“OH, HELL NO.”
I stiffened at the sound of Julian’s voice behind me. Shit, why was he here already? He was consistently five minutes late for work, but today he decided to show up early? Of course he did.
“Take the goddamn plants off my desk, Poppy.”
Julian’s anger had always been easy to detect by how often he swore. So I probably should have taken the goddamn plants off his desk. But did I?
Nah.
Turning to face my lovely colleague, I found him standing there, eyes narrowed on me. His worn messenger bag was slung over one broad shoulder as he overwhelmed the doorway with his frame. If I didn’t know any better, I might have been a little intimidated.
But I did know better. So I squared my shoulders in preparation for another week where Julian did that thing he always did to make me feel like I was a nuisance who didn’t belong. Luckily, I was used to it.
“They need direct sunlight,” I said. “And your desk is the one by the window.”
Julian pushed a hand through his hair, which was darker, more auburn this morning. Clumped strands fell over his forehead, and I realized they were still damp. Which also explained why our office suddenly smelled like soap. Masculine soap with hints of musk and spice.
“I don’t give a shit what they need,” Julian grunted. “They can die for all I care.”
“I was going to move them back to my desk in a bit,” I explained. “After a little sunbath.”
Julian grabbed the top of the door frame with one hand before resting his forehead against his bicep in a moment of clear frustration. His words were muffled when he spoke. “Your plants, your desk.”
I rolled my eyes at his dramatics. “I thought you liked flowers. You know, considering how often you reference them in conversation.”
“That’s not even a flower.” Julian lifted his head, eyes scrutinizing my plants. “It’s just a bunch of leaves.”
“It’s a moonflower, Julian.”
He dropped his arm again. “Why are you saying that like I’m supposed to know what it means?”
“Oh, moonflower isn’t on your curated list?”
Julian’s lips twitched, pulling into a smirk. “No, but I can add it.”
Just once. Just once, I wanted to have a conversation with Julian that didn’t backfire on me. I glared at him when I said my next words so he knew I was serious.
“Do not start calling me that.”
“I can’t make any promises.” He shrugged, noncommittal. “Not while that’s sitting on my desk.”
“Fine.”
Picking up one pot and then the other, I moved them back to the corner of my desk that was most likely to get some sunlight. I wasn’t counting on it, though. Julian’s desk faced the only window in the office, while mine was tucked into the corner with only blank walls to keep me company. Together, they made a squished L-shape. Sometimes it felt more like we worked in a closet than an office.
Julian nodded with approval before he crossed the space and started unpacking his bag. I watched him for a moment, my good mood from earlier slowly transcending into annoyance. This happened most mornings, and it usually only worsened the longer Julian and I had to stay within the same four walls.
“You’re doing that staring thing again,” Julian said without even bothering to look at me. I was sure he purposefully tried not to on most days.
I crossed my arms over my chest, knowing I wouldn’t be able to get back to work until I scratched that combative itch inside me that only Julian seemed to spark. “I was just thinking that an alternative solution would be for us to switch desks.”
“Hell no.” He shook his head, keeping his eyes on his computer as he opened it. “If you wanted to litter your desk with plants, you shouldn’t have brought ones that need full sun. It’s called planning ahead. How did you get through law school without critical thinking skills, Daisy?”
I scowled, hating when he made some small thing I did into a bigger, professional slight. Did he forget that he had come to me for help with a case?
“I’m trying to declutter my apartment,” I confessed, ignoring his comment. “I didn’t realize you would be so much of a curmudgeon about it. My mistake, honestly. I should have expected you’d be the Ebenezer Scrooge of the office.”
Even as I said it, I knew the words weren’t entirely true. This behavior of Julian’s would never extend to the entire office. Only our office.
“The last thing I need is you invading my space with your shit. I had to deal with that for like ten years, and I’m over it.” He sighed heavily, hunching over his desk. “Leave your clutter at home, okay?”
Often when we argued, there was a hint of a smirk on Julian’s face. A smirk that told me that he enjoyed irritating the hell out of me. But this was not one of those times. I couldn’t even see his face, but I knew. The tone of Julian’s voice was sharp. Pointed.
I sighed as a familiar, embarrassing sense of rejection swirled in my gut. I shoved it down, refusing to let Julian bother me.
“Right now, my apartment looks like I’m unhealthily obsessed with plants, books, and clothes and have no friends,” I said, doing whatever I could to not get sucked into the past. “I don’t want Noah to see all that.”
Although, it was an accurate description. My life was a collection of outlet malls, romance novels, enough plants to have my own greenhouse, and Gemma. Because I did have one friend. In Boston, anyway. The few friends I’d made in college were now scattered throughout the country, and it was scary how quickly we’d drifted apart.
Julian turned abruptly in his chair to stare at me. His face had twisted even more than I imagined. Eyebrows pulled together, mouth flattened in a rigid line, the tone of his voice still sharp.
“What is that supposed to mean?”
I frowned, not sure what had been unclear. “It means I invited Noah over and—”
Julian’s entire body seemed to tense, though I didn’t understand the reason behind it. “Why did you do that?”
“Because,” I began slowly. Maybe if I enunciated it more, he’d understand me for once. “If Noah and I are going to act like we’re in a relationship at my sister’s wedding, we need to get to know each other first.”
From my very first text, Noah had been super friendly. All my nervousness about talking to him vanished as soon as he started texting back, asking me questions about working with Julian and moving to Boston, making it seem like he was genuinely interested to know more about me. There was an ease to talking to him that I enjoyed. Sometimes I couldn’t tell if he was being flirtatious or if he just had a natural bit of charm to him, but I liked it. We could definitely survive one night together.
“Hold on. Hold on.” Julian lifted a hand while raking the other one through his damp strands. “Hold on, Rosie.”
He paused, and it felt theatric, as usual. I tapped my foot, impatient.
“Holding on,” I said dryly. “And waiting for the point.”
“Sister?” His confusion verged on something…more. Something I couldn’t put my finger on. “You don’t have a sister.”
“Sofia,” I said, swallowing the sudden lump in my throat. I hadn’t meant to let that slip to him, but it was the least of my concerns at the moment. The wedding was only a month away, and just thinking about it made my palms sweat. “My biological sister.”
I watched as the neurons fired in Julian’s brain. He relaxed, softening, looking like he wanted to ask more. But then the gears in his head turned faster, and we skipped right past the questions to something else. A dark mask of irritation replaced his momentary understanding.
“And you want Noah to pretend to be your boyfriend?” His lip curled on the last word like he couldn’t imagine anyone wanting to date me. “That’s not what you told me.”
“I told you I needed a fake date.”
“A fake date is different from a fake boyfriend, Juni.”
His incredulity was somewhat satisfying today, considering Noah had already agreed to my plan without seeming bothered by it. Our conversation from Friday had extended into the weekend, and while I was a little overwhelmed by how flirty and forward he was, Julian had warned me that he was a bit of a player, so I wasn’t too surprised or bothered.
“It’s just for one night.” Why did he care so much? “It’ll be fine.”
“Why?”
“What do you mean why?”
The exasperation on Julian’s face told me he thought the question should be obvious.
“Why does he need to pretend to be your boyfriend?”
I stiffened, having no desire to explain that particular why to the man in front of me.
“Because, Julian.”
That was all I had in me today.
Julian opened his mouth to undoubtedly call out my nonanswer when a friendly face popped into the door of our office. One that was more than welcome at the moment.
“How do either of you get anything done when you spend half your time at work arguing?”
Cameron gave a megawatt smile, clearly teasing.
Julian, on the other hand, did not seem amused.
“Wanna grab some coffee quick?” he asked, sending Cameron a look that pleaded for a reason to get out of this office.
I was positive that Cameron’s reply would only piss Julian off more, and I grimaced in preparation. Sure enough, Cameron lifted his coffee cup from Georgia’s—the one I got him earlier this morning—and gave a regretful response.
“Juniper already brought me some.” An awkward silence filled the room for only a second before Cameron rushed to add, “But I’ll go with you, man. Just gotta be back to meet with our team by nine.”
He glanced at me—because I was on said team—before checking Julian’s reaction. Which was to wave it off and turn back toward his desk.
“No worries,” Julian said. “Maybe another time.”
Cameron winced, and I hated the guilt that washed over his expression. How I helped put it there.
Poor Cameron was a people pleaser. Well, to an extent. In meetings, he was assertive and confident with the perspective he brought to the table, even if it differed from others. But as soon as we’d revert to small talk, he softened into a different version of himself. It was easy to see how his family background might have influenced him into that—an actress for a mom and an artist for a sister while his late father was in the military.
Cameron sighed, lingering in the doorway, and I gave him a wave to let him know I’d see him at our meeting. Once he left, I got to work, ignoring Julian while he ignored me.
At one point, that might have been easy, but today, something wasn’t sitting right. I felt oddly bad. Our deal was hanging over my head, too. We’d made plans to stay late tonight to look at Julian’s case, and now I was dreading it.
I shook my head and put my earbuds in, needing to think about anything or anyone but Julian Briggs. At least until I had to.
I could do that…right?
I saw the pizza box waiting for me on Tyler’s desk as soon as I walked into the reception lobby. When I grabbed it, Tyler paused what he was doing to glance my way, curiosity woven into his expression.
“Working late tonight,” I said simply and turned around before he could ask any questions that I couldn’t—or didn’t want to—answer.
Julian didn’t move a muscle when I slid through our office door. Unsurprisingly, my presence meant nothing to him. I put the pizza on his desk, followed by paper plates and napkins I’d grabbed from the commons area.
“I ordered pizza.”
It was an obvious statement, but it was the first thing I’d dared to say to Julian since we bickered this morning. He didn’t like that I got things for Cameron—that much was obvious. Was it because I never got anything for him? I doubted that was the case, but something still churned in my gut, similar to the guilt that flashed across Cameron’s face earlier.
Not knowing how else to fix it, I bought pizza. For Julian.
When he didn’t respond, I nudged the box closer to him. “It’s pepperoni and pineapple. You still like that, right?”
That captured his attention. He turned his head slowly and examined the pizza box, probably wondering if I’d poisoned the damn thing.
I cleared my throat. “I assumed you still wanted to stay and look at that case tonight.”
After drawing out the moment in his own personal brand of dramatics, he spoke.
“You remember what kind of pizza I like?”
“Saturday pizza nights at your house were a staple of my childhood, Julian.” Was it surprising that he forgot I was there for those? Not even a little bit. “How could I forget the way you domineered the weekly ordering process?”
Julian hesitantly opened the box, frowning.
“You didn’t have to buy dinner,” he muttered, ignoring my critical comment. Typical. “How much was it?”
“Don’t worry about it.”
Julian shot me a glare while snapping his computer shut. I was sure it had to do with the sudden unbalance of what he perceived was fair in our deal, but he took a slice of pizza anyway.
“Are you going to eat, too?” he asked after swallowing the first bite and licking his lips. “You always get food and drinks for other people but never yourself.”
It took me a minute to find any words. Considering how much time Julian spent actively ignoring me, his words struck me as surprising. No, more than that. Shocking.
“I’ll eat.”
I didn’t want to argue about it, nor did I want Julian to go down a sudden rabbit hole that involved dissecting my relationship with food. So to prove it to him, I grabbed a slice of pizza and dropped into my desk chair. I kicked my feet up in a hopefully casual attempt to brush past his comment, and Julian’s gaze flicked over to me before immediately training on the ceiling instead.
“What?” I asked, ragged exasperation filling the word. What the hell was his problem now?
Julian coughed, managed to swallow a bit of pizza, and then cleared his throat. All without looking at me.
Drama king.
“Your dress,” he admitted hoarsely.
Huh? My polka-dotted wrap dress was one of my favorites. Flimsy and comfortable, it covered my thighs entirely, even as I sat back in my chair. But as I smoothed the hem and followed it around to the back, I realized that with my legs propped up, the underside of my legs—and maybe even a bit of my ass—were exposed. Unlike the skirt I had on yesterday, this dress didn’t stick to me like a second skin.
I hastily flattened my feet back on the ground. “That better?”
Julian lowered his gaze, assessing me in a way that warmed my cheeks. Not warm from embarrassment or warm from the hot pizza in my hands. It was warm in a way that tripped a confusion wire in my brain and caused goose bumps on my arm. My palms grew sweaty. I hated being sweaty, but this? I didn’t know how to feel about this.
Finally, Julian responded by making a noncommittal noise in the back of his throat, and I snapped out of it.
“Didn’t realize you were afraid of a little bare skin,” I said, hoping that the heat inside me might fade to embers if we reverted back to our status quo.
My hopes lasted all of two seconds.
“Afraid?” Julian chuckled, but it was deep, and there wasn’t much humor there. His voice tickled the already raised hairs on my arm. “Daisy, no.”
Breathing was suddenly something I had to concentrate very hard on.
“So tell me about this case,” I said, hurrying to find a topic of conversation that wouldn’t make my palms sweat even more.
Julian nodded, clearly relieved that I’d brought it up. He launched into a description of the case, which focused on an undetected heart defect—coarctation of the aorta, to be precise. His eyes lit up as he spoke, his passion more than apparent. It wasn’t something I’d seen in Julian, not in a long time. Except for maybe at the football game last week.
“There’s something you’re not telling me,” I said when he finished, though I couldn’t articulate precisely what it was. “Why haven’t I heard anything about this? I was just talking with Daphne about—”
“It’s being kept on the down low.”
“Why?”
“The client is…” Julian bit his lip, looking like he didn’t want to finish that sentence.
“Famous?” I offered. “A celebrity? Politician?”
He shrugged. “You could say he’s well-known, yes.”
Sensing that Julian wouldn’t drop his insistence on being tight-lipped, I let it go.
“Okay.” I rubbed my hands together, eager to get started. It was these moments that I lived for, the reminder within me that knowledge was power. And I had it. “This is what I know.”
We walked through my experience with a similar case until the sky was inky outside the window. It was strangely nice. Even though I’d been working in this office with Julian for weeks now, tonight was the first time we shared a professional, working conversation.
“We can look at it more tomorrow if you want,” I offered once I realized the time. The pizza was cold, the office was dark, and I had just yawned three times in a row.
“That’d be great. Thanks, Juni.” Julian nodded absently, still shuffling through medical reports that his client had sent him while I stilled, shocked at how he’d thanked me. “I’m taking Friday off to help Mom prepare for the party,” he added.
The Briggs Family Annual Halloween Party—I’d almost forgotten.
Julian glanced up, cocking a brow. “I assume you’ll be crashing.”
My stomach soured, feeling the progress we’d made over the past few hours going down the drain.
“It isn’t crashing if you’re invited, Julian.” I sniffed, turning my attention to organizing my desk. “Your mom sent me a text as a reminder last week.”
“Of course you’re texting my mom,” he mumbled beneath his breath.
“Your mom loves me.”
He sighed. “I know.”
“Gemma has practice Friday evening, so we’re driving to Whitebridge after she gets done.”
He shot me a look, his eyes narrowing and jaw twitching, and I immediately regretted opening my mouth. I knew what he was about to say, and I would do anything to escape the upcoming conversation.
“Which one of you is driving?”
Yep, there it was.
From the beginning, Julian thought I was some sort of imposter into their family—like he couldn’t fathom having yet another girl in the house. While the rest of the Briggs family treated me like I was the sixth sister, Julian had always rejected that idea. Instead, he liked to pretend I didn’t exist.
But then there were times that he was forced to acknowledge me, never for good reasons. And the car accident Gemma and I were in on a snowy night in high school was the worst one. He still blamed me for that, for what happened. He went from thinking I was annoying to hating me because of it, but not more than I hated myself.
“Gemma is driving,” I said icily, knowing it would be what he wanted to hear. “Something is wrong with my car’s brakes right now, so I’m riding with her.”
His previous concerned expression twisted visibly.
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Why didn’t I tell you what?”
“That your brakes aren’t working.”
“Why would I tell you?” He acted like we had the kind of relationship where we shared personal life details even though we usually just tried to get through the workday without biting each other’s heads off. “It’s not that bad. Just whenever I drive, they—”
“Jesus Christ, Juniper,” he cut me off, and I jumped from how sharply he said my name. My real name. “You’re still driving with bad brakes?”
“Why do you care?” I shot back, instantly defensive as I careened into memories of that night in high school and all the other nights, too. Anxious energy filled my words. “As long as I’m not driving Gemma around, it’s not like it’ll matter to you if I end up in a ditch with a broken neck.”
Julian flinched at my harsh words, his eyes darkening as they swept over me. When he spoke, his voice was eerily low. Unsteady. “Don’t ever say something like that again.”
I looked away, unable to handle the intensity of Julian’s stare or how it made me feel. My heart was already in my throat from thinking about the accident, and now—
“Did you drive to work?” he asked, the sharpness returning to his tone.
I shook my head, peeking over to find him looking more relaxed. Relieved.
“Your car’s at your apartment?” he clarified.
Still not trusting myself to speak, I nodded. And with that response, Julian quickly packed his belongings and made for the door without even glancing at me. I breathed a sigh of relief that the conversation was over until Julian checked back over his shoulder.
“Coming?”
I frowned. “You don’t need to wait for me.”
“Yes, I do.” He momentarily pinched the bridge of his nose. “I need you to show me where your car is so I can look at it.”
He wasn’t serious, was he?
“I have an appointment with a mechanic next week.”
“I’m a mechanic.”
“You’re an attorney, not a mechanic.”
This man really liked to act like he was all-powerful sometimes, and it drove me up the wall.
“I’m as good as one after how many years I worked in my dad’s shop, and you know it.” The longer Julian lingered in the doorway, the redder his face seemed to grow. Maybe it would match his hair soon. “How are you planning to get to your appointment if your brakes don’t work?”
I shrugged. “Well, it’s not far, and my brakes should work enough to get me there—”
Julian interrupted me with a grunt. “Let’s go.”
When I hesitated, debating if I should dig my heels into the ground even more, Julian insisted.
“Now.”
“It’s late.” I emphasized that with a yawn.
His lips curved. “Our specialty, right?”
“Fine,” I huffed.
As much as I hated once again relying on Julian to help me with something, I found it hard to argue with him when it meant I might save money on repairs. Every once in a while, I was practical.
But also, I was tired. My combative itch had been scratched for the day, and my desire to argue disappeared from all the barbs that had stuck and hurt.
Sometimes it wasn’t worth it. And this was one of those times.
So for the second time in a week, I followed Julian out into the night and let him take me home.
