Taking What's His(48)

“It’s about damn—” Steven glanced up, his eyes narrow. “Oh, it’s you.”

Holt raised a brow. “Who did you think I was?”

“My sister.” He tossed a pen down. “She’s late.”

Fuck. Did she think he told Steven already? If so, he’d best get his ass in gear and open his mouth. “Oh. Right. I didn’t know she was coming here.” He cleared his throat and tugged on his collar. “There’s something I have to tell you. I—”

Steven slammed his pen down on the desk. “This is just so unbelievable, and so fucking typical of her. Always flitting from relationship to relationship, falling in love as fast as she can say hello to a guy. Well, this is the last straw. She’s in deep shit with me.”

Wait. She fell in love all the time?

If that was true, and she “flitted from relationship to relationship,” as Steven said, how could she truly fall in love with him, instead of just being infatuated? And if she did eventually fall for him, then how long would it be before she realized she didn’t really want to be with a guy like him?

“She falls in love all the time?” he asked Steven, gripping his chair tightly.

“She’s twenty-four and has found ‘the one’ six times already. What do you think?” Steven snapped, leaning back in his chair. “But this time she took it too far. I won’t stand for it.”

He curled his hands into fists, trying to ignore the sinking sensation of doom in the pit of his gut. “Uh, why? What happened?”

“I got her an impossible to find position at a highly regarded hospital.”

Holt blinked. “But that’s great. Why are you so pissed—?”

“I wasn’t finished yet, dumbass,” Steven snapped. “This position I got her is a rare opportunity. It’s one she isn’t fully qualified for, and won’t be for a long time. On top of that, it’s something that generally only opens up to people who are working at the hospital already, so it’s a huge fucking deal. A once in a lifetime opportunity, thanks to my buddy Ian down in Delaware.”

“But again that’s—” Wait. Ian. That name again. That’s what she’d been about to tell him the other night. This Ian guy had a job for her, and it was hours away from him. Holt stepped back, his heart dropping to that empty pit in his stomach. “Delaware?”

“Yes. Delaware.” Steven pinched the bridge of his nose. “But what does she do with this awesome opportunity that I traded a million favors to get for her? She wants to turn it down because of a guy she’s just started seeing. A fucking guy. I’m going to rip her a new one, and then I’m going to find this guy and kill him for good measure. He’s fucking up her life, and I won’t allow it. Not when they’ll be broken up in a month anyway, like always. Fuck that shit.”

Like always. Holt’s heart twisted with dread. He’d thought they had something special, but she was the type to love them and leave them. But how…?

It didn’t matter how. He knew it was the truth. Her brother wouldn’t fucking lie. And he was the guy fucking up her life. Here he’d been thinking about trying to make them into something real, and she was giving up this huge thing for him—a temporary relationship in a long line of her passing love affairs.

He couldn’t ask that of her, not when he didn’t even know if this thing they had going on between them was even going to last, when stacked against all the odds.

Truth be told, they’d pretty much been doomed from the start.

He had no way of knowing anything at all besides the fact that he liked her, and she was ready to walk away from a job opportunity like this without a backwards glance?

Hell no.

Not if he had anything to do with it. It had been fun for a little while to dream of happily ever after and maybe finding love…but he couldn’t continue to do so.

Not at the cost of her career.

He curled his hands into fists. “Did she already turn down the job?”

“No, I don’t think so.” He sank back into the chair. “She has until five o’clock tonight to answer him. She told me this morning that she was turning it down, and I begged her to wait until I had a chance to say my piece.”

There was still time, then. He could fix this, even though his gut balled up into a fist at the thought…because he knew exactly what he had to do. And he didn’t want to. “Don’t worry. She’ll listen to you.”

“Yeah, I wouldn’t hold my breath,” Steven muttered. “She never has before.”

Holt looked over his shoulder. No sign of Lydia yet, so he had time to stop her from making a huge mistake. Had time to make it right. She hadn’t told him about this offer, more than likely because she knew he’d tell her to take the job. And she hadn’t wanted to hear it.