Reese
One week later (two weeks till the retreat)
The hot and sunny spring day that was forecast by the weather channel seems like an empty promise as I step out of my car. I rub my arms, trying to ward off the chill before reaching into the backseat of my vehicle and pulling out my jacket. After sliding the extra layer on, I lock the door then look across the car park, to where Knox is chatting to CeCe. Just like the first time I realised CeCe planned to pursue Knox, concern and irritation flicker through me.
My reaction has nothing to do with jealousy because my days of being jealous of the girls Knox dates are long gone. I’m no longer a high schooler with a crush. But CeCe doesn’t know just how capable Knox is of breaking hearts. She falls hard and fast, and I’ve been her shoulder to cry on after a break-up too many times to count. Fun is not what she’s looking for, that’s just what she says to reel ’em in. Knox has made it clear he doesn’t have time for a relationship, nor does he have the interest in one, and I’ve warned CeCe, but she continues to be lured in by his ‘gorgeous face.’
Fortunately, I’m not having the same problem she is.
I swear I’m not.
Okay, so Knox fills out his clothes so well, it’s a crime, and his face has only grown more handsome over the past decade, annoyingly. But I won’t be lured in by his looks and charm again. Fool me once and all that.
I stride towards the building, determined not to let the thought of CeCe’s imminent broken heart ruin my day.
“Reese!” Knox calls across the car park, stopping me before I’ve stepped foot in the foyer.
CeCe frowns as Knox leaves her side and jogs over to me.
He hands me a cup of coffee I didn’t see until now. “I bought you one.”
Damn the man, I don’t want to feel like I owe him, but I inhaled my first coffee, and this smells much better than anything I can make in the lunchroom. So instead of turning it down, which would be rude, I reluctantly accept it and take a sip, noting it’s hot, sweet, and strong, just the way I like it.
“Thank you,” I mutter.
It’s been a week since Knox and I started working together, and when he’s not goading me and teasing me just the way he used to a decade ago, he’s proving to be quite considerate.
Do you remember what I said about not being lured in by his looks and charm again? It’s moments like this that make it just that bit more difficult. Moments like this where I must fight the urge to admire just how good he looks in the tailored trousers, black shirt, and jacket he’s wearing today. I must ignore the heat that curls through me when his gaze stays fixed on mine, and I’m the sole focus of his attention.
Thankfully, I’ve revived our old rivalry. Meaning, instead of thinking about how sweet Knox is for bringing me coffee right now, I’m going to fantasize about what I will ask Knox for when I win our bet.
A small smile pulls at my lips as I think about it.
Knox raises an eyebrow as we walk into the building. “Good night?”
“I’m just imagining all the ways I’m going to make you suffer when I win our bet,” I tell him.
His eyes dance with amusement. “Really?”
“Mm-hmm.”
“I look forward to it, Cameron.”
The low and husky promise to his voice sends shivers across my skin, caressing me in places it has no right to. And as we step inside the waiting elevator, our gazes meet, and I’m shocked to see his eyes blazing with heat. The sight sucks all the oxygen out of the small space, lust punching me in the gut.
Damn it, I know better than anyone what happens when I let my guard down with this man. The whole point of our rivalry is to keep some emotional and physical distance between us. I’m desperately trying not to think about how difficult that will be when we arrive at the retreat. My mind insistently rakes over the fact we’ll be sleeping in the same bed once there, causing my heart to go haywire and my body to overheat.
I still need to tell Max about the retreat, but I keep putting it off. Not only because I know Max will be far from happy about it, but because I’m petrified Max may sense my desirous thoughts when I talk about sharing a bed with my rival.
I clear my throat, the doors sliding shut behind us. “How was your night? Did you dig up anything interesting?”
“You better believe it.”
“What did you discover?”
The doors spring open, and Knox merely waggles his eyebrows as we walk toward our desks. I’m trying to contain my excitement, but if Knox is acting like this, he’s found something juicy.
We both sit down, Knox spinning his chair and me spinning mine so that we’re facing each other.
Knox leans back, arms crossed, a smug smile on his face, waiting me out.
“Tell me,” I half-beg, knowing I’m doing exactly what he wants me to do but unable to stop myself.
“If you insist,” he says, looking far too pleased. “Lars Von Gruber has a brother named Peter Von Gruber.”
I sigh, disappointed. “I already knew that.”
“But did you know that seven years ago, Peter was arrested for his odd role in a bank robbery.”
“I read about that. He was arrested for hypnotizing a couple to commit a robbery in a jewellery store.”
Knox leans towards me. “Did you know that at the time it happened, Lars was supposedly in the same city? Peter accused his brother of setting him up.”
“Seriously?”
I don’t want to be impressed, but I am.
Again.
He has a habit of doing this. I want to be annoyed he hasn’t spent as much time as I have digging into this story, but I can’t be. The man knows how to find dirt, which is an asset.
“Admit it, Cameron,” he says, lips twitching. “I did good.”
What I hate more than his impressive research skills is the way he sometimes says my name so softly and suggestively, that my belly flips.
“Tell me how you found out first and I’ll tell you whether I’m impressed.”
“I’ll do you one better; turn on your computer and I’ll show you.”
I spin back to face my laptop and Knox stands behind me. The scent of his mouth-watering aftershave fills my nostrils as he leans over my shoulder. Needing a distraction, I reach for the mouse, but when his hand brushes mine, indicating he wants control, I let go immediately. The hot fiery shock of his touch is too much to ignore.
For more than a year in high school, Knox was the subject of all my night-time fantasies. That was ten years ago, yet sometimes my body still reacts as if he’s my fantasy.
Sometimes, his touch and his scent make me remember every vivid dream, waking and asleep I had about this man.
“This is the website you want to use,” he says softly, his minty breath stirring the hair near my ear. I want to shiver in response, but quell the urge, focusing instead on what he’s showing me.
“I know this website,” I say, watching where he moves the cursor and what he’s clicking on. “I’ve used it before.”
The website holds general information about arrests and is open to the public.
“I’m sure you have, but if you click this tiny box down here, it gives you access to a range of information that the public doesn’t get. You just need Bob’s Sun ID.”
“Did he give it to you?”
“No, I used Whittleman’s for this.”
“How did I not know about this?” I ask, turning to face him.
I expect him to rub it in my face that he knows more than I do, but instead he shrugs. “I don’t know, but now that you do, you’ll be able to use it as a source for other articles.”
There Knox goes again, being easy to get along with and helpful.
“Thank you.”
“You’re welcome,” he says softly in my ear.
This time I can’t control my reaction, and I shiver slightly as he steps back from me, goosebumps breaking out over my skin as lust tugs low in my belly. God, I hope he doesn’t see my response.
“Are you going to make me admit I’m impressed?” I ask huskily, trying to bring our rivalry back to the fore.
“No, I can already see that you are.”
Before I can chastise him for being smug, he says, “Let’s go talk to Kates about this road trip.”
“Road trip?”
“To meet with the couple from the jewellery store heist. I want to talk to them, don’t you?”
“Yes,” I nod quickly. “I do.”
Later that afternoon, I cling to the armrest with one hand as Knox speeds along the highway to the town of Gate’s Crossing. When one obeys the speed limit, the drive takes a little over two hours. We’re already more than halfway there, and we’ve only been on the road for forty minutes.
“There are a few ninety-degree bends in the road ahead,” I warn.
“I remember.”
“Perhaps you could slow down a little then.”
Knox looks at me, sees my expression and eases off the accelerator slightly.
“Thank you.”
“Don’t mention it.”
The song list on Knox’s phone has finished playing over the stereo. He switches the radio on, and Butterfly by Crazy Town starts playing. Immediately, I reach out and flick the radio off.
Knox frowns and looks at me out of the corner of his eyes.
“Sorry, bad memory,” I explain.
He nods, then says, “We should work out our back story.”
“What part of it?”
“You know – where did we meet? How long did we date before we got married? What was our wedding like? Who said I love you first?”
Obviously, I knew this was coming, but I’ve been trying not to think about it. Talking about our sex lives has been difficult enough without talking about falling in love. Discussing our ‘happy ever after’ which actually isn’t so happy, considering we’re heading to therapy, doesn’t appeal. It’s all I can do not to moan, ‘do we have to?’
“Do you have any ideas?” I ask instead.
“A few. I think we should say we met in high school. Keep our story as close to the truth as we can.”
I close my eyes briefly and remind myself this is necessary and that he’s not trying to maliciously remind me of how he was with me in high school – of the cruel way we were friends one day and then the next we weren’t. “Okay, what was our relationship in high school?”
“You were dating some rich boy and we were rivals.”
My stomach knots. “If we’re keeping things as close to the truth as possible, I wasn’t dating anyone. You were dating everyone.”
Knox sneaks a look at me before looking back at the road. “Fine, how about we were friends for a while but we had a falling out and stopped talking? I left town after graduation. When I returned a few years later, we bumped into each other and things had changed. We became friends.”
“A falling out?” I repeat tightly. “Okay. How did we get out of the friend zone when you came back to town?”
“I gathered up my courage and asked you out. You jumped at the chance to go out with me.”
His words scrape open all the past wounds he inflicted, reminding me of how I jumped at the chance of going to Prom with him when he asked. I should have been warier and less quick to forgive. But after he’d been my fantasy for so long, I just couldn’t wait to go on a date with him.
Fiction or not, I’m not about to jump at the chance to go out with him all over again.
“How about you begged me for a date?” I suggest.
“I would never beg.”
“And I would never date you.”
Knox turns and glares at me, something flickering in his dark eyes that makes me squirm with something suspiciously close to guilt. After all, he did bring me coffee this morning. And even though we’ve both enjoyed the rivalry between us this past week, Knox has worked hard – we both have – to keep things amicable between us. Furthermore, Knox has gone above and beyond at times to show me things. Even if I wouldn’t date the man or become friends with someone who misjudged me and dropped me at the drop of a hat, he doesn’t deserve such a pointed comment.
Wrenching my attention away from Knox and looking at the road ahead, I gather up my courage. “How about, instead of me jumping at the chance to date you or you begging me for a date, we went out one night, you kissed me, and…things went from there?” I ask a little hesitantly.
Knox turns to me, his eyes darken in that way that makes me feel like I’ve just been kicked in the stomach. “And did we sleep together that night?”
I swallow hard. “Do we really need to answer that?”
“I should know whether you sleep with men on the first date, Cameron. The better I know you, the easier it will be to pull off this marriage sham.”
This conversation is way too personal and I’m far from comfortable, but he’s right – the better we know each other, the easier it will be to pretend we’re married.
And I would tell him that my sex habits were not really something he needed to learn about, except that if the questions on the surveys and questionnaires are any indication, we might spend a lot of our time in ‘therapy’ talking about sex.
“It depends on my feelings for the man involved,” I hedge. “In regards to the fictional night we…’got together’, it’s difficult to answer that question because we weren’t on a date.”
“Fine, we weren’t on a date, we were out as friends and I kissed you. Did it take days, weeks, or months for our relationship to progress from friends to lovers?”
My cheeks feel flushed and I’m too warm. I want to open the window, except Knox has the air conditioning on.
“I don’t know,” I say. “It’s so far removed from reality.”
“Reese, we need to answer these questions. We have to know our history as well as any couple who are married.”
“Fine. You decide.”
He looks at me briefly. “It took weeks. You weren’t sure we would be a good fit, so I needed to show you we were. Eventually, I proved how good we could be together, and we started dating.”
Our story feels far from authentic. Likely, if his proposed scenario actually took place, things would have escalated out of hand after a kiss. I think back to prom night, the one and only night we went out together. Had Knox’s motivation for taking me out not been revenge – had our date been the real deal – there’s every chance I would have slept with him.
But I’m not about to correct his perception or admit to anything like that.
“Okay,” I say.
“You fell in love with me quickly and I proposed after a year.”
I ignore the ‘falling for him quickly’ part and ask, “So how long have we been married for?”
“Four years?” Knox suggests.
“Marriage problems after four years?”
Knox shrugs. “Our work keeps us busy and we’re growing apart.”
“That’s too weak and vague for the retreat we’re heading to.”
“What do you want to say instead then? I decided how we got together. Why don’t you decide what’s tearing us apart?”
Well, that’s fair, I suppose.
Reminding myself we’re supposed to be keeping this as close to the truth as possible, I think about what wouldn’t be completely out of the realms of possibility.
What do I know about Knox and me? Knox and I are rivals, he is more than capable of assuming the wrong thing about me, and he’s one-hundred percent dedicated to his job.
“When I was promoted at work,” I start. “You felt like you needed to compete with me and earn more money than I do. Since you’ve spent so much time at work lately, I’ve been hanging out with one of my co-workers. You believe we’re having an emotional affair even though I’ve told you I’d never cheat on you.”
I’m pretty pleased with the story I’ve come up with. It fits Knox and me to a tee. Knox, however, is less than impressed, judging by the way his fingers tighten on the steering wheel.
“Not bad, but let’s expand on it a little,” he throws me a look I can’t quite decipher. “Maybe it’s an emotional affair you’re having even though you don’t realise it. And maybe I’m insistent on earning more because your family has always looked down at me for not earning enough.”
I turn in my seat to study him. “I would never be unfaithful. And my family would never look down on you for not earning enough.”
The look he shoots me tells me he doesn’t believe me at all.
The sudden realisation that just because a decade has passed doesn’t mean Knox no longer believes I’m a snob and an uppity bitch is a sudden and crushing blow to my chest. More crushing is the fact I can still feel hurt by his perceptions of me – that his opinion still slips beneath my armour and pierces through me. What did I do or say to make him think so poorly of me all those years ago? How did he get me so wrong?
And can he ever truly know me when he’s still holding onto his past judgements?
It’s doubtful. At least his underlying judgements of my character will make us seem more legitimate in therapy.
“I guess that will work,” I say quietly, turning to look out the window. “That’s your perception. Doesn’t mean it’s true, but it does generate conflict between us.”
“Reese,” Knox calls softly.
Perhaps he can sense just how unhappy I am with what he said, but it hardly matters.
“It’s just fiction,” he tells me.
“It’s a solid story. Let’s leave it at that.”
Fiction or not, he still views me the way his past self did. I don’t know why he feels that way, but I can’t change his perception. And this conversation has just been a timely reminder that no matter how pleasant Knox has been to work with, or how easy it is to fall into the pattern of being friendly rivals, nothing from the past has really changed. Nothing. And if I choose to forget that, I can bank on being hurt all over again.