Page 115 of The Boss Problem

She looked back at me with undisguised happiness. I’d never seen her this happy and this relaxed.

When I was closer, I could see her eyes were sparkling.

“I thought …” She trailed off, biting her lip. “I thought I’d disappointed you that night.”

“By leaving early,” I corrected. “Not with anything else. In fact, with everything else”—I brought her hands to my lips and kissed them—“you have far exceeded expectations.”

She sighed with contentment as a rosy blush took over her cheeks.

“Fancy joining the party?” I asked with a wicked grin as I withdrew from her while she put a hand over her mouth, muffling her laugh.

I lay down next to her and stared at the ceiling for a few minutes. I settled her on my shoulder, draping an arm around her waist, and breathed in her scent. I felt strangely calm.

“Lucas is back with his mom,” I said, feeling the need to unload all my concerns on her. When I turned, Chloe was watching me intently. “It didn’t matter that she got him all the wrong gifts or that she wasn’t prioritizing his favorite activities. He loves her.”

She smiled and gave me a small, knowing look.

“And I now understand how much you were on tenterhooks that night. Ever since you had turned Henry’s request down once already.”

“I know,” she muttered, looking like she was moments away from starting to tremble.

I was reminding her too much of that night, and she wasn’t happy about it.

I pulled her in and gave her a quick kiss.

“I know I pushed you that night to say no to Henry, and you couldn’t do it a second time. It’ll get better with time, I promise. You won’t feel this bad.”

“With time?” she asked.

“With our second date, and the third, and the …”

She cut my words off with a kiss of her own. “You saw me flee from a perfectly orchestrated date, and you still want me for more dates? I can’t explain how desirable that makes you seem.”

“Don’t,” I said, breaking apart from her and breathing heavily, my eyes on hers. “I’ll insist on taking you again if you keep talking like that.”

She grinned and pressed her lips against my parted ones once more.

“You can take me as often as you’d like tonight,” she said with a humorous look at the closed door. “There’s no way I can go out there and face them now.”

The silence in the room was punctuated by a beep as a message lit up Chloe’s phone. When she lifted her phone, I noticed it had a wallpaper picture of a woman in her early forties.

She checked the message and set her phone aside, looking conflicted. “Another notification from a recruiter trying to hire me,” she muttered.

Our gazes locked, and I knew what neither of us wanted to say out loud. Was our time coming to an end? Would I still see her once she no longer worked for me?

I didn’t know the answer to that question myself, so to distract myself, I asked her a completely different question.

“Who’s the woman on your phone’s lock screen? Is that your mom?” I asked, registering the resemblance between their dimpled smiles.

She nodded as she laid her head on my arm. “Yes, Mom,” she muttered, trailing her fingers on my shoulder.

The touch sent tingles up my arm, but for once, I was more curious about the story behind the woman in bed with me than I was in my groin.

“She passed when I was barely eight. She had muscular dystrophy. All I remember was her lying down in bed and not being able to move, until …”

I buried my face in her hair and pressed kisses on her head, her cheek, and her lips. I couldn’t imagine having to deal with the process of losing a parent at that age.

“Did you find out anything more about your dad?” I asked, reading from her silence that I was pushing her into uncomfortable territory. “You said you were going to meet him soon.”

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