Total pages in book: 114
Estimated words: 108636 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 543(@200wpm)___ 435(@250wpm)___ 362(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 108636 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 543(@200wpm)___ 435(@250wpm)___ 362(@300wpm)
It’s only been a week, and we’ve only had a few conversations, but I can’t get her out of my mind.
Everyone I come into contact with is suspect—or, at the very least, a new lead in my search for her identity. This morning alone, I questioned Steve, who works at the front desk downstairs, and Cal, the night janitor, who was just trying to finish cleaning up as I arrived. I don’t really suspect that they’re the ones messaging me anymore—I’m fairly confident it’s really a woman now that we’ve been actively flirting—but anyone could have knowledge that could help find out who she is, and I need to know.
There’s just something about her. Something…irresistible.
There’d have to be, I guess, for me to keep going back over and over, despite knowing full well how stupid and fucking reckless it is.
I’m a top executive in the company, for shit’s sake, and I’m teetering on the cliff of some very inappropriate behavior with an employee whose identity I haven’t a damn clue about.
If I’m being honest with myself, I shouldn’t be doing it at all.
Hell, yesterday, I questioned Luke from Copywriting, who spent the majority of his time asking me about my fucking sister—the reason for which, I absolutely don’t want to know—and I tried to talk Ella, a twentysomething girl in Web Development, into sharing some of her personal details while we rode in the elevator together.
She either thinks I’m insane or is filing a harassment suit against me as we speak, I would assume. Though, she did smile when she was getting off the elevator, and it wasn’t shaky or scared. Hell, for all I know, she is the Mystery Woman. None of my questions were direct enough to know for sure.
I take my time walking toward my office, looking around the massive space, taking in the faces and making a mental checklist of the names of the people on my floor.
There are at least twenty women up here who are in the right age range, have been around long enough to know the details of the office that my Mystery Woman does, and would’ve had every opportunity to be in Seth’s vicinity to overhear the things she did.
Clara Lay’s office, for example, is across the hall from mine and right beside Seth’s. If anyone is within hearing distance of that bastard every day, it’s her. And I’m pretty sure she’s only a few years older than me, early thirties, and the last I heard, she just got out of a long-term relationship.
Maybe I could just go over and say hello?
A hand on my bicep squeezes, and I startle, and Bethany’s always red-painted lips curl into a smile. “Aren’t you going to say hi?” she greets, intrinsically thrilled to have gotten me with the element of surprise. She spends so much time here, I’m starting to wonder if we’re cutting her a check.
“Hi,” I say, any other words I might have had for her in the past lost somewhere between her open legs and Seth’s dick. It’s a sloppy, messy, dirty place, and I’ve got absolutely no desire to wade in there for the sake of fucking small talk.
She squeezes my bicep again. “I feel like it’s been forever since we talked, Beau.”
“Probably because it has,” I answer, looking over her shoulder and into Seth’s office to see why she’s wasting her time with me instead of powwowing with her fiancé.
Fiancé. What a joke.
Not even two months after we broke up, she and Seth were engaged. She’s never admitted the reality that she had an affair with him behind my back while we were still together, but she doesn’t have to. The proof is in the pussy—Seth’s, I mean, not hers. There’s no way he would have pulled a Desperate Housewives on me if she weren’t putting out well before the announcement of their future plans.
“I hate that it’s like this between us, you know?” she says, and her mouth turns down at the corners. “We used to be so close, Beau.”
Yeah. We did. But then you fucked my best friend, so…
A very small part of me wants to say those words to her, but the larger part of me, the part that’s more than over this woman, chooses to be the bigger man here. Seth might be a fucking lying prick, but I refuse to stoop to his level of bullshit. I also refuse to waste my time on her.
“This is just how it has to be, Beth,” I answer, shrugging her hold off my arm with the motion of my shoulders and taking a step back.
“I disagree,” she refutes. “I think there’s too much history between us to just act like complete strangers whenever we’re around each other.”
“The history between us is very much what keeps us apart.”
“Come on,” she replies, her eyes narrowed. “You don’t miss being friends?”