Nick grinned, “It tells me that you just admitted to spending two hours and fifteen minutes watching me.” Kalilah threw up her hand in resignation. Nick continued, “Now that I have your confession, can you please supply the motive?”
She didn’t answer him immediately. Instead, she studied him silently. Her eyes slid from his hair and across his face to his unshaven chin and jaw. Nick inwardly flinched when she squinted and slightly wrinkled her nose as if she was seeing something that wasn’t to her liking.
Nick performed the basic hygiene rituals: showering, washing his face, brushing and flossing his teeth daily, hadn’t felt like shaving that week. Besides, it had only been three days since his last shave. His facial hair wasn’t that bad. Was it? He rubbed his face. He thought women liked the Patrick Dempsey look. Maybe he looked like one of those “you think you look like this, but this is how you actually look” memes. Nick made a mental note to look in the mirror when he got in his office.
Her perusal continued to his clothing and shoes then back up. She must have noticed his discomfort and refusal to let the matter drop, because she sighed in resignation.
“Fine, I’ll tell you.”
Nick was nervous but hoped she would admit to being hopelessly in love with him or something along those lines.
“When I started parking back here it had nothing to do with you. Hell, I didn’t even know you parked back here.” Nick waited patiently for her to tell her story. He slid his hands in his pockets to distract himself from telling her to get to the point. “I started parking back here to get away from having to see everyone else before I was ready…”
Nick scoffed, “The Office Sweetheart, Little Miss Sunshine is avoiding her coworkers? What does that have to do with me?”
She fixed him with a glare so heated, it could have cooked his frozen dinner for one. He mentally shook his head so that he wouldn’t dwell on his lack of a social life. Kalilah’s voice bought him back to the present.
“Well, if you would shut up and let me finish, you would know already.” She gave him a look that dared him to rebuff her statement. Satisfied, she continued. “Anyway, I wanted an extra twenty minutes of quiet time. I would spend fifteen minutes in the car eating breakfast and the other five walking quietly through the back of the building.”
She shifted her weight from one foot to the other and continued. “First day went great and then you showed up the second day. Since you seem to go through great lengths to be the office recluse….”
Nick was staring at her glossy lips wondering what flavor they would be if he licked them, but his eyes snapped back to hers when she said “recluse.” Is that what she and the others thought of him?
“Recluse?” he asked.
She rolled her eyes, annoyed by another disruption. “What? I can have a title and you can’t? Yes…. Office Recluse. You don’t go to any company functions, you don’t speak to anyone, and you don’t go on any IT support calls. And that is just to name a few. I haven’t really heard you speak until today. You walk around with the male equivalent to the resting bitch face.”
Nick was shocked, “I do not…”
“Anyway…” she continued like he didn’t speak. “I was pretty shocked to discover that not only do you talk to people, but someone has the ability to make you laugh and smile.”
She tucked a piece of windblown hair behind her ear and focused her gazed from whatever she was looking at on the ground back to him.
“The first day I was shocked. The second day? I needed to see if it was a fluke. The rest of the days I figured if I was relaxing in my car before work anyway, why not watch you enjoy yourself before you turned into the other guy. Apparently, you have layers. I was intrigued.”
Nick felt hope flutter in his belly. Could she be interested in getting to know him? He didn’t fully know how to respond. It was a lot to digest. The woman that he had a thing for and had been the standard that he compared other women to thought he was an ass the whole time.
Now, she had made watching him a part time hobby. She saw him. Nick. Not the son of Andrew Sinclair. This was the opening he’d been waiting for to get to know Kalilah. His mind flooded with possibilities: what if she was the one he’d been looking for all this time? Would she go out with him if he asked? Could they become a couple?
The hope was almost euphoric. Nick felt like he could float. He fixed her with a smile so big that his cheeks hurt.
Kalilah looked surprised, then she smiled back before she spoke, “Can I ask you a question?”
“Sure.” Nick nodded.
“What’s it like being Andrew Sinclair’s oldest son?”
Nicks entire body went cold. Disdain rode his veins from his toes to his cracked heart. Of course, the thing that made him intriguing was his bloodline. How many times had a woman used him to get to his father or brother? Hell, guys had tried to befriend him to get to his sister, Deidra!
He was over being the ugly duckling link to his family. And he was tired of women “settling” for him and trying to date his money or benefit from the perks associated with being seen with a Sinclair. Nick clenched and unclenched his fist. He was used to people trying to use him and he thought he was immune. He was wrong. This hurt was so strong he could almost taste it. Kalilah was the one woman that he hoped was different. Apparently, he was wrong.
Chapter 3
K alilah felt the shift in his mood. Then she saw him morph into the jackass she was used to seeing. The relaxed and smiling guy was gone and replaced with the sullen and standoffish guy everyone avoided. She looked at the clock on her cellphone. 7:20 AM. She couldn’t help but wonder if his mood was affected by time, like full moons for werewolves.
“Fuck you lady.” She gasped but he continued like he didn’t notice. “If you want to know anything about my family ask them for yourself. Don’t try to butter me up to pry information out of me. Find a different way to climb the corporate ladder because you cannot ride my cock to the top. Understood?”
Kalilah knew she should be furious but she didn’t have the energy. All she felt was hurt. She was surprised he had the power to hurt her. Did he really think she was some slutty opportunist, or was this his opinion of all women? She wasn’t about to spend the time to figure it out; she needed to get away from him. She was stymied – her brain could not formulate a response.