ou, and to tell you in person that I’m sorry about what happened to you. I have no idea why you’re so pissed off and think I got you fired. What happened?”
“You know what you did, Cooper. You just didn’t think you would get caught, but guess what? You did.”
“Caught doing what? I swear, if you don’t tell me what the fuck you’re talking about—”
“Fine. You want to play dumb, I’ll spell it out for you. You did this! You’re the one that got me fired. I had just told you how much I needed the job and then not ten minutes later you shoot off some pictures, proving me to not only have broken the company’s rules, but also made me out to be a liar. You’re the reason any of this is happening!”
“What pictures? Last thing I knew, I went to Rita’s office, against my better judgment, and told her nothing was going on. You were sitting right there! How could you think this is my doing?”
“Don’t! Just stop.” I pressed my hand against my forehead and shut my eyes. My head was starting to feel like someone had the tip of a screwdriver digging into my temple. The stress piled on top of my existing hangover was only going to land me back in bed with a full blown migraine if I wasn’t careful. I eyed the “miracle cure” on the dining room table, but I couldn’t bring myself to back down now and take it. “Stop lying to me. I know it was you. Yesterday morning, I got into Rita’s email account and found the email address of the person who sent her the pictures…of us…and when I traced it back, I found that the email address is registered to you. You did it, you sent her those pics. Fuck. For all I know, you’re probably the one who hired the photographer who took them in the first place.”
I let out a hysterical laugh at the thought. “I’m just a marionette puppet to you. And when I act out and don’t do what you want, you have to rearrange things to get me back where you want me. It’s like the very definition of maniacal.”
“You think I would do that?”
“I don’t think, I know. Come on, give it up. Drop the act. I have the screenshots saved on my computer. I can pull it up right now. So stop it, stop pretending like you don’t know what I’m talking about.”
I found myself holding my breath, waiting for what he would say next.
“Show me,” he said, not moving a muscle. “You want to prove me to be the bad guy—then show me.”
His response startled me and I was paralyzed for a moment. I knew that I had the proof to back up my theory, but him calling me out like that had me rattled, nonetheless. I stepped away from the counter and went to grab my laptop. I booted it up, waiting in awkward silence as it ran through the startup sequence. Finally, it loaded, and my fingers flew across the keyboard. Within seconds, the screen was filled with the images I had saved the day before. I pushed the computer across the table to him and stood back, crossing my arms again.
“Do you mind if I email these files to myself?” he asked after a few minutes of careful study.
I thought it was an odd request but I shrugged. “Do whatever you want. Apparently, you already have them.”
Another silence settled on the room with nothing but the clicking of the keys to fill the void. I let my eyes wander across his broad shoulders and down his back, watching the muscles move with each keystroke. An overwhelming urge to reach out and skim the softness of his T-shirt overtook me for a moment, but I drew my hand back as if it had been burned, coming to my senses just before he turned around in his seat to look at me again.
“Allison, I didn’t do this. I wouldn’t stoop this low. If I wanted you fired, I could have just told Rita to fire you. These pictures—I don’t understand. I’m going to get to the bottom of this.”
I rolled my eyes. “Okay, smarty pants. It doesn’t really matter. I’ll be fine.” The lie was so bad that even I was appalled by it, but I did my best to look confident and sure of myself, no matter how badly my insides were quivering both with fear and arousal.
“I’m sorry for what happened at Spotlight. I wish I could convince you that I’m not the bad guy here, but unfortunately, I’m beginning to see that it’s impossible. I don’t know why you have to make everything so fucking difficult.”
“Why are you pushing this so hard?” The words left my mouth before I could stop myself. “Why do you even care what I think about you?”
“I don’t really know.”
Well, that was honest. I was surprised by the rawness of his answer.
“I’m not the bad guy you might think I am. I don’t know what happened with Rita and Spotlight, but I need you to believe me when I tell you that it wasn’t me. I didn’t send pictures or do anything to compromise your job there.”
I considered him, letting his words soak into my fuzzy brain. I felt like I needed to hold back, to be smart and look for the catch. But, staring into his deep brown eyes, I found myself releasing the hostility and I realized that I believed him.
But just as quickly, I realized that it really didn’t matter whether or not he was the one who got me fired. The problem was that I couldn’t be around him. He was too tempting for me. At twenty-three, I wasn’t exactly in a hurry to settle down and get married and start popping out babies, but at the same time, I didn’t want to waste my time and emotions on a man who played the flavor of the month game.
His words from the launch party that now seemed so long ago echoed back to me. He had called me out for basing the majority of my opinions of him based on water cooler talk. And he had been right. But then again, I really didn’t have anything else to go on. Maybe he had been telling the truth…but then again…maybe he wasn’t. Maybe he had just been trying to sleep with me. Which he had, so why was he still here?
It doesn’t matter, I reminded myself silently. I don’t want to get close enough to find out. I’m already too close.
“I’ll be just fine. I don’t need your pity—or charity.” I crossed the kitchen and picked up the paper bag of groceries he had brought for me. I set the bag on the table and pushed it towards him. “Please leave, Cooper.”
“Allison, you’re being unreasonable. Take the groceries,” he said, pushing them back to me.
“You can drop the whole knight-in-shining armor routine. It’s getting tired anyways.”
“You don’t know me at all,” he said. His voice was still edgy, but quieter in a way, and I could tell I hit a nerve.