Bargaining with the Boss (Honeybrook Love, Inc. 2)

Everything.

She'd kept everything from him, and he'd never judged. He let her have her secrets. Stared at those stupid freaking flowers everyday. It had been fine.

And she still hadn't trusted him.

She lay back on the couch. "I can't let Eliza be right. I can't--"

Her cell phone skittered across the coffee table and onto the floor. But this time...

This time? She knew she had to answer.

* * *

Garret's house was not the easiest of places to unwind.

Between the sound of his pug struggling for breath and the photos and Eliza festooning the mantel, it was more a shine to unrest than anything else. Still, Brooks had been avoiding his brother--any everyone else--for an entire week and he knew as well as Garret did that something had to be done.

With the company. With the press.

And with Eliza, too.

Garret flicked the channel from one baseball game to another, then out a deep, exaggerated sigh.

"What?" Brooks asked. Not that he knew why he bothered. They both knew why he was here, and it certainly wasn't to watch the Red Socks get trounced.

"What are you going to do?" Garret asked.

"What is it you want me to do? The company has been press now--"

"You've been giving the company bad press for years. We both know that's not the problem here."

Brooks cracked open a beer and slugged from the top. "Wasn't it you who wanted me in the papers?"

"Reverse psychology. You always do the opposite of what I want anyway. Rachael and I thought we'd—"

"You and Rachael thought? You set this up?"

"Not set it up so much as encouraged."

"Me and Natalie? I thought--"

"Reverse psychology, my friend. It works wonders." Garret stroked the pug in his lap and the dog snorted his appreciation.

"Well, it's not working out so great from where I'm sitting." Brooks sighed. "I've called Natalie seven times and Debbie has called me twice as many as that. Why is it that things you want never come to you, but the things you don't want barrel at you with all their might?"

"Maybe the problem is tha

t you see them as 'things.'" Garret grabbed his own beer from the coffee table in front of them, then tipped it toward his brother.

"I don't see them that way. I mean, I might have once. But Natalie isn't a thing. She's smart and funny and..."

"And loyal." Garret added. "You should have trusted her."

"How am I supposed to trust—"

"You don't have to know how. You just do."

"She wasn't even my girlfriend. We didn't have any arrangement or--"