Chapter 3

chapter

three

Chelsea

Two years later…

"It's been eight hundred and seventy-four days," JD says.

We're walking to our cars from Zilker Park where we just finished our company-wide family picnic.

"What?" I ask.

"Since we first met. Eight hundred and seventy-four days."

I try to ignore the way my insides bubble with excitement when he talks like this. It's always the little things with him. The way I come into the office and find my perfect coffee order sitting, ready for me on my desk. Normally, this might not be such an amazing feat. But I'm a mood and weather drinker so I don't have a single standard order. Still, he manages to know precisely what I need and want on any given day. It's actually kinda spooky.

He's a details guy, I get that. His coffee ordering and gifting me with the perfect snacks when it's shark week every month, well that's just him paying attention. It's not about me. Not about what we could be if I wasn't still pretending to date some mythical man.

Why am I still carrying on with that lie after more than two years? It's been one series of reasons after another until now; he would likely think I was an actual lunatic if I told him that Mike, in fact, is my labradoodle. I blow out a breath, then remember he was in the middle of a random musing about days.

"Why are eight hundred and seventy-four days relevant?"

By now we've made it to my car and he's doing that looming thing where he stands entirely too close to me. "In all that time, don't you think it's strange that I've never met Mike?

"What?" My question comes out more like a squeak, so I clear my throat, then try again. "Why would that be strange?"

He looks down at me, his eyes are pools of darkness. Dusk has settled around us, giving the sky an orangish romantic glow. For fuck's sake! I mentally shake myself.

His gaze drops briefly to my mouth, something that happens far too often for my own sanity.

"I've met all the other partners and spouses," he says.

"All of them? Really? That seems unlikely," I tell him.

He braces a hand against my car door, effectively doing that sexy-as-hell wall-lean, only in this case, it's a car-lean. I hate that his nearness does this to me. But it does. Every. Single. Day.

"Well, we do these big company-wide, family events twice a year," he continues. "So yeah, I've met, most, if not all, of everyone's people."

When I think back to all of the people I've met over the last couple of years working here… He's not wrong. It's a family-friendly company. The kind that organizes meal trains when someone has surgery, a new baby, or a tragedy. We're all there for each other. JD and Hayes have made H & J Funds special.

"Everyone's," he repeats. "Except yours."

I wonder if he can hear how loudly my heart is beating with him being so close to me. I can feel the warmth of his broad chest.

I swallow hard. "I've never meet any of your girlfriends," I say.

One of his brows arches. "I don't have any girlfriends, Chelsea." His hand leaves my car to briefly tuck a piece of my hair behind my ear. "I thought by now you would have realized that."