Burke could make me see things in a way that I really shouldn’t have.
In fact, I now had to admit I secretly am totally and utterly turned on.
I walked him out to the lobby and to the stairwell.
“What the hell are you doing here?” I said as I took a closer look at some swelling and bruising on his face. “And what the hell happened to you? You look like you got in a bar brawl. And your chest…and your walk…”
“Fallout from work, it’s not a big deal. Listen, give me five minutes. OK? And then you can ask whatever they hell you want.”
I sighed. Burke did have a lot of nerve, but if he’d gone through as much as it looked like he had to get a chance to speak to me, well, fuck, I suppose the least I could do was give him a chance.
“You’re lucky it’s slow at work,” I said. “But you get five minutes before they start thinking you’ve kidnapped me. So make it sharp.”
“As if I never do,” he said, one of those little off-the-cuff remarks that made me feel all sorts of ways about him. None of them that I liked, even if it felt good. “First, I can’t believe I’m saying this, because I’m sure as hell not fucking good at it, but…fuck, I’m sorry, OK?”
He was right. He wasn’t very good at it.
But that just made it more sincere.
And, unfortunately, it continued to spike the arousal I felt for him. This was bad. This could not continue. I most certainly could not let this happen in my office at a minimum.
“I—”
“Burke, I need to stop you right there before you go any further,” I said, needing to take the initiative. “I don’t know where this is going. I’m happy to have you in the lives of my kids to a certain degree. And again, I’m sorry, too, that it’s kids and not just a kid. But there can’t be anything else between us.”
And yet, there was a certain falseness to those words that made them sound so damn hollow, so damn weak. It was like my mouth spoke them, but my soul refused to put weight behind them. I didn’t know, I just knew that I could see Burke didn’t buy it, and he had damn good reason.
“Don’t be so sure.”
What a fucking cocky thing to say.
“You saw me at my worst when we last met. Let me show you at, well, not my worst. Come for lunch?”
I looked at my watch. It was twenty minutes until noon. I couldn’t use time as an excuse. This man knew exactly what he was doing.
“Burke, I can’t just flip the switch like that.”
Even though I desperately want to.
“Maybe if, I don’t know, we’d managed to speak to each other before all the paperwork and such got signed, I don’t know. But when the first thing that shows up after you storm off is legal documents, you know what I feel like? A goddamn business transaction. And when I’m negotiating pricing on billboards and online publications, that’s fine. When I’m negotiating…whatever this is?”
I sharply inhaled after I
