“Ha-ha.” She took my confession as a joke, but I wasn’t kidding. “Is that why you moved me to Stonewood Enterprises?” She pursed her lips and rearranged her clothing before scooting off my lap to sit on the table.
“I moved your ass because you were poking around in top secret, confidential records.”
“Well, that worked out well. Still breaking into systems, just different ones.” She combed a hand through her silky hair.
“That and kissing your boss now, huh?” I looked at her lips and knew I wanted another taste of them as she licked them.
“Don’t be an ass.” She moved to get up, but I didn’t let her. I took her face in my hands and brought her mouth down onto mine. I tasted her, ravaged her, devoured her exactly the way I wanted to. She somehow always tasted sweet, but with a hint of candy canes. Her lush lips moved skillfully with mine as the kiss grew more and more heated, and then she moaned before ripping herself away.
I let her go, my mind swirling with confusion. She wasn’t something I could decode, but the way I would rather focus on her than my work was unheard of for me.
She hopped off the table and hurriedly grabbed her glass of water, then paced out of the room and re-entered two minutes later in a big T-shirt that hadAs ifwritten across it with the blondeCluelessgirl.
She didn’t stop moving back and forth in front of me, never taking a sip of the water still in her hand as she raced through her own thoughts. “Don’t come near me again on this retreat. We work and then we go our separate ways. This cannot happen.”
I stretched before getting up and chuckled, taking a step toward her.
Holding the water between us, she took a quick step back. “I’m not kidding, Cade. This is a bad idea. You know it is. What if we get caught? Then what? We tell the president, ‘It’s fine, we got your election all set. No one is going to hack the voting systems, even though we were fucking behind closed doors instead of working on it.’” She winced like it killed her to say it. “That sounds so unprofessional.”
“You’re that nervous about being unprofessional?”
“Coming from the guy standing in front of me in a suit while I’m in pajamas. It’s a perfect display of who will get blamed if we don’t keep this together.”
I shrugged. “I’d take the blame.”
“Even if you did, my reputation would be ruined, Cade. And it’s already so tarnished, I can’t withstand another stain.”
She was so hard on herself. “You realize you’ve gotten over your drug addiction, right? You fought and you won, and people respect you for that.” Maybe I’d never told her so, but she had to know from everyone else she surrounded herself with that people thought she was badass.
She’d walked into our office, and her peers had leaned in to be a part of her conversation; she spoke, and they listened.
“No. Nobody respects that. They’re scared I’ll veer in the wrong direction again.” She sighed and turned to the sink. “And if I misstep at all, it will point to me going right down that path again.”
“You can take a misstep without going down that path, dollface. You can have a bad day.”
“No.Youcan.” She rinsed out her dish, then pointed at me. “You can, and everyone else around here can. Me, Lucas, people who’ve struggled with addiction and our reputations, wecan’t. We have to set an example and show everyone we have it together. Always. Do you know how tiring that is?” Her shoulders slumped and it was a reminder to me how small she was, how big her personality could be to hide her vulnerability. She sounded exhausted, like she needed a break but knew she’d never get one.
“I can imagine.” I answered honestly.
“How can you? You’ve been—”
“My father was in the mob, I’m a product of the mob. And I have access to causing world destruction because I’m good at my job. People will always think I’m one step away from snapping.” I rubbed a hand over my face.
“Does it bother you?” she asked quietly.
“Not much. I know my place. We all have our crosses to bear, right?”
She took a deep breath. “Yep, and mine is okay. It’s fair. My family cares about me and loves me. So does this team. I just need to continually prove myself. I can’t slide one toe off that straight and narrow line, Cade, or they’ll all think I’ve lost it.”
“And I’m ‘off that line’ for you?”
“You’re the damn circle on the other side of the room, Cade!” She slammed her hand down on the island countertop, and her confession—the way her eyes blazed, the way she thought avoiding me would keep her sane—had me doing what I did best.
“You’ve been over on that side, jumping in and out of my circle, for a long time, Izzy. Problem is, you don’t see that you can indulge without going back to using. You can be you without that. Who you are isn’t a bad thing.”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about. I am me, and I don’t want to indulge in you.” She shook her head at me, tears suddenly in her eyes.
“You can hide it and avoid it, but there’s no real use fighting it.”