Page 39 of Bossing My Holiday
“I do?”
I smirk. “Yes. You do.” I reach into the wardrobe and pull out the dark slacks and navy shirt I was going to wear tonight. “I can get dressed out here if you want the bathroom.”
“Okay. Thanks.”
She was so against sharing a bed with me when the idea of sharing a bed with her made my heart race and my palms sweaty. It made me nervous and excited in the best and worst possible way, and I can’t remember the last time—if ever—a woman made me feel like that.
And she wants nothing to do with me.
Not that I blame her.
I’ve fucked up a lot with her over the years. Made everything about me and nothing about her because she worked for me, and that’s how I operate. I don’t know what’s happening to me. I don’t know what this feeling is. I’m sick and twisted upand edgy. All week I’ve felt like this whenever I thought about her.
Now it’s as if Braxton switched on the light inside my head. I see her when I never did before. Or maybe it’s more that I knew that if I opened myself up to her, even a little, if I gave her an inch inside me, she’d spread like a virus with no cure.
I don’t even know. I can’t separate it in my head anymore.
Part of me wants to retreat. To go back to the way things were before where I forced myself to be indifferent to her in every way other than work. It’s safe there. I know what to expect.
But a larger part of me doesn’t want to go back.
I want what Brax is offering. But I want more than that. I want her to be mine. For real. And I don’t know how that works. We’ve shared women in bed, but our hearts were never involved. Brax is crazy about her, and she seems to share that with him. I’m not sure where, or even if at all, I fit into that.
“I’ll let you get ready.”
I turn and give her my back as I slip on my boxer briefs beneath my towel. I hear the hanger click as she pulls it from the rack, and her feet tap as she moves toward the bathroom.
“Are you mad?” she asks softly, and I turn my head over my shoulder and look at her.
“Mad?”
“About what’s happening, whatever it even is, with Braxton. You and I have a contract, and you’ve paid me an insane amount of money, and I feel like I’m betraying you, which is kind of odd, and?—”
“I’m not mad.”
Her eyes round. “You’re not?”
“No. I’m a lot of things right now, Waverly, but mad isn’t one of them. And you’re not betraying me.” Because she’s not actually mine.
She licks her lips and takes a small step back. “I don’t want to fight with you anymore.”
“I don’t want to fight either.”
“Truce?”
I grin. “Truce.”
I turn away and start to slip on my pants when she stops me. “Tristan?”
“Yeah?”
“You have a nice ass.”
I choke on a laugh, and she shuts the door to the bathroom. A moment later I hear the water turn on, and I finish getting myself ready. Refusing to think about the woman naked in my shower.
“I seeyou finally graced me with your presence.” My father’s voice comes from behind us after the butler lets us in, his French accent light as if he’s been speaking in English more than French lately. “And here I thought I’d have to stalk down to your flat to see you.”
I turn and take Waverly’s hand, giving it a squeeze. “Hi, Dad.” I extend my hand, and he grips it like he wants to prove he’s still the man of the house, and I’m nothing more than an unruly child. That is until he tugs me into a giant hug and holds me.
