Enemies With Benefits (Loveless Brothers 1)

Violet steps out, alone. She stops. She looks at me. Susan hugs me tighter, her arms around my waist. She buries her face in my shoulder, my arm around her so she doesn’t fall over.

Violet’s eyes lock onto mine as the elevator doors slide shut. It feels like it takes a year for them to close and the whole time, she doesn’t look away. Her expression’s unreadable, but I still feel it deep inside myself, twisting me in a place I didn’t know I had.

Then the doors close and I stare at myself in the dull reflection, Susan snuggled against me, head now against my chest, my arm still around her shoulders so she doesn’t fall over.

“This is nice,” she murmurs.

I don’t answer her.Chapter TwelveVioletI stand stock-still in the doorway as the elevator closes, my brain unwilling to process what I just saw.

Eli. And the maid of honor who’s been sloppily hitting on him for the past fifteen minutes, in the elevator, their arms around each other, her head against his chest.

Going upstairs. Where there are beds. Six days after he kissed the hell out of me, he’s going upstairs with this girl who’s clearly handsy as fuck and who’s also pretty cute.

If I were a dude, I wouldn’t turn her down. My heart feels like a fist.

“You forget something?” Kevin asks, shaking me out of my reverie.

“Nope!” I say, sounding way too perky. “Just standing here. You ready?”

Kevin gives me a weird look, but doesn’t say anything as we head back to the office barn, talking over the final few preparations for tomorrow.

When the linens get here, we need to make sure they match.

Eli is banging the maid of honor.

The bride brought last-minute chair-hanging nameplates for the entire wedding party, so someone should make sure that those go in the right place.

Does he do this all the time? Does Eli have a new girl every week and I didn’t know? Am I already old news and he’s on to the next thing?

We’ll need to do a dry run of the butterfly release before the ceremony, and Eli is banging the maid of honor. Oh my God, why is he doing this and why do I care? Stop caring. Now.

We reach my office. Kevin hands over the iPad and says goodnight. I act normal and also say goodnight, then gather my things, and prepare to head out.

And I keep thinking about Eli. In the elevator. About the look me gave me, the smug way his eyes lit up when the maid of honor snuggled harder against him, his arm around her shoulders. I’m pretty sure she was grabbing his butt.

You are being ridiculous, I tell myself.

You saw two people in an elevator, one drunk and one not. You have no idea what happened afterward.

Except they looked so cozy together, and she was definitely into him, and they were touching and he gave me that look as the doors closed, the one that was smoldering and high and mighty and smug and hot.

The same look he gave me Saturday night right before —

“Stop it,” I say out loud, in my empty office, like a lunatic.

Then I clear my throat, hope no one heard me, grab my stuff, and leave my office.

As I’m walking down the hall, something else occurs to me.

Sleeping with a guest is unprofessional as hell.

I don’t know if it’s specifically in the employee handbook. I read it cover-to-cover when I started this job, of course, but I didn’t memorize it and it’s been a few years. But there’s no way that’s proper, condoned behavior.

It’s possible that I could get Eli fired. It’s probable that I could get him in hot water with Montgomery.

It’s almost certain that I could knock him out of the running for that twenty thousand dollars.

I stop again, right in front of the door to the employee parking lot, and I back up a few steps until I can look down the hall, toward Montgomery’s big corner office.

The door’s open. The lights are on. If I listen really closely, I think I can just make out the sounds of typing.

And I can’t get the elevator scene out of my head: the way they were intertwined, all over each other, her hands everywhere. Most of all I can’t get the look on his face out of my head, like he’s mocking me, challenging me.

I’m not jealous. I’m not. Kissing him last weekend was a dumb mistake and I don’t want to do it again, no matter how good it felt, because Eli and I don’t get along and there’s no point to making out with someone you don’t even get along with.

Therefore, I can’t be jealous. Logic dictates it.

I’m still standing there. I’m still staring at Montgomery’s open door, thinking about how much harder I could probably make Eli’s life if I just walked down there and told him.