6. Dana

Chapter 6

Dana

I stood outside Cole's office with a clipboard, paper and a pen in my hand, bouncing from foot to foot. All I had to do was knock. That was it. I just needed to get inside, ask my questions, and go.

The amount of incessant inquiries I was getting with every tour about Cole's background was becoming tedious. I didn't know the answers outside of the standard ones I'd been told to give when I first got the job—he had a passion for beer. I laughed thinking about it now. Passion was one way to describe it.

I wished they'd told me who I was talking about before finding out the hard way.

But by going straight to the source, I could answer the questions the visitors presented with confidence. I hated having to avoid queries and conversations because I didn't know the proper thing to say, so my manager, Allison, had suggested having a conversation with him. If only she knew how fucking difficult that would be for me.

Taking a deep breath to steady myself, I knocked three times on his opaque glass door, almost hoping he wasn't in there.

"Come in."

Godammit.

I pushed the door open, trying to breathe through the warmth that filled my face. "Do you have, like, ten minutes?"

His green eyes went wide as he shut his laptop. "Yeah. I do."

I wanted to go inside. Truly. But my feet betrayed me and stayed where they'd grown into the ground.

"Do you want me to follow you somewhere?"

"No, I… I'm coming in."

"Okay."

He blinked at me. I still didn't move.

"Dana—"

Finally, my body responded and I made the move into his office, softly shutting the door behind me with a click. What a great way to kick this off.

Silence hung in the air between us, awkward and heavy, and all I could do was fucking stare. As if I hadn't taken him in enough when he'd shown up unannounced the other night.

A sleek, shaven, chiseled jawline and a muscular neck were always my downfall, but with him, it was almost otherworldly. Maybe it was because I knew how well he knew how to handle a woman in the bedroom, or maybe it was just how attractive he was overall. His button-up clung to his chest, tight against the ripples of his pecs, his biceps, and his forearms. He wasn't quite as bulky as he'd been last year, but it was still enough to make my knees weak. His dark blonde hair, pushed back and to the side, was neatly groomed in a way I hadn't noticed last time. All that was missing was that little dimple that punctuated his cheek whenever he grinned too wide.

I shouldn't have felt the roar of butterflies in my stomach or the sinking heat between my thighs caused by the fleeting memories of his words to me as he caged me in on his bed, his cock ready, his eyes wild. I'm going to fucking ruin you, baby.

Truth is, he would have ruined me regardless, even if things hadn't ended the way they did.

"Can I ask what this is about?" he looked directly at me, his chin resting on his upturned hand as he leaned forward onto his desk.

I cleared my throat, hoping the heat in my cheeks wasn't nearly as noticeable as it felt, and sat down in one of the plush leather chairs directly opposite his workspace. The cleaning crew had done a great job—not a speck of dust anywhere. The mountain view outside the window behind him almost snagged away my attention but I forced myself to be present.

"Well, uh, I was wondering if it was okay for me to ask you a handful of questions about… you. I keep getting asked a bunch of shit on the tours and I don't have anything to tell them other than you have a passion for craft beer and the process of making it perfect."

A ripple of something that looked like shame crossed his eyes before he spoke. "Oh. Sure, I guess. Though I don't want you to tell them every detail of my life."

My throat closed a little. "I won't, I don't. Don't worry about that."

His mouth turned into a straight line as he nodded once. "Thank you."

I glanced down at my list of questions. I wished I'd included a few extra ones such as: What happened after that morning? Do you still drink like that? Can't you just fucking apologize? Now wasn't the time, or the place, so instead, I started with the first one I'd written down.

"Why craft beer?"

He snorted out a laugh and leaned back in his chair, his body visually relaxing just a bit. "Because I'd done some home brewing and found it fun." His eyes lingered on me, flicking back and forth between the clipboard and my mouth. Oh, my god.

"Okay." You're good. Calm down. Stop, for fucks sake, stop getting turned on. I could work with that answer and capitalize on it. I jotted it down on my paper.

"Why Boulder? Did you grow up here?"

He shook his head. "No. I grew up in Austin."

"Texas?"

He nodded. "Yeah. I moved to Boulder as a teenager and my aunt took me in. Then I met Brody Harris and he agreed to mentor me on business after I graduated, I wanted to stay close to my new home," he explained. The way he looked at me was piercing, almost as if he was tearing me apart or fucking undressing me with just his eyes. It was hard to hold eye contact; it felt like a predator staring at his prey.

I swallowed and jotted down his answer as quickly as I could. I threw out an additional question, one that popped into my head. "Did you have an accent?"

"Everyone has an accent, Dana," he purred, his lip twitching up and flickering the hint of his dimple. "If you're asking if I sounded more southern than I do now, yes."

God, why did it sound so good when he said my name? "What happened to it?"

"Faded. As most things do."

He ensnared me again, catching my gaze and holding it for far longer than I should have allowed. It was foolish of me to even try to pretend that I didn't find him attractive. There was a reason I'd fallen in with him so quickly before, but I needed to keep myself at bay here. He'd fucked me over once, and he was more than capable of doing it again.

No way was I going to let that happen.

"Are you going to write that one down?"

I narrowed my eyes at him. "No," I said, my mouth feeling like it was full of sand. "I was just curious."

He chuckled darkly as he shifted in his seat. "Do I get to ask you questions just because I'm curious?"

"Absolutely not," I deadpanned. "Why this building?"

"At the time, I liked that it had originated as a brewery right before prohibition. Did you know they continued brewing in secret here during most of that period? They moved everything to the basement," he explained. "It wasn't on the blueprints. It still isn't. The only reason we know is because of the abandoned machinery down there. I thought it was really brave of them and I wanted to continue the legacy."

I took a deep breath. "And do you still feel that way?"

His gaze lingered a second too long once again before he turned from me. "Next question."

A chill went down my spine. I wasn't expecting that. "Okay. How did you fund the business?"

"Trust fund and an investment from my aunt," he replied. The words were quick, snappy, inattentive. I wondered if the previous question had gotten under his skin.

"Do you have any plans for expansion?"

"No."

"Is your aunt involved in the business?"

He winced. "No."

Was it just the questions I was asking that made his answers become so short or had I done something to ruin it? I couldn't tell. I wanted to know more, wanted to ask more questions that weren't on my list. "What's your family like?"

Again, that piercing glare met mine. "Next question, Dana."

"What do your parents think of the business?"

Silence fell over us in a quick, startling wave. I could hear the footsteps passing in the hallway, the sound of my breathing, the honking of horns three floors below on the street.

A storm brewed behind his eyes, menacing and angry, and I knew then that I'd royally fucked up. My heart pounded in my chest, aching and expanding, and my grip on the pen grew loose enough for it to fall from my hand and clatter against the hardwood floor.

"That's enough for now," he said, his voice like gravel as he broke his gaze and flipped open his laptop again. "If I were you, I'd leave before you regret coming in here more than you already do."

What the fuck did that mean? "Okay," I breathed. But I didn't move from the chair, couldn't find the will. I hated that this happened with him, this freezing up, this immobility that felt like a fucking trap. I wanted to stay. I wanted to know the answers to the questions he'd avoided. But more than anything else, I wanted to ask for an apology. I also wanted to give him one.

"I'll go," was what came out instead.

Finally willing myself to stand, I turned to the door, feeling his gaze like an iron barb in my back as I turned the handle.

"Dana," he said.

I halted, glancing over my shoulder. His mouth, perfectly symmetrical and far too inviting, opened and closed a handful of times before he spoke as if the words he wanted to say got stuck behind his teeth. I'd take anything—the smallest mention of what we'd shared, a brief apology, an acknowledgment of something . But he couldn't seem to find it in him.

"Close the door on your way out, please."

————

I sat down in my chair, the cramped space of my office almost suffocating. That had been far more intense than I'd imagined it in my head, even when one of those scenarios I'd come up with had ended with him fucking me over his desk. I shook the thought away.

My attraction to him was still strong, maybe even stronger. That was a problem in and of itself, because my god, I could not handle him. The moods, the hot and cold, those were quite the put off. Though I could understand the topic of family being triggering for him, I probably would have responded much the same to the question had someone asked me that.

Halfway through typing out a summary of the answers to send to my manager, my phone rang. For the smallest of seconds, I wondered if it was him. An apology, maybe. A text. Anything. But instead, Lottie's name flashed on my screen, and I answered it as I sent off the email to Allison.

"Hey," I said, a smile spreading across my cheeks. We hadn't spoken in almost two weeks, and with Drew and work and everything else piling on top of me, time had gotten away.

"Oh my god, I've missed you," Lottie gushed down the phone. "How are you? How's Drew?"

"I'm okay. Drew's good. I've missed you more."

"I swear, we need to get Brody and Drew together for a playdate soon. I need Dana time so badly," she chuckled. "I'm sorry I haven't called."

"It's okay, no worries." I leaned back in my chair, my eyes turning to the mop slouched against the wall on the other side of the tiny office. I had a sneaking suspicion I shared a space with the custodian. "We definitely need to get together. I miss the horses."

"Maybe sometime this weekend? If you're available, I mean. I know your shifts can be a bit weird. Oh! How's work? I heard he-who-must-not-be-named is back."

My blood ran cold. "You knew he ran the business?"

"Uh…"

" Lottie ."

"Look, I," she sighed. I could hear Brody's giggles in the background. "Please don't be mad."

"Seriously?"

"I didn't know how long he'd be gone. And I thought maybe, when he came back, you guys could, like, talk. Or make up. Or make out. I don't know."

"Jesus—"

"I know, I know, it was childish. But I just thought with everything that maybe it was worth it. I didn't want to meddle and stop you from leaving Harris Ranch just because he owned Pearson Beers. You wanted out and it was a good offer." The way she rambled made my head spin. "But I'll hire you back if you want to leave. I don't want you to feel trapped."

I sighed and kicked the base of the wall with my boot. I could tell her I was pissed, I could shout at her, but I just didn't have the energy. But it still hurt a little that she knew what had happened between us and hadn't said anything to me when I started working here. "It's okay. I'm not mad. Just a little taken back."

An incoming email from Allison made me pause.

Meet me in my office in five.

"I've got to go," I said. "And not because I'm annoyed—which I am, a little—but I have to meet with my manager."

"Promise?"

"Promise. I'll see you soon."

————

The short walk to Allison's office gave me time to think far too hard about the situation with Cole. The more present he was around here would inevitably cause complications. He seemed more in control, much more confident in a way he hadn't been before. He was always a light in the dark somehow, but now, he was shining even brighter.

I wondered what caused the change, wondered where he'd been.

A buzz in my pocket had me checking my phone with hope again, but this time, it was a text from Vee. A photo of her and Drew in the park, his giggling face lighting up my world for just a moment. The nanny stood behind them, her eyes off in the distance, almost as if she were standing guard. It was nice to see Vee getting along with Drew. Maybe she didn't think he was the anti-Christ after all.

A thought hit me like a sinking stone as I slowed to a stop outside Allison's door. If Cole was going to be around more often, he'd find out fairly quickly I had a son. I didn't exactly keep it a secret—it was plastered all over my time-off requests, my schedule, and my emails.

How the fuck was I supposed to tell him Drew was his?