Catching Avery

Chapter 9

Envy: Because I know that I can do more for her than that stupid putz.

Avery~

I kept looking at the clock all morning, willing it to speed up. By the time that I'd fled Nicolas' office yesterday, everyone had already left for the day, and thank God for that small favor. I'd been sure that anyone who looked at me would have been able to see the glaring red letter A on my forehead. I mean, what else would they think after seeing me in a man's button-up that was a million sizes too big for me? Plus, Quinn, bless her little backstabbing, traitorous, unsympathetic heart, had left a note on my keyboard with a smiley face. Of course, since I couldn't bask in my humiliation alone, I had also received a text from Izzy last night of a thumbs-up emoji.

Then, first thing this morning, Quinn had ambushed me for all the 'juicy details', but I'd only given her the G-rated version of what had gone down, much to her disappointment. Plus, after she couldn't stop laughing when I'd gotten to the part where Chase had interrupted us, I had decided that she didn't deserve all the dirty details. I really needed to look up Friend 101 refresher courses because she obviously needed them.

I had also seriously contemplated sending Chase a bottle of whiskey with a huge 'Thank You' helium balloon attached to it, but I didn't think that Nicholas would find that amusing. I'd been a mess when I'd left Nicholas yesterday, and even once I'd gotten home and had polished off a half bottle of wine, I'd still been a mess. I couldn't believe that I almost let Nicholas Savage screw me in his office. Hell, there was no 'almost' about it. It would have happened if not for Chase interrupting us.

I'd ended up lying in bed last night, doing my best to get some sleep, but whether my eyes had been opened or closed, all I'd seen was Nicholas' face, and I could still feel his kisses on my lips, his mouth on my body. I had even considered sleeping in his shirt, but the only reason that I'd hadn't was because it smelled laundered and not like him. I could recall every touch of his lips, hands, and body, and Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, what a body it was. When I had run my hands from his stomach up to his chest, I'd felt exactly how dedicated that man was to his health; he was all hard muscular planes and ridges.

So, most of the night, I'd been trying to un-confuse myself because, let me tell you, I was certifiably confused. I knew that it was wrong to get involved with Nicholas. That was a no brainer; he was my boss. That part wasn't the part that I was confused about. The confusion came with this dangerous game that I was playing where I was uncontrollably attracted to him, but I wanted him to force the issue to absolve me of knowingly making a bad decision. Plus, it played into my fantasy for him to coerce me and give me no choice.

So, here I was, experiencing the excruciating pain of waiting for three-thirty to come around, so that I could give myself a couple of days away from work, him-everything-and hopefully clear my head. Thankfully, it was already lunchtime, and that meant that half the day was already over. All I had to do was get through the one o'clock meeting about Spillner without jumping Nicolas' bones, then I'd be okay.

Though it was lunchtime, Quinn and I rarely ate out. We both knew how to pack our own lunches, and why waste money if you didn't need to? However, I needed a breather from this building and the occupants in it-okay, one particular occupant-so I decided to hit Aunt Stella's Café again this week because it was easy and fast.

As I was walking through the front lobby of SMA, I was digging through my purse to make sure that I had some cash on me for some food. While my ATM card would work, I hated balancing my checking account, so I always tried to have cash on me for the little things. It was because of this insistence to have cash that I hadn't been paying attention to where I was going, and I walked head-first into a very male stranger.