Page 13 of Falling for a Grumpy Hero

FORD

T he door slammed and I blinked. Then I blinked again. Honestly, I wasn’t sure if I had imagined the ray of sunshine exploding into a violent burst of light or if Lila really had just torn me a new one.

I was mildly impressed that she had it in her. I hadn’t expected it, but I knew I’d deserved it. Sucking in a couple of deep breaths, I released each one slowly and searched my insides for a shred of composure.

The last twenty-something hours since I’d received that letter had been rough, the darkness completely overwhelming me again, but it wasn’t right that I’d taken it out on her.

Once my pulse had returned to normal, I reached for my jacket and buttoned it up, then ran a hand through my hair, feeling the tiniest touch more like me.

Ready to… well, not apologize or explain, but to say something to her, I left my office and walked the two steps to hers, but as I got to her door, I caught a glimpse of her through the glass wall between the CE office space and the elevator.

The stainless steel doors slid open in front of her and she strode in, folding her arms tightly across her chest after jabbing a button.

A moment later, the doors slid shut and she was gone.

I felt my stomach form a weird, writhing pit of something, maybe regret, or maybe disappointment. Maybe a mixture of both.

Either way, as I spun to head back into my own office, I caught sight of Jared and a few of the other employees sipping coffee in the break room down the hall. They were all eyeing me, but at least the rest of them had the decency to look away when I caught them in the act.

Jared didn’t have that decency. He arched a questioning eyebrow at me and I shook my head.

I didn’t owe him or anyone else any explanations.

Slipping back into my office, I was fuming.

Not only was Lila gone, but despite our whispers, the entire office clearly knew we’d gotten into a fight—and then Jared had looked at me as if I had to answer to him.

Once I’d shut the door behind me, I slid the lock into place just in case. I needed a few minutes alone, which I realized was saying something since I’d practically only just arrived. Regardless, alone was my preferred state of being.

I sat down behind my desk, exhaling a deep breath, but instead of getting to work, I turned my chair to face the bank of windows behind me.

Looking out at the city that had been my home since I’d gotten my degree, I drank in the crystalline waters of the bay in the distance and fought against the onslaught of memories that threatened to break into my mind.

Memories of a sandy desert rather than clear blue water. Memories of the acrid scent of something burning and the disorientation of spinning out of control. My breath tried stalling in my lungs, but I blew it out deliberately, inhaling slowly and repeating the process.

I swallowed hard as those memories fell back. Not far, but far enough that I could focus on the here and now—and in the here and now, I’d probably fucked up.

There were at least a dozen different ways I could’ve handled that situation with Lila better.

Maybe I could’ve thanked her, for one. The office was somehow brighter, and when I really looked for what had caused the change, I realized she’d cleaned the blinds and the windows too, letting in the sunlight I’d been hiding from before.

We had cleaners that came through here at night, but I’d long since stipulated that they weren’t to spend any longer than five minutes in this office.

That gave them time to do the bare minimum—empty the trash, wipe the surfaces, maybe a quick push of a vacuum cleaner over the carpet. But that was it.

Part of why I’d done that was because of the sunlight.

I didn’t want it, but now that I had it, it wasn’t horrible.

The sun here was different than what it had been like there, and I wasn’t a vampire.

Obviously, I went outside every damn day.

I’d just preferred the light in my office to be slightly more muted.

Or something like that. Sometimes, even I couldn’t explain it right. It had just been what I’d needed—or thought I’d needed—at the time.

I got up and started pacing in front of my newly cleaned windows, finding I rather enjoyed the warmth of walking in the sun. Chewing my lip as I contemplated my next move, I wondered if perhaps I had come down on her a little too hard.

Although I had been upset about walking in to find that she’d completely destroyed the thought process I’d had going on, I couldn’t really blame her for thinking she’d be helping by tidying up. Okay, so when she gets back, I’ll tell her that. I’ll say that I don’t blame her.

I didn’t know if it would be enough, but it was the best I had right now—despite a nagging feeling in my gut that the old me would’ve done so much better. That guy is gone, though. Dead and buried.

Finally going back to my computer, I fired it up and tried to get some work done while I waited for her to come back. She was probably just cooling off at the coffee shop downstairs. In the short time she’d been here, I’d noticed that she had an affinity for their lattes.

Maybe that’s it, the other thing I could do for her. Buy her a latte.

I nodded to myself, making a mental note, but an hour later, she still wasn’t back. The time jumped out at me from my computer screen and a frustrated growl lodged in my throat. This is ridiculous. It wasn’t that bad.

Planting my feet on the floor, I shoved my chair back and stood, intent on going to find her.

Jared and the others must’ve gone to do some actual work because they weren’t just sitting around anymore.

I stalked to the stairwell instead of the elevator, figuring that this was probably a good time to work off some of the aggravation still rolling through me.

Taking the stairs two at a time, the four flights down were just enough to coax me off the edge before I was striding in the lobby. Since it was after lunch, the cafe and coffee shop were quieter than they had been when I’d come in earlier, and I immediately realized she wasn’t there.

My next stop was going outside, but her silly little bike with that obnoxious basket wasn’t padlocked to the bike rack anymore. Holy shit. She actually left.

It was yet another thing I hadn’t expected from her, having the balls to walk out in the middle of a workday. So far, today had taught me that the girl had a larger pair on her than I ever would’ve guessed. Nice as she might be, she clearly had a problem with… me?

No, jackass , a voice from my past whispered from the back of my mind. She has a problem with being treated like shit. Take a page out of her book, grow a pair, and apologize.

I groaned and scrubbed a hand over my face, doing a U-turn at the bike rack and heading back inside. Imaginary Luke was right. I was being a jackass and I had her number, being her employer and all. I just hadn’t used it until now.

When I got back to my office, I looked it up and called, but it only rang once before she rejected it, sending me straight to voicemail. So surprised this time that I didn’t really know what to do, I just growled at her answering machine.

“You can’t just run off in the middle of a Monday afternoon,” I snapped, but then I remembered why I’d actually called and backtracked.

Running my fingers through my hair, I issued a half-hearted, muttered apology.

“Also, I shouldn’t have spoken to you that way.

You did your job, and I should’ve appreciated that. So, yeah. That’s it. Yes. Goodbye.”

Feeling like a complete idiot, I hung up and buried my face in my hands. I turned back to my computer to try again to actually get some work done, but instead, I was feeling too out of sorts to focus so I got up. Again.

This time, I decided to hit up the break room. I rarely drank coffee from there given the likelihood of being sucked into a conversation with a coworker, but I was willing to accept that risk right now.

I opened my door, my gaze grazing across her desk and my head cocked. Is that… her school binder? Yep. That’s it.

I recognized it from helping her the other night, and I only remembered then that I’d asked her to bring it in today. I shouldn’t look through it, though. That would be crossing a boundary, right?

On the other hand, I really wanted to see it and she’d obviously brought it in for me to look at, so I abandoned my plan to grab a coffee and picked up the binder instead. I took it back to my office and closed myself in, sitting down behind my desk before I started flipping through her sketches.

Some of these, I’d caught glimpses of on Friday night, but there were so many more. Not only sketches but blueprints and plans she’d made for completely fictional rooms. What the hell? She should be pursuing architecture, not interior design.

She was too bright, too soft, and too expressive to be an engineer, but she would also have been good at that. Judging by the hand-drawn blueprints, she was excellent at math, but she was also too creative to be an engineer.

After a beat of just staring at a page in her binder, I decided that she would’ve made a fantastic, albeit eclectic, architect. Why isn’t she just doing that instead of taking night classes to get a certificate saying she can tell someone what couch to buy, or what trendy wallpaper to use?

Obviously, she was more than that. Her talents were bigger and her skills a lot more refined. Without even really thinking about it, I grabbed a pen—which I could find easily thanks to her organizational prowess—and started making notes about her sketches on the sticky notes she’d left on my desk.

Until now, I’d never used a sticky note before. I’d always just scribbled stuff on the corners of papers and forgotten about it.

By the time the sun was sinking low outside, I packed the binder with my stuff. But I wasn’t heading directly home. I had a stop to make first, and I was really hoping it wouldn’t blow up in my face again.