It wasn’t even her money.
It was bribe money from Nadine Titus, to get him to, what? Reconcile? And he’d taken one look at it and rejected the money, rejected her, rejected everything.
A shudder wracked through her body.
She’d always been optimistic.
Happy.
But on nights like this it was hard to be optimistic when the hollow ache might as well be a giant chasm in her chest.
Two more tears.
One.
“Done.” Nikki breathed out a shaky exhale. “No more tears.”
“Brave,” she repeated, fighting for sleep the rest of the night.
* * *
As far as Mondays went, Nikki’s was quickly going to hell. Another one of the masseuses had up and quit, leaving her with two extra clients. Her feet ached, and she was starving.
“Should have packed a protein bar.” Her stomach grumbled as she quickly washed the almond oil from her hands and dried them off. Five minutes. She had five minutes until her next client.
Please, God, let it be a nice elderly gentleman. Her day had started with an NFL rookie, only to be followed by a guy who used to fight for the UFC. Then again, what did she expect? That was the type of clientele Azul catered to.
“Nikki?” A rap of knuckles sounded across her door, followed by a swift breeze as it opened.
She quickly turned to the sound. “Cole?”
No matter how hard she tried to get her tired eyes to focus on the blur of colors in front of her, it never happened, and she ended up getting headaches. Sometimes it was just easier to keep her eyes closed or put on sunglasses and pretend that she was a movie star—given her size they’d probably just assume she was on Disney Kids or something else equally as embarrassing for a twenty-four-year-old woman.
“Don’t hate me.” He moved toward her, his gait slow.
“I’m not going to like this conversation, am I?”
“If I mention key words like chocolate and wine you might.”
She smirked. “That doesn’t work on me anymore. You can’t just randomly interject words in a sentence that don’t make sense just to calm me down.”
“Wine.” His raspy voice dipped. “Hot…” He paused. “Cake.”
“Cole.” She tapped her foot. “Seriously, just four minutes; I have to make it all the way down the hall.”
“I’ll give you a piggyback ride.”
Her lips twitched as she imagined him carrying her down the hall in front of the staff. They’d seen worse from Cole but still she’d always tried to keep it as professional as possible at work, much to Cole’s dismay. “You’re my boss.”
“Also your best friend and knight in shining armor. Why don’t you just marry me and get it over with?”
“Probably because this is the first time you’ve proposed today, and you still haven’t brought me food.”
He was always fake-proposing and a completely harmless flirt when let loose on the female population.
“So you’re saying if I bring you pasta?”
“I may think about it.”
“And then reject me?”
“Pretty much.”
His laugh was deep, infectious, and she knew firsthand from the rest of the staff that the guy was drop-dead gorgeous, like John Stamos’s long-lost twin. Sometimes it was more fun imagining what he looked like then actually seeing him—at least that was what she told herself when the pity parties started, but she did a good job of looking at the bright side.
Like the fact that she was alive.
Bright side.
Plus, she had a great job, a best friend who was also her boss, and look! A marriage proposal. Things were looking up.
“Three minutes,” she reminded him.
“Sometimes,” he whispered, a hard edge to his voice, “I wonder what goes through that head of yours when you get that lost expression…and other times, I don’t want to know, because I wonder if you’re thinking of him, and that just makes me want to commit a crime.”
Unwelcome tears blurred her vision further as she jerked her head away. One bottle of wine was all it had taken for Cole to pry out every piece of Brant information. “That was four years ago. I know that’s not what you came in here to talk about.”
Sometimes she hated how much he knew about her past—and how desperately he always seemed to want to fix it.
“Oh?”
“Cole.” Her voice caught. “Out with it.”
“Sara had a few clients I didn’t see on the schedule this morning. I think they were late additions, and with Nadine Titus arriving later this afternoon, we can’t risk moving them around and having them complain.” He paused. “So I’m going to need you to stay a little late.”