Burned (Miller Sisters 2)

Love, I thought silently. I can’t do love. Not when it was one-sided. Not when all the feelings were mine.

‘This. Us. It’s going to make our working relationship awkward. People are already noticing and talking about us.’

‘Let them talk.’

‘It isn’t a good idea to sleep with the boss.’

‘I’m the boss and it seems like a good idea to me.’

Whatever I said, he countered, pressing closer and closer to the truth, but I’d learned my lesson. This time around, my feelings were my problem, not his. I wasn’t going to dump them all over him again, as I had the first time.

‘Well, I’m the employee and it’s awkward for me. This has been fun, but it was a one-time thing. Just the weekend. From tomorrow we’re back to being how we were.’

‘And how were we?’

‘Colleagues. I don’t want to be intimate.’ But I realized that we’d never been anything but intimate, and with that admission came the unpalatable realization that I was probably going to have to leave my job because I was never, ever going to feel normal around this man. I wasn’t capable of feeling indifferent. ‘Just colleagues.’

He gave me a long steady look. ‘Are you sure that’s what you want?’

‘I’m sure.’ I made for the door before he could see through the lies. Last time I’d smothered him in my feelings. This time I was going to spare him that. ‘I’ll see you at work tomorrow.’

* * *

I limped through the next few weeks, pretending I was fine. Every minute was torture. I gritted my teeth and counted down the hours until the weekend, when I didn’t have to see him.

Three weeks after I’d done the ‘let’s be colleagues’ speech, I was lying in bed with the duvet over my head pretending to be asleep when I heard my sister open the door.

Hayley wasn’t fooled. We’d shared a room growing up, so she always knew when I was asleep and when I was faking.

I felt the bed dip as she sat down.

‘I have coffee, an untouched packet of chocolate biscuits or a glass of wine. You pick.’

I didn’t answer. I hoped she’d go away, but of course, this was my sister, so there was no hope of that. Instead the duvet was tugged from my fingers and she wriggled into the bed and snuggled under the covers with me.

‘Do you want to talk about it?’

I would have thought the duvet over my head would have answered that question, but Hayley wasn’t easy to deflect. ‘I’m fine.’

‘Right. Because not eating, sleeping or laughing is totally you, as is spending an entire Saturday in bed.’

I wanted to say something flippant but my throat was clogged with misery. I hadn’t allowed myself to cry, but suddenly I was crying and my sister was holding me and she was muttering ‘Shh’ and ‘I’m going to kill the bastard’ as she stroked my hair.

‘Not his fault. My fault for loving the wrong man.’ I choked out the words but it didn’t stop her listing all the dire methods of torture she had in mind for Hunter Black.

‘You’re crazy about him. You always have been.’

And suddenly I was telling her everything. How it had been at work, about that weekend, all of it. ‘When I’m with him, I can be myself. I never feel as if I’m being judged. He likes me the way I am. He doesn’t want me to join a book group or learn to bake cupcakes. He doesn’t care that I have a flat chest or that I like practising my kicks while we’re talking.’ I scrubbed my face with my hand and sat upright. My head throbbed from crying. ‘And he makes me laugh.’

My sister looked at my swollen face and raised her eyebrows. ‘You’re not laughing now.’

‘That’s not his fault.’

‘Have you told him how you feel?’

‘After last time?’ I grabbed a tissue and blew my nose. ‘No way.’

‘Maybe he feels the same way you do.’