“You spent weeks hating me and then out of nowhere, you show up on my doorstep offering me a truce. What am I supposed to think?”
He clenched his hand around the fabric, then discarded my dress on the bed. “You were supposed to see how I was trying to do better, Georgina. Be better.”
“Maybe. Or maybe you figured sex was one sure way to guarantee I’d never take your job.”
“What the fuck,” he said slowly, “does that mean?”
“You knew what last night would mean to me. I’m not saying it didn’t mean the same to you, but . . .” Unexpectedly, my throat thickened. Intimacy. The problem with getting it meant it could be taken away. “How do I know there wasn’t a part of you that recognized you could use my ‘kindness’ against me?”
“That’s not goddamn fair.” He fisted his hair. “I’d never do that, and you know it.”
“I don’t know it. I thought I did once, and I was wrong. I won’t make those same mistakes again.”
His gaze darkened. “You’re going to compare me to your piece-of-shit ex after everything you told me yesterday? Don’t even go there.” He inhaled, his nostrils flaring though he seemed to try to calm himself. “I’m not trying to bend your will in my favor,” he said deliberately. “I’m just stating the facts—this is my job. My life. I wouldn’t give it up to anyone without a fight, and I certainly wouldn’t get into a relationship with that person. Would you?”
“Would I? Here’s what I would do.” I clutched the sheet at my hip with one hand, held up a finger, and counted off. “Spend nearly two months trying to save the job of a man who hates me. Invite him to my home. Introduce him to my dog. Spend my Sunday falling for him. Turn down a great opportunity and a salary I could really use. All for him, when he clearly wouldn’t even give me a second thought.”
“Nowhere in there did I hear that you actually want the job.”
“I don’t,” I cried. “I don’t want it. I’m not going to take it, but you never even gave me the chance to say that.”
He stared at me, his shoulders loosening along with his fists. We held each other’s gazes, something sizzling between us. The light of day only served to remind me how that chemistry could be as dangerous as it was sweet.
“Then we don’t have a problem,” he said.
“Oh, we have a problem,” I threw back at him. “I told you to go.”
“Look,” he said, stepping toward me. “This doesn’t need to come between us. I like you, Georgina. I haven’t said that to someone and meant it in . . . I don’t even know how long.”
I shook my head. “If that were true, you would’ve considered me the way I did you. Instead, you assumed I’d automatically back down to give you what you want.”
“If I assumed anything,” he said gently, “it was that you’d do the right thing, which doesn’t make you a doormat. It makes you a good person.”
“It makes me a sucker. What if taking the job was the right thing—just not for you? What then?” My face heated as I recalled that I’d been standing in the same spot when Neal had told me he never should’ve left me for a “stronger” woman—one who hadn’t put up with his shit for more than a couple months. “You were so sure I’d do what’s best for you, you never once stopped to consider if it’s best for me. I’m sorry, but I’m not doing this again.”
“What are you saying?” he asked.
I couldn’t say it, so I showed him instead. I went into my bathroom and slammed the door on him. On us. I turned on the faucet to brush my teeth, but instead stared at myself in the mirror.
After a moment, he knocked. “Georgina.”
We’re over. Done. I tried to get myself to say the things I should’ve said to Neal a million times. “Please go.”
“No. We’re not done talking about this.”
I didn’t want him to go. I wanted him to be the man for me, but how could I ignore the warning signs after wasting years of my life already? My confidence had only just begun to recover. It would be so easy to open the door and continue getting to know Sebastian as something other than a rival. But would I look back one day and wonder how I could’ve made the same mistake twice?
If he kept pressing, I worried I’d give in, so I took a deep breath and opened the door just enough to face him. “We’re professionals, so I trust we can finish out my time there in peace.”
Hurt flashed in his eyes. “You can’t be serious.”
“I’ll see you at work,” I said. I closed the bathroom door, leaned back against it, and took deep breaths to attempt to slow my pounding heart. If this was how it felt to be a bitch, I wasn’t sure I liked it, but I either had to choose myself or lose myself. When there was no more hate, only love, where was the line?
And had I just crossed it?
23
Sebastian
Love was a bitch. And Justin was a bastard. He’d never beaten me to work before Georgina had come along, but evidently, today was the second time he’d managed it in a few weeks. I found him in my office, leaning back in my chair, feet on my desk and arms behind his head. “Well, well,” he said, making a point to check his watch. “Look who decided to show up. Late night?”
“It’s barely ten,” I grumbled, furtively checking Georgina’s desk. It was just as she’d left it Friday afternoon. She must’ve been running behind this morning as well.
“So, how’d it go?”
“What?” I asked, dropping my briefcase next to his feet. He was mining for details about my night with Georgina, but after our argument that morning, I was in no mood to shoot the shit.
“You stopped answering my text messages after the movie last night,” Justin said, “so I can only assume . . .”
“You know what they say about assumptions.” I kicked the rolling chair so his feet fell.
He jumped up. “What the hell, man?”
“I’ve told you a million times to keep your grimy shoes off my desk.”
“Jesus. For a guy who just got laid, you’re in a pretty shitty mood.”
“Yeah, well.” I took my rightful throne. “I got some bad news earlier.”
“Really?” Justin asked as he moved his plebeian ass to the couch. “Just completed my morning rounds for office gossip and didn’t hear shit. What is it?”
I was still reeling, even though I’d suspected this could happen. I wasn’t sure what pissed me off more—that Vance had told Georgina before me, or that she’d had the audacity to accuse me of manipulating her with sex. Maybe it was how she’d treated me like her ex when I’d only wanted to convey that her kindness was a strength, not a weakness.
I got up and shut the office door before returning to my desk. “Vance offered Georgina my position.”
“What?” Justin shot forward on the sofa. “How are you not throwing things right now?”
“Georgina and I already had it out at her apartment this morning.” I had thrown out some words I regretted, but the strange part was that I hadn’t been as angry about potentially getting fired as I’d expected. That’d only come once she’d started in on me. “At least, we began to until she slammed the door in my face.”
“The whole point of having sex was to release the tension you two have been forcing on us for months. Where does she get off being mad at you?”
The argument had happened so fast and gone downhill so quickly, I was still trying to figure out what the fuck had happened. “She’s upset because I didn’t consider what the job could do for her career. Instead, I just assumed she wouldn’t take it, but what the fuck was I supposed to think? It’s my job, and she knows what it means to me.”
“I’m guessing by her reaction that it also means something to her.”
Not the job itself, but maybe what it represented—confirmation that she’d succeeded in the position despite the environment I’d created for her. Calling her unqualified had been below the belt. It wasn’t true. She deserved the offer, I just wished it wasn’t at my expense.