I shrug. It’s not her business. It isn’t like no one has cleaned my desk since then.
Her eyes widen as she starts to look a bit grossed out. “Where?”
“Why is that your business?” I can’t help the chuckle that escapes my lips.
“Hunter! Where?” she says, and I only laugh louder until she looks down at my desk and jumps back about two feet. “Gross!”
“I never said it was on my desk,” I tell her, still trying not to laugh.
“You never said that it wasn’t,” she replies. “Hunter, This is serious, You have rules, remember? And one of them, one of the most important ones, is not to screw your employees.”
“I know, I know,” I say, holding a hand out toward her, trying to calm her nerves. “I messed up.”
“I mean, rules are rules,” she says in true lawyer fashion. “You can’t just go around breaking them whenever you fucking feel like it! What if you broke the number one rule?”
I raise an eyebrow. “What’s the number one rule again? I wasn’t aware that they had rankings.”
Her face is turning red she’s so fed up with me. “The number one rule is don’t die, idiot!” she shouts at me. That makes perfect sense to me. If I end up dead, I can hardly enforce any of the other rules. “Hunter, you’ve got to do something about this situation with Meg. This could be a serious problem.”
“Relax, Leah,” I tell her, and her eyes scrunch up even more. I think the number one rule should actually be to never tell a female to “relax” or “calm down.” In my experience, one can get super close to actually breaking the real number one rule of don’t die if you give a female either of those pieces of advice enough.
“Don’t tell me to relax!” she barks. “I’m the one who was there when everything happened with your ex, remember? I’m the one who had to help you put the pieces of your life and your business back together, and while I don’t think that Meg would ever do anything like that to you, I still think that you have these rules for a reason, and you need to follow them!”
“You’re right,” I tell her, and that seems to make her a little less scrunched up and red. Women do like to hear that phrase, in my experience. “You’re absolutely right. I shouldn’t have done it, but now that it’s done, I need to fix it. And I am fixing it.”
She purses her lips together, her head tipped to the side as she flips her hair over her shoulder. “And…how in the world are you doing that, exactly? Because I had a conversation with Meghan, and she doesn’t seem to think it’s fixed.”
It’s upsetting that Meg doesn’t feel like I’m doing anything to fix it. I tried to talk to her. I tried to make sure we were okay, but she didn’t really want to hear me out. So…I have to tell Leah what else I’ve been doing to try and smooth it over.
“Listen, Meg’s a cool girl. I haven’t been harassing her or following her around or anything, you know? I’ve just let this go and am pretending like it hasn’t happened at all. I want her to feel like she can do the same—just forget about it.”
Except I will never, ever be able to forget about it. I’m quite confident in that assessment since I can’t get that gorgeous redhead out of my mind, and every time I see her, I want to press my lips against hers again. I want to bring her back here for round two and fuck her so hard she can’t see straight, leave her breathless and moaning my name again…
“Hunter!” Leah shouts, and I realize she has been talking to me, but I wasn’t paying attention because she’s giving me the look she always gives me when she’s talking and I’m not listening. “This is not something you can just pretend away. It’s no wonder you’ve been acting like such a colossal asshole lately!”
“Leah,” I begin, gesturing for her to take a seat in the chair across from me. “You know I wouldn’t let anyone else get away with talking to me that way, right?” It doesn’t even make me mad that she just called me a giant asshole. She’s right. I am one. I have definitely been one lately. And it’s not just because of the situation with Meg. There’s the issue with Jonathan and the money, as well as Velasco demanding more territory. No, there’s nothing easy in my life right now.
“I’m sorry, bossman,” she says. “It’s just…I like Meghan. She’s a hard worker. She’s scrappy. She’s got a great attitude. I think the two of you would actually be really good together under different circumstances. But I was there. I know how it went last time. I don’t ever want to see you in that sort of situation again. I care too much about you to watch you fall victim to a royal bitch one more time, especially one who is sneaky enough to seem to be a cool person.”
I listen to her, taking her words in, thinking about everything she has to say. I know it was hard for her to see me go through all of that, almost as hard as it was for me to go through it. She’s not just my lawyer; in a lot of ways, she’s also my best friend. I value her input, and I trust her advice.
But in the case of Meghan, I know I’m making the right decision. I need to just let these feelings for her I’m having pass, get through this, and move on. “Trust me, Leah,” I tell her, giving her a smile I hope she knows is genuine. “I’ve got this figured out.”
She takes a deep breath, holds it for a second, and then slowly lets it out. “Just be careful, okay? I’d hate to see either one of you get hurt, and I think Meghan is in a lot of pain right now. You said some things that really hurt her.”
“She told you that?” I ask, seeking clarification.
Leah nods. “Yes, she did. You’re going to have to do something so Meghan understands that when you called her a mistake, you didn’t mean it the way she took it.”
“Shit,” I mumble. If Meg’s talking to Leah about the specifics of the situation, then she is hurting even more than I thought, and that makes my heart ache. I didn’t mean to hurt her at all, and now I’ve gone and created a situation where she feels bad about herself because of me.
I still think it’s best if I give it a little time. In my experience, trying to fix things too soon usually makes it worse, and I already tried to fix it a few days ago and failed.
“I’ll see what I can do,” I tell Leah, but I’m not convinced that I should do anything at all.
Leaning forward in her chair, Leah says, “You know, everyone sees how tough you are, how you don’t take shit and know how to handle yourself in every aspect of your business—whether it’s the club, the underground, or the other legitimate businesses you run. But, Hunter, you’ve got to remember that it’s okay to be vulnerable sometimes, to be a regular human. We all care about you and want what’s best for you.”
She reaches across the desk and squeezes my hand.