The Wright Mistake(15)

So, I plopped my ass down next to her. She gave me a nasty look.

“What the hell are you doing?” she demanded.

“Sitting down. Is that a fucking crime now?”

“It is when you do it. I thought I’d made myself clear when I left you up there,” she said, pointing upward. “I don’t want to deal with this.”

“You made yourself clear when you said you were interested in Patrick,” I spat.

She rolled her eyes. “I can do whatever I want.”

“Yeah, and I can fuck half of the lake if I want to.”

“Then, do it,” she challenged me. “See if I fucking care!”

But the expression on her face mirrored the one I had given her earlier. Her eyes were as flat as the lake water and her mouth pinched. Yet I couldn’t stop admiring the way her hair blew in the breeze and the flash of the ring in her nose and the ease of her body as it tilted toward me. God, I wanted her. Even with this anger that sizzled through me, I wanted to fucking lay her back on this dock right here and now and fuck her brains out.

“Stop looking at me like that,” she whispered. Her fire had dissipated in a second.

“Like what?” I asked hoarsely.

“Like you’re going to kiss me again.”

“Going to do more than that, Jules.”

She swallowed hard but didn’t avert her gaze. “What’s going on with you? You’re hot and cold and then hot again. I can’t get a read on you. I thought you wanted a fight, and now, you’re wanting to fuck.”

“Two things we’re best at,” I said with a gruff laugh.

“Well…I don’t want to do either,” she lied, finally glancing away from me. “If there’s something going on, you can tell me. Otherwise…I’m going to go back in. It’s getting cold.”

Did I want to tell her about the shit going down? She’d eventually find out, but right now, I wanted to drown myself in alcohol and forget everything Jensen had ever said. Probably wouldn’t help my case, but at this point, who even cared?

It was my turn to lie.

“There’s nothing.”

She narrowed her eyes, as if expecting me to say more, but when I didn’t, she got up off the dock and strode away from me.

I probably deserved the solitude anyway.

I lay flat on my back and stared up at the stars as I wondered how the fuck my life had gotten to this point.





Seven



Julia


Going back to reality on Tuesday morning had been a slap in the face. Despite the bullshit with my breakup and then Austin, the rest of Memorial Day weekend had been pretty much amazing. Heidi and Emery had gone out of their way to make sure that I enjoyed myself. Between suntanning, taking out the Jet Skis, and getting pulled behind the boat on tubes, it had been awesome.

It’d probably helped that Austin left Saturday morning with no explanation. Jensen had been pissed that Austin disappeared with his truck, but all the Wrights had been tight-lipped about his reasoning. Even Heidi had just shrugged it off.

I’d given him the chance to explain himself on Friday night. It wasn’t my fault if all he’d wanted was a distraction I wasn’t willing to give.

Whatever had happened, it didn’t matter to me. I’d had a better time without him there. Or at least…I thought so.

I didn’t have much time to think of it the rest of the week. With an extra day off for the holiday, I was swamped at work. To be honest, I was always swamped at work. Being the head of HR for a company as large as Wright Construction meant that things never slowed down. Not ever.

“Did you get the memo that was just sent over?” Heidi asked, popping her head into my office.

“Uh…” I pulled up my inbox and clicked the refresh button. “I don’t have anything.”

Heidi huffed and plopped down into the seat in front of my desk. “It should be there.”

Heidi was a lead civil engineer for the company. The first woman ever in that position here at Wright. How she still had time to come harass me when she had so much work to do was beyond me. Not that I minded. We worked on the same floor, which was how we had become such good friends.

I refreshed again, and there it was. I clicked the latest email that had hit my inbox. My eyes scanned the document.

“Meeting upstairs for the whole company at three o’clock? Attendance mandatory for all staff?” I asked, my brows knitting together. This was the kind of memo that I was supposed to send. I didn’t know what the fuck was so important that I wasn’t even informed about it in the first place. “What’s this about?”

“It’s super exciting. I can’t believe I was able to hold in this secret all week.”