Enemies With Benefits (Loveless Brothers 1)

“I bet I could make it look like an accident.”

Violet just rolls her eyes.

“We can’t let him win this,” she says, still keeping her voice low. “He can’t take credit for our work and sabotage people and get rewarded.”

“No,” I agree, leaning forward in my chair. “I have a proposal.”

She raises one eyebrow, turns slightly pink.

“I’m still not comfortable with stabbing,” she says.

“I say we make a pact,” I go on. “We work together.”

She taps the pen a few more times, saying nothing.

“I only want to win this thing slightly more than I want you not to win,” I admit, totally candid. “And I’m fairly sure you feel the exact same way, but you know what I want most of all?”

“For Martin to lose.”

“Bingo.”

She blows air out the side of her mouth, pen still tapping her desk, her eyes on me.

“Listen,” I say. “I admit that I’ll be pissed as hell if you beat me, but at least I’ll know you earned it. That’s more than I can say about that slimy fucker.”

Violet says nothing.

“Just imagine,” I say, leaning back in my chair, locking my hands together over my head. “It’s the end of the summer. Montgomery calls a meeting or whatever it is he does, and with every single employee there, he announces that Martin beat you. He wins the twenty grand, and he did it because he’s a backhanded shitweasel.”

The pen taps faster, her face stormy. I know for Violet the worst thought isn’t failing to win the money. It’s the thought of someone else winning dishonestly.

“This isn’t some ploy is it?” she asks, still suspicious. “Where I help you and then at the end you screw me over somehow and take it for yourself?”

“Hand to God, it’s not,” I say, raising my right hand over my head. “I just don’t want Martin to win.”

She nods, watching the pen tap against the desk.

Then she stands from her chair. She leans over and holds her hand out.

I don’t look down her shirt. The effort that takes is Herculean.

“Deal,” she says.

I stand. I take her hand in mine, and we shake. Her hand is smaller and more delicate that I imagined, and for a moment I wonder if I’m being too rough.

Then she gives my hand a squeeze so hard it crunches my knuckles together, and I stop wondering.

All right, if that’s how we’re going to do this.

I squeeze her hand back. Her jaw flexes, but she doesn’t say anything. Of course she doesn’t. It’s Violet.

“Deal,” I agree.

The shitweasel is going down.Chapter SixteenVioletKevin grunts, sliding his foot into the shoe, then stands. He does a couple of deep knee bends, then takes a few exaggerated steps around the carpeted lobby before bouncing on his toes, looking contemplative.

“Yeah, I think I need a bigger size,” he says, sitting back down on the bench, next to me.

I wiggle my toes in my own shoes. Bowling shoes always pinch a little bit — that’s the nature of bowling shoes — but do these pinch too much? Not enough? Do I look like I’m wearing clown shoes?

Across the way, Lydia is already in one of the several lanes reserved for Bramblebush employees. We’re having one of our happy hour team building outings, where Montgomery tells everyone to leave work at four o’clock and we all go do an activity together.

It’s been a week since Eli and I made our pact, and it’s been blissfully uneventful. No one’s sabotaged anything. No cakes fell over. Last weekend’s wedding was a small, intimate, relaxed affair, and I was home and in bed by ten p.m. That’s practically unheard of.

Most astonishing of all, Eli and I have barely fought. Admittedly, I’ve been avoiding him a little, because when I see him I can’t help but think of him in the elevator and then also him shirtless, and neither of those images are particularly conducive to a pleasant day for me.

I’d love to stop wondering whether he had sex with the maid of honor. I’d love to convince myself that it doesn’t matter, because it doesn’t, and yet I seem unable to quit thinking about it, and yet I’m also unable to quit thinking about how much I enjoyed seeing him half-naked.

Ugh.

I watch Lydia enter our names into the computer, a pitcher of beer on the table behind her. Her bowling shoes seem to fit fine, but she’s also one of those people who could wear a paper bag as a dress and a cactus for a hat and look effortlessly stylish, so that hardly counts.

“What size were these again?” Kevin mutters to himself, flopping the shoes off his feet and picking them up.

I catch a glimpse of his feet, and then can’t help but stare in horror.

“Kevin,” I say.

He stops and looks at me, alarmed.

“Are you okay?” he asks.