Hot Boss by Anne Marsh

Author:Anne Marsh
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Harlequin
Published: 2020-04-02T18:03:24+00:00

CHAPTER EIGHT

DOES IT BOTHER her that her family is so eager to hook her up with husband material? That none of them believe she can do this on her own? Part of me is starting to wonder why no one considers me to be Mr. Hazel material, when in some respects we’re the most perfect of matches. We’re both driven workaholics. We both love our families, prize loyalty above all and take care of our people. We’re both here and all I can think is why not?

Why not see where we can go?

Why not stay together?

Why not go back down the stairs and introduce ourselves as a couple?

But that isn’t what Hazel wants. It’s not that she’s antimarriage or anticommitment. Despite her mother’s pressure-cooker expectations, she’s still looking for her perfect one and only. It’s just that she’s most definitely not looking at me. We’re each other’s wingmen at the bar, sitting back-to-back on our bar stools and pointing out hot singles to each other. Buying consolation drinks when those singles hurt us. Offering to exact bestie vengeance.

Hazel’s watching me, her eyes moving over my face, down my arm, to where our fingers are tangled together. “I needed some space.”

“Do you want me to go?”

“This is good.” She slants that secretive, catlike Hazel smile at me, the one that says she’s happy and as relaxed as she gets, but that her brain is still moving a million miles a minute because Hazel never stops thinking. Even though we’re standing in the hallway of her childhood home, I want to kiss her. I want to keep standing here beside her because I like it. I like her.

“I would apologize for my family, but someone will just say something else.” She grins at me. “Then we’ll be trapped in an endless loop of apologies and neither of us will be able to leave.”

“We’d have to stand here forever.” I make a face of mock horror.

“Champagne out of reach.”

“Eternal sobriety.”

Hazel laughs in agreement and then she pulls me toward her. Somehow we just fit together, side by side, arms around each other. Our arms know where to go.

“They shouldn’t ask you to find me a date,” she says. “But fair warning—they’re not going to stop. They don’t think I can find someone on my own and they see you as the mother lode of bachelor recommendations.”

This is my cue to give her shit for her lack of accomplishments in the husband-finding-and-landing sweepstakes. I’ve done it dozens if not hundreds of times before, and then she would always tease me back about being a homebody and a one-trick pony who was monogamous and middle-aged at seventeen. It’s a comfortable, familiar pattern...and it feels all wrong.

“Why doesn’t it piss you off?”

Hazel makes a frowny face, forehead puckering. “Getting mad wouldn’t be effective. I know I don’t need a husband, but it would make them happy. I’m not a people person and my relationship skills need work, so they’re just trying to be helpful. It doesn’t matter.

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