Dear Grumpy Boss: A Brother’s Best Friend Office Romance (The Harder They Fall)

LEAVING THE OFFICE AT five was outrageous, especially after being out of town for half a week. Yet, here I was, striding across the lobby, hoping I was fast enough to catch up with Elise.

When I caught her, I had no idea what I was going to do with her.

Dinner, maybe.

White Russians and zombie flicks.

Christ, was I jealous of the time she’d spent with her own brother?

It was entirely irrational, but I was. I wanted that time for myself.

Stalking out of the building, I looked left, then right. I’d found Elise, all right, but she wasn’t alone. Some tall, bearded fuck had his mouth on her.

Possessiveness roared inside me. Bitter disappointment clouded my vision. She’d moved back to her lumberjack the minute she got home.

It was her right. She wasn’t mine. So why the fuck did betrayal stab at my chest?

I found myself backing up, preparing to turn around and go inside where I belonged when Elise ripped herself away from the man who’d been holding her.

My vision cleared. This wasn’t Thomas, and Elise didn’t look happy.

He grabbed at her, catching her by the elbow. “Stop it, Patrick. This wasn’t talking, nor was it welcome. You can’t just kiss me. That’s over.”

Patrick.

I was on them before I acknowledged I was going to move. My arm banded around Elise’s middle, easily pulling her from the other man’s grasp.

“You heard her,” I snapped. “You need to leave.”

At the sound of my voice, Elise melted against me, sliding around to my side.

Her ex’s eyes narrowed on where we were holding each other. I scoffed, raising my chin.

“That’s right. She’s mine now. You screwed up, didn’t treasure her, and I got the reward.” I gently moved Elise behind me and stepped into him.

He puffed out his chest like he was a big man, but I knew he was small. Tiny, even. I didn’t mean his physical size. I was referring to his mind, his confidence, the essence of him. That was minuscule.

It had been apparent to me the first time I met him, when Elise had let her light dim so this idiot could shine. She had deferred to him, and when she’d caught herself laughing too hard or stating an opinion, she would dart her eyes to him and clamp her mouth shut.

“What is this?” Patrick snarled at me before softening to look at her. “Elise, what is this? Don’t tell me you’re with someone else. Don’t tell me that.”

“I’ve moved on,” she replied quietly.

He thumped his chest. “Yeah, well, I should have a say in that. How have you moved on when we never broke up? I’ve been hunting you down to beg you to come back to me and you’ve been fucking someone else?”

I had to laugh. “I think Elise ghosting you was a loud and clear message that you’re broken up. It isn’t her fault you’re too dense to understand.”

“This has nothing to do with you, man. Elise and I were having a conversation before you showed up.”

“What you aren’t seeing is everything to do with Elise involves me. She’s mine. And what I walked up on didn’t look like conversation. It looked like you were forcing my girl into a kiss.” I pointed to the corner of the building. “If you need playback, the security cameras captured the assault in real time.”

“Weston—” Elise started.

“What are you talking about?” Patrick sputtered, cutting her off. “I kissed her because I missed her. I would never hurt her.” He tried to peer around me to get to her, but I was a brick wall keeping him away.

“Just go, Patrick,” she said sadly. “We’re finished.”

“I don’t accept that.” He shoved his fingers through his hair. “I know you saw the texts. Steve’s girl told him, and I get why you’re mad, but—”

“Go!” she yelled. “Don’t say anything else. Just go!”

The pain lashing through her words alerted me. What the hell had this guy done to her?

Patrick staggered back. “Elise. God, I’m so sorry, sweetheart. Please, please let me explain.”

Suddenly, I almost felt sorry for him. He was just now coming to the realization he wasn’t going to get her back. Whatever he’d done, the damage had been permanent, and it was hitting him like a tidal wave.

I held my hand out to her. She slipped her warm palm into mine, and I drew her forward, kissing her temple.

“She’s mine now. All taken care of. You had four years to treat her right, and you failed at the task. You made her feel so unsafe, so unwelcome in her own home, she moved across the country to get away from you. But I have her now. I recognize how lucky I am to even be allowed to stand beside her. It’s too bad you didn’t, but your loss is my gain. So you can go. You’re not needed here.”

He stared at her with wide, shining eyes. If he cried, I wouldn’t have blamed him. Losing Elise had to be gut-wrenching. But from the sound of it, he’d done it to himself.

“I love you, Elise, but I can see I’m hurting you. Even if you’re finished with me, I think we need to have a conversation. I can’t force you, though. The ball’s in your court now, sweetheart. I’ll wait to hear from you.” He swiped at his eyes. “And so you know, I am disgusted with myself for the way I treated you. I will never stop regretting it.”

She nodded, but that was her only response. After an eternity, Patrick walked away, and I pulled Elise against my chest so she didn’t have to watch him.

“Everyone will see us,” she mumbled.

“Doesn’t matter.” I made long strokes up and down her back until her body slowly loosened and curved into mine. “I’m taking you home.”

“Okay.”

Elise was in my penthouse, and I had no idea what to do with her.

I wanted her happy. I was still trying to figure out how to make that happen, but I wouldn’t stop until I reached my goal.

She was wandering around my living room, trailing her fingers over the furniture and stopping to examine the art on my walls.

“You have so much space,” she said, awed.

“More than I need.”

“Yeah.” She peered out the floor-to-ceiling windows. “It’s beautiful, though. Not cold and stark.”

With a short laugh, I cocked my head. “Did you assume I’d want a cold and stark home?”

She spun around, starting toward me. “I suppose I didn’t think about it very hard, but no, I don’t think you’d want that. You’re not cold.” Her hands smoothed up my lapels. “Thank you for being there for me. I’m sorry you got pulled into all that, but I’m not sorry you were there.”

“Don’t thank me for that.”

She laughed. “Don’t growl at me for thanking you.”

“I didn’t know I had.” I swiped my thumb along her cheek. “How are you?”

“I’m fine.” She groaned. “Well, not really. That was so awful. I imagined what it would be like if he found me, but that was so, so real. He’s not doing well.”

“But you are, aren’t you?”

Her eyes were wet when they met mine, but she nodded. “I am. I’ve spent this time walking through it and making myself better. I don’t think he’s done that.”

My jaw hardened at the sound of her worry. “My concern doesn’t lie with him.”

“I know.” A slow smile spread across her lips. “You were right. You do make me feel safe.”

“Good.” If I couldn’t make her happy, at least I could make her feel safe. “What I said to Patrick wasn’t untrue, you know. While you’re not mine, I do feel lucky to have you and that I get to know you again. His fuck up is definitely my most valuable gain.”

Her fingers curled around my lapels, and she gave them a tug while she sighed. “Weston. God, don’t say perfect things like that when I’m trying to keep hold of my feelings for you.”

I smoothed my hands from her wrists to her shoulders. “I’ll always tell you the truth and take care of you. As long as you know it, I don’t have to say it out loud anymore.”

Her gaze held mine. The shine in her eyes brought out the flecks of gold. Fucking dazzling.

“I do know.” She sniffled and dropped her hands. “What do we do now, pal?”

I chuckled, though it was bitter. The last thing I wanted to be was Elise’s pal. “I don’t know. If you were Luca or Elliot, I’d say let’s order takeout and—”

“Watch zombie flicks?” She bounced on her toes.

“Most likely a game.” I shook my head. “But I’ll watch anything you want.”

There might not have been White Russians, but inside my head, I was celebrating the fact that I was going to get my coveted zombie flicks with Elise.

We were on my couch, food in our laps, choosing a movie. Elise went for Shaun of the Dead, which I’d never seen and probably never would have if not for the woman beside me.

I gave her the pickle that had come with my hamburger. Her wide beam had been thanks enough, but she leaned over and kissed my bicep too.

She’d run home to change out of her work clothes and into leggings and a T-shirt that hung off one shoulder, revealing the strap of her bra. The wide neckline kept slipping lower, and Elise didn’t seem to be concerned.

My burger went half-uneaten while I tracked the path of her shirt. Her bra was pink and, as I’d discovered, lacy. My fingers twitched to pull the neckline down another inch or two to reveal the creamy round tops of her breasts.

I wouldn’t.

Elise’s giggle brought my attention to the screen. A guy walked through his neighborhood, oblivious to the fires, dead bodies, and bloody handprints.

It should have been enough to turn me off, but my dick didn’t care about anything other than the woman sitting beside me. Her skin, her scent, her laugh, the memory of the feel of her, her taste.

Jesus.

I closed my eyes and pictured Elliot, thinking of the time my dad knocked me down the stairs. It had been a careless accident when I was a skinny ten-year-old, more bone than anything else. My dad had been drunk and blundering, pushing me aside without much force, but since I’d been at the top of the stairs, it hadn’t taken much for me to tumble.

An apoplectic Elliot had hidden me in his room for two days, bringing me bags of frozen peas and ice packs for my bruises while making detailed plans to kill my father. If I hadn’t approved, his alternate plot had been to hide me in his house forever. He’d had lists with bullet points. He’d meant it.

On day three, when my mother came for me, he stood in front of me until I relented and agreed to go home with her.

There was a lifetime of those kinds of stories between us.

That was what was on the line.

If I went for what I truly wanted, I would be risking the single most valuable relationship in my life. Even if Elliot approved of me dating his sister—a long shot—if things didn’t work out with Elise, nothing would be the same between Elliot and me.

With my track record and my single-mindedness, when it came to my company, failure was the most likely outcome.

And yet…

When I’d told Patrick Elise was mine, I hadn’t been lying. The words leaving my mouth had been the complete truth.

The fact that it was impossible hadn’t entered my thoughts.

“Are you even watching?” she asked.

I lifted my eyes from her bra. I’d been staring for a while, and now I’d been caught in the act.

“I’m watching you enjoying your movie.”

She smiled with a sigh. “I’m enjoying all of tonight. I didn’t know you were capable of relaxing, yet here you sit. Are you dying to check your email?”

“No. I haven’t thought of it.” That wasn’t strictly true. Work was always on my mind, but with Elise, it was at the back, on a low simmer. That was rare for me.

I let my gaze trail over her. Her feet were kicked up on the ottoman in front of her. Her toenails were polished sky blue, and she had a small blue columbine tattooed on the inside of her ankle. “When did you get that tattoo?”

She rubbed her feet together. “It’s the Colorado state flower. Saoirse took me to get it before I moved, so I’d always have a piece of Colorado with me.”

Someone screamed on the TV, but I was focused on her.

“Do you want another one?”

“Maybe, if there’s another moment in my life I want to mark permanently.”

“Planning to move again?”

She shook her head. “No. I like being near Elliot. This is my home.” She shoved at my knee. “I can’t tell if you like it or not.”

“Your tattoo?”

She lowered her chin, silently saying, “Duh.”

“I do like it. It’s very pretty. I remember putting my mouth on it a few times on our trip.” Her cheeks flushed, and my nostrils flared at the shared memory we weren’t supposed to be talking about.

I wadded up the wrapper with the remains of my dinner inside, tossing it into the paper bag on the floor beside the couch. “I’m glad to know you’re not the type who’d get a man’s name tattooed on you. Otherwise, you’d be spending a fortune to remove it.”

A laugh burst out of her. “You can bet I’m most definitely not that type. Even if I was, getting Patrick’s name on me would have never entered my mind.”

“No?”

“No.” She tossed her trash in with mine and shifted so her legs were tucked on the couch, twisting to face me. “I’ve done a lot of thinking about how I’ve been feeling since the breakup. What he did devastated me, and I’m still getting over that. But I realized I got over him a lot faster than I expected, and it’s not just because I’m so deft at compartmentalizing. I think I chose Patrick because I knew when it ended, I wouldn’t be broken.”

“You always expected it to end? Elise, I thought you were a believer in happy endings,” I admonished.

She rolled her eyes at me then poked my arm. “I am, jackass. I didn’t make those decisions about Patrick consciously, but I think I always knew we wouldn’t wind up together. I think half the reason we lasted as long as we did was because—like you with Marisol—I wanted to prove you and Elliot wrong. The other half was because there wasn’t anything threatening about loving him. He didn’t light me on fire, but then again, he didn’t light me on fire.”

I’d stopped listening the moment she’d said I was part of the reason she’d stayed with him. My brain imploded with that frustrating revelation. I squeezed my eyes, attempting to process what she’d just said.

“You stayed to spite me?”

Her nails scratched lightly on my forearm, springing my eyes open. “Is that really all you heard?”

“I’m supremely self-centered.”

She huffed. “I mentioned none of this was conscious, right? I wasn’t actively thinking, ‘Oh, I can’t dump Patrick for not taking care of my emotions because then Weston will know he was right and will gloat.’ That didn’t happen. In hindsight, that was very much part of it.”

I reached out, running my forefinger along the pink strap of her bra.

“You really disliked me, didn’t you?”

“Dislike is too strong. I had thoughts, though.” She rubbed her lips together. “To be fair, I now know I was wrong and stupid. I wish I hadn’t wasted so many years shutting you out when we could have been friends.”

I dipped my finger under the strap to rub my knuckle along her skin. “The plethora didn’t help.”

She shook her head, grinning. “No, it most certainly did not.”

“Do you know how much I despise hearing I was even part of the cause of you staying with that guy?”

“I can imagine.”

I unhooked my finger to flatten my palm at the base of her throat. “A lot. If I didn’t think I’d scare the shit out of you, my fist would be meeting drywall right now. I’m sorry, baby. I’m sorry for driving you away.”

“Weston,” she breathed, scooting closer. Her arms went around my shoulders, her cheek pressing against mine. “Don’t, okay? I don’t blame you, and I’m not mad at you. You have nothing to apologize for. I’m back, and we’re good. You and me, right?”

I turned my head, our noses brushing. “I wasn’t lying about you being mine.”

Her lashes fluttered, and she rubbed her nose against mine. “I didn’t think you were.”

“But we can’t.”

Her soft breath floated over my lips. “If we did, it would be…”

Dangerous. Ruinous. Beautiful.

“Yeah,” I sighed. “It would be.”

I curled my arms around her waist, drawing her closer. “Let’s watch your movie, baby. We don’t have to talk about this anymore. It’ll work out how it’s supposed to.”

She pulled back, looking me over. “That doesn’t sound like you.”

I gave a wry laugh. “It doesn’t, but I’m hopeful it’s true since I don’t have any control over this anymore.”

“That must be hard on you, you control freak.”

I wasn’t offended. It was the truth.

Sliding my hand up her back to cup her nape, I shook my head. “You have no idea.”

She laid her head on my chest, nuzzling even closer.

No idea at all.