Page 97 of The Hookup
And yet, Luke had his surgery today, and he didn’t want her anywhere around him. It didn’t mean that she didn’t worry about him.
“What was that about?” Erin had crept up to her desk, and stood looking down at her.
She wasn’t in the mood to talk. “I’ll tell you later.” She wanted to be alone, to get on with her work, to find something to focus on so that her mind didn’t hover over the dressing down to the dark places, of Luke in surgery.
“Did you mess up bad?”
“Yes. I didn’t check the reports before we sent them through.”
“Ouch.” Erin made an appropriately sorry face. “We could hear him shouting.”
Kay glanced around the open place office, and saw a few heads turn away quickly. “I hate it when he does that.”
“The guy’s an ass,” Erin agreed. “He’s real mad.”
“I messed up. It was my fault. It’s an important account.” Remington was level-headed, for the most part. She’d messed up bad, and she had to suck it up and make up for it.
Only, it was almost impossible to focus.
How could she?
She wanted to speak to someone. She wanted to talk to Savannah, wanted some of that simple, no-nonsense advice that her cousin seemed to dole out by the bucketful. Only, this time, it wasn’t advice she wanted. She wanted to confess. Spill her guts out, and have Savannah make her feel better. Luke had humiliated her. He made what they had had seem shameful, and her out to be shameless.
She was hurt by the difference in how they both viewed the same event.
Trying to hide the sadness—for him, and for what he had said, as well as the work pressure, was killing her.
If she wasn’t careful, she would implode.
But even though Luke Hunter could be cold and uncaring, deep down she knew that the man who’d told her she had been nothing more than a pity-fuck was also an angry and frightened man.
“Let’s go for a drink tonight,” Erin suggested.
“You seem to want to go for a drink every night.” She lowered her head, trying to still her mind.
“We all need a place to go and unwind. The bar is the perfect place.”
“I can’t. I really can’t. I’ve got too much to do. You heard him. You all heard him. Remington’s going to be watching me like a hawk, and I can’t afford to mess up.”
Erin didn’t force the issue further. “I don’t want to get you in more trouble,” she said. “Maybe another time.”
“Another time,” said Kay, hearing her cell phone go off, and answering it.
“I need to see you.” It was Marie. “I have Luke’s cell phone. He’s out of surgery.”
She let out a breath she didn’t even know she had been holding. “He is? How is he?”
“Heavily sedated, and completely out of it.”
She could picture him now, sleeping, with his eyes closed, and that beautiful mouth, capable of inflicting the cruelest torture and the sweetest rapture. “So, it was successful?” she asked, suddenly overcome by a burning desire to be by his bedside. When she had woken up this morning, her initial thoughts—those first few fleeting moments devoid of yesterday’s memories—made her think of him, and she’d had the urge to rush to the hospital. Until she remembered how things had ended last night.
“It seems to be. When are you coming?”
“Ugh.” This was going to be awkward to answer. “You are coming to see him, aren’t you?” Marie asked.
“I don’t think he wants me there.”
“You have to learn to ignore him, Kay.”
