Page 28 of Boss Me

It wasn’t the first time someone had let me down. Maybe it’d be the last.

“Who sent you? Weston? Or Jackson?” When I said my partner’s name, my empty stomach seized. His abandonment was the other thing I’d been trying to erase with the booze.

Ben’s mouth tightened. “No one sent me.”

A bitter laugh barked out of me. “No one sent you? You came all the way out here on your own to—to talk to me about Synergy?” He had to be working for Weston. I thought Weston understood I needed a break, but maybe he’d sent Ben to check up on me. There was no way Ben had chosen to come out here. Not after he’d seen me blow up at the office. Not after he’d had to clean up the mess I’d made.

Ben was too kind, too bright, too beautiful. He was the sunny, tropical, blue-sky day to my black-cloud hurricane. He was the gentle breeze and the soft, soothing lap of water on the Caribbean side of the island. I was the whipping wind and pounding surf on the Atlantic side. He nurtured; I destroyed. My desk back at the office was proof.

He must have been horrified to witness my loss of control. He should have resigned. He shouldn’t be standing there on my deck offering me coffee.

Had he come to tender his resignation? That didn’t make any sense. I shook my head, and that only made a new pain erupt between my eyes. I rubbed it with my fingertip.

“I came here for you.” His voice was so gentle I almost couldn’t hear it over the sea breeze. “I was worried, Mr. Fallon.”

It felt like a feint followed by a shovel punch to the liver. He was worried. About me. And then he’d reminded me of our relationship. I was his boss. He worked for me, and that made me responsible for him. For his well-being. Which meant the attraction I felt was completely inappropriate. Not to mention I was a danger to people I was supposed to care for.

I needed a drink. A strong one. Fortunately, my house wasn’t the only place on the island with a stockpile of alcohol.

I turned on my bare feet and stalked back to my bedroom, where I found my last clean pair of socks and, in the bathroom, my dress shoes. What the fuck were they doing in the bathroom? They were suspiciously clean, too, not coated in dust from the shell path. Had Ben—? Impossible.

I slipped on my shoes and strode to the front door. Ben stood in the kitchen and held out a cup of steaming, black coffee.

I waved it off. “I’m leaving. Good-bye, Ben.”

His jaw dropped open, and with a satisfying slam of the door, I left.

11

BEN

I stood frozen, mindlessly gripping the cup of coffee, after Cooper stomped out. Then I slammed the mug on the counter, the coffee sloshing over the smooth granite. Now that I’d found him, I couldn’t let him out of my sight. Not until I asked him about the stock sale. And asked him about what I’d overheard on Weston’s call with the Chairman.

Scrambling to the back door, I slipped on my Converse then hopped off the deck and sprinted through the back gate. Cooper, with his long-legged strides, was already well ahead of me. I speed-walked to keep him in view.

I wasn’t shocked when he headed right back to the bar where I’d found him last night. He trudged up the steps and disappeared behind the wall. I sped up to a full jog—what if there was some private room I didn’t know about?—and bounded up the steps to the bar.

Cooper sat on the same stool as last night and said something to the bartender. It wasn’t Luis but a fresh-faced kid, no older than twenty, with a pixie cut and a they/them button. Instead of a teal guayabera, they wore a white tank top, knotted just below their ribs. They leaned over the bar, shapely ass and thighs on display under their cut-offs. Damn, did Cooper return here year after year for the eye candy? Had he tasted some of the treats on offer? My neck heated under the collar of my polo shirt.

When the bartender turned to make Cooper’s drink, I caught their eye and shook my head. They bit their lip and nodded.

I slipped onto the stool next to Cooper. “You can’t get rid of me that easily.”

He kept his gaze on the bartender’s back. “How much?” he asked, too low for them to hear.

Was he talking to me? “How much what?”

“How much is Weston paying you to bring me back?”

I recoiled. “Weston’s not paying me!”

“Jackson, then.” The look he gave me was a heartbreaking mix of hope and anguish.

“No,” I said softly. I’d seen the way he looked at Jackson in the office. It was the same way Mimi looked at chocolate, even though she was allergic. The same way I looked at every dog we’d passed on the street when I was a kid. Mimi was allergic to dogs, too.

It was the way I looked at Cooper every damn day.

His jaw hardened, and he stared at the drink the bartender slid in front of him. “What the fuck is this?” he growled.

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