If I had to watch Chantilly wiggle her ass for me one more time, I deserved a monument in the fucking Smithsonian.
She parachuted a tablecloth in front of her, letting it float to the office carpet. It laid flat on the floor, but she took her time bending on her hands and knees. Ass in the air, she smoothed out the wrinkles.
Our new office lunch ritual, ladies and gentleman.
If this is hell, I’ll change my ways. Fucking promise.
“Will you help me, Nash?” She peeked back at me, her body arched doggy style.
My eyes remained glued to my phone.
Candy Crush again.
Full volume.
Victorious dings filled the air.
“Unless capitalism has changed in the past twenty minutes, the whole point of paying people money is so I don’t have to waste my time with pointless shit.” My thumb ran miles across the screen. The light cast a shadow from my lashes to the phone. Candy wrappers crushing echoed in the room. “Did I miss a memo?”
Cayden eyed Chantilly’s ass as she ran a palm along the polyester fabric. He had two working eyes and a healthy libido, and Chantilly bore the body of a Sports Illustrated model. Yet, I didn’t glance.
Not once.
Definitely not in the past ten days, as each attempt grew more desperate than the last.
You’d think she’d take the fucking hint.
Office picnics for lunch had never existed before I started my feeding attempts, and Chantilly caught on.
If Emery—fucking Emery and her stubborn ass—would cave, everyone in this office could go back to ignoring each other, please and thank you.
Chantilly spread five sets of silverware across the cloth—one for everyone but Emery. “It’s just lunch, Nash.”
“It’s Mr. Prescott to you, and because you have such difficulty understanding boundaries, allow me to teach you a lesson in them.” I pocketed my phone, stepped on top of the cloth, and rattled the silverware, shattering a crystal plate with my three-thousand-dollar dress shoes.
I continued, “This is what happens when people overstep my boundaries.” My heel dug into the crushed plate and twisted. “They become as useless to me as a broken plate. People are expendable, including you. Clean this mess and clear the office. In the future, Chartreuse, do not overstep if you’d like to keep your job.”
Problem was, Chantilly cared about her job as much as she cared about melting ice caps in the Arctic. As in, not at all. I’d become her goal the second I’d stepped foot in this office and introduced myself to the team.
Perhaps earlier, considering her behavior at the corporate party she’d crashed. If it weren’t for her uncle, I’d fire her. Easily.
Cayden left with Ida Marie and Hannah, his phone pulled up to his Uber app. Cheeks the same shade as her hair, Chantilly folded the edges of the tablecloth to the center, bundled up the mess in the middle, and shoved it under Cayden’s desk.
Emery slid her sketchpad into her Jana Sport and flung it over her shoulder. Her toe hit the door’s threshold when I stopped her.
“Not you, Miss Rhodes.”
A mouse squeaked.
Or Chantilly.
They sounded the same.
“Yes, Mr. Prescott?” She pivoted, rested a hip against the frame, and studied me.
I eyed Chantilly, who took her time gathering her belongings into the Birkin bag she wore—something her salary did not afford her, but her family did. The silence allowed Emery to scrape her eyes down my body, trying to satiate her curiosity.
Good luck, Tiger.
That ember between us never extinguished. Proximity drew sweat from her palms. She rubbed them on her jeans, staring at me like she needed to taste me, fuck me, use me. To affirm our one-night stand meant nothing. A fluke orgasm that would have happened if anyone experienced touched her.
Yeah, right, my lifted brow told her. Keep fooling yourself.
She muttered something under her breath. Not weird words this time. Actual sentences. I edged closer, trying to hear them.
Something along the lines of, “It felt worse than the first time, which makes sense, considering I mistook you for the better Prescott.”
“Thank you for the fuck. I have no intention of doing it again. No desire to either.”
“I liked who you were, but I hate who you are.”
“Bye, Nash.”
I popped a brow up and watched her watch me, leaning against my desk. The same desk I worked from everyday, efficient and diligent. I offered input when needed and minded my own business if I had nothing to contribute.
Exactly what I wanted everyone in here to fucking do, but Chantilly seemed incapable.
When dinnertime approached, I would look at Emery, read her unwillingness to accept my food offers, and order her takeout that ended up in the palms of the night guard.
By the time the furniture orders had been placed and shipped, everyone else began ordering in, too. Hence Chantilly’s newfound picnic fetish, where she dished out mood candles and heavy silverware like an overachieving mom handing out healthy Halloween candy no one wanted.
“What?” Emery snapped as soon as Chantilly left, whipping the hair out of her face with a rough swipe.
“Woke up on the wrong side of the bed?” I eyed her hair like it supported my theory. It did. Wild and crazy as ever.
Irritation masked her lust.
“Is there a point to this?” She patted her stomach just below latibule on her shirt. “I’m hungry. It’s my lunch hour.”
“Anyone ever told you that you need a Snickers? You’re as pissy as a toddler when hungry.”
“For the record, this is the reaction you inspire from everyone who has ever met you. And if you were hungry and couldn’t feed yourself or talk, you’d throw worse tantrums than toddlers. In fact, your daily setting seems permanently stuck on tantrum.”
I pretended to ignore her—of fucking course, I couldn’t—fetched something from my desk drawer, held it up, and shook it. “Ma made these for you.”
Check. Mate.
Emery
I RECOGNIZED the neon pink as soon as I saw it. A surge of homesickness throttled through me like an earthquake. My fingers twitched with the need to pry it from Nash’s fingers and claim it as mine.
I played it cool. “You saw Betty this weekend?”
“We’ve been over this. I see her almost every weekend.”
He ate the distance between us in two strides. I loosened my grip on my shirt, leaving huge wrinkles above my belly button. When he plopped the Tupperware container onto my palms, I latched on.
A koala clinging to a eucalyptus tree, except my home was a one-hundred-and-forty-pound, five-foot-two woman with graying hair and two hazel eyes that matched Nash’s.
“You have your mom’s eyes.”
The words slipped past my lips before I could swallow them. An accidental gunshot wound to the gut, fired from my own weapon. Embarrassment mixed with a shit ton of pain. I mouthed magic words and cataloged my body, searching for a wound.
Nope. Just inside, you dolt. You are the reason guns come with a safety latch.
Those hazel eyes studied me and drew me into their current. I refused to look away or explain myself. Breaking the silence would be tantamount to losing, so I suffered in it. Not masochistic. Just stubborn.
Why is being near you always a series of lose-lose situations, Nash?
“I know, considering they’re in my eye sockets.” He threw back my words like a Major League pitcher, striking me out while I failed to consider why either of us remembered them. “Ma baked those yesterday.” Nash flicked his attention to the container I refused to loosen my grip on. “White chocolate macadamia nut. Your favorite.”
“Snickerdoodles are my favorite.”
“Liar. Snickerdoodles are your least favorite.” He gave me the stare people gave crying babies. Irritation hidden behind a patient smile. “You once faked a cinnamon allergy, so Ma would stop making them instead of the white chocolate macadamia.”
“Until she told me she mixed cinnamon in the white chocolate chips, too.” I kicked at one of the tablecloth packages on the carpet, digging this trip down memory lane, even if it was with my least favorite Prescott. “Betty’s secret ingredient for every damn dish she cooks.”
“She made you watch us eat white chocolate macadamia nut cookies while you ate the snickerdoodles.” Nash leaned against the doorframe, kicking one ankle over the other. His suit pants tightened around his thighs, but I. Would. Not. Stare. “Ten years later, you still haven’t learned your lesson about lying, have you?”
I didn’t want to reminisce with him. It delved too close to a line I wouldn’t cross—focusing on better times. Forget the past, and it can’t haunt you. That included forgetting the good stuff.
“I don’t want food from you.”
Another lie.
Betty stacked her Tupperware in a cabinet next to the sink. I’d sneak a few out of the cottage and repaint them black with lilac-colored Northern Lights and white stars in the shape of magic words.
I not only wanted the food, but also the container.
“They’re not from me.” Nash’s North Carolina accent sounded more pronounced as he folded his arms across his chest. “They’re from my mom. Would you really deny my mom’s gift? She spent hours baking them.”
Indecision ran laps around my brain until I heaved a breath and distanced myself from him. My shaky hands stretched out, offering the Tupperware to him.
If he grabs it, y’all better let go, Fingers. Don’t embarrass me.
Nash eyed the container, taking his time to examine the way my fingers clenched around it. “Stop.” Harsh. Gruff. Loud. A command I felt above my neck and below my waist. “Just stop.”
“What?”
“This.” He gestured to me like he meant all of me. My entire existence. “You’re lucky pride doesn’t come armed with a dagger, because yours would kill you if it could. Stop being embarrassed. It’s not embarrassing to need help. It’s not embarrassing to be poor. None of this is embarrassing.”
I edged back an inch at his words, knowing he had a point, but not wanting to address it.
He continued, ruthless, “You know why I call you the tiger?”
No, but I had a good idea. A statue of Dionysus riding a tiger consumed the expanse of the foyer at the Winthrop Estate. Virginia used to pet the tiger each time she passed it. Right along the jugular vein.
“Because Dionysus rides the tiger.” I hitched a shoulder. The outstretched Tupperware stilted the awkward movement.
“No.” Nash pushed the container until it shotgunned to my chest, still squeezed between my palms. “Because the tiger cannot be tamed. The tiger rules the jungle, and only a god can worship the tiger properly. Your mother is an uncultured idiot, who mistook a tiger for a panther.” His scathing laughter tasted like candy against my lips as he leaned close. “Dionysus doesn’t ride a tiger. He rides a panther. The tiger is his sacred animal.”
And gods worshipped sacred animals.
It’s why I’d chosen Durga as my username.
A goddess known as The Inaccessible.
The Invincible.
Her sacred animal is the tiger, and I wanted to feel sacred.
“What are you saying?” I asked, hoping Nash would give me an answer that would make me hate him more. I clung to the container, the only thing separating us.
His breath fanned my cheeks.
Actually, it also sounds fucking cute.
“I’m saying eat the cookies, Tiger.”
