Bad Bridesmaid (Billionaire's Club Book 11) Elise Faber (most read books of all time txt) 📖

Some days they’d exchange two dozen emails, sometimes a week would go by without a word. But their virtual contact would always pick right back up as though they were in the middle of a conversation. It was never uncomfortable, never strained.

Just . . . connection.

And like it had been when she was a kid, that connection was over science. Luckily, she loved both her dad and the theoretical properties of barrelene, even if it was a long ways from the molecular physics she studied and used in her lab.

Signing off on her reply to the final email, an exchange that would normally energize her for several more hours, Heidi found her eyes going back to the clock.

Again.

Counting the minutes down until she could leave. Again.

Because despite the emails from her dad, for the first day ever, she hated her job.

Part of her kept repeating the conversation from that morning back to her, cringing at the desperate way she’d asked Brad to come over. Brad, who she wasn’t going to see as a love interest. Brad, who she wasn’t going to sleep with. Brad, who she was only going to be friends with.

And Brad . . . who she wanted to be so much more than that.

Sighing, she tapped a few keys across her keyboard, logged off her computer, and pushed back from her desk. “I’m out of here,” she told Stef.

“Everything okay?” her assistant asked.

“Fine. Just my brain is fried. I’m going to call it a day.”

Stef nodded, and they spent a couple of minutes discussing the day’s outstanding items. Fifteen minutes later, she was signing out of the lab and heading toward her car.

Then she was on her way home, ridiculously early.

But she honestly couldn’t hate the ridiculously early, not when it was smooth sailing through traffic, not when she took fifteen minutes upon arriving to her complex to bypass her condo and walk down her little trail. She stood in front of the little creek, trying to get the fist gripping her heart to relax—the same fist that was telling her to run from Brad, that she’d only get hurt again.

Because she had been hurt.

Deeply.

After one night.

Which was . . . too much and ridiculous and something that shouldn’t have been possible. She’d slept with plenty of people, so Brad being a one-off shouldn’t have hurt.

Except, his leaving without a word had.

And now, she worried that she would be opening herself up for a world of that hurt if she let him back in, if she dove into things with him, like she so desperately wanted. They’d had all of one phone conversation. Had only spent a couple of hours together. He’d left a note. Not poetry. Not undying love. Not . . . what?

What was she looking for?

She had no freaking clue.

Aside from the fact that all of those things were combining to draw her more firmly down the rabbit hole that was Brad Huntington.

Could she risk being his friend without falling in deep?

Because he would inevitably leave, and he would leave her behind.

But . . . what if he wanted her to come along?

“This is pointless,” she muttered to the tiny babbling creek. “We slept together. We hung out a bit. That’s it. It’s not life-changing, even if it feels like it.”

And it did feel like it. She was addicted.

She wanted more.

But he was going to leave.

It was an inevitability.

“So, knowing that,” she whispered, “why can’t I just enjoy the process? Why can’t I just go in and have fun and soak in every bit of the experience?” She tossed a rock into the water. “Because, dumbass, you’ve been talking a big talk about wanting more, about wanting something more than just a quick fuck.” A sigh. “And you’ll never have that with Brad.”

“I don’t want a quick fuck.”

Heidi shrieked and spun around, losing her footing at the sound of the voice so very close to her ear. She slid down the embankment, dirt and leaves rolling over her, landing in a heap at the bottom, the all of three inches of water in the creek soaking into her jeans.

“Heidi!”

A second later, Brad was at her side, scooping her up, holding her tightly against him.

“I’m fine,” she said, shaking her head to clear it. “You can put me down.”

“I didn’t mean to scare you,” he muttered, definitely not putting her down as he carried her up the slope, back onto solid ground.

“I’m all wet. Put me down before you get soaked, too,” she said.

Scorching hazel eyes on hers had her replaying her words.

“That wasn’t an innuendo,” she muttered.

Those eyes narrowed, and she realized that the heat in his gaze wasn’t remotely sexual. No, instead, it was fury. Pissed-off, intense anger.

“I never expected it to be,” he snapped.

“Why are you mad?” she asked, putting aside her request to be put down.

He bent down and snagged her purse. “I hurt you.”

“I’m not hurt,” she said. “I’m fine.”

His eyes flashed to hers again, and as he started carrying her back down the trail, she placed her hand on his chest.

“I swear, Brad. I’m not hurt.” Her groin might be a little tetchy from the slip-slide—she must have been attempting to do the splits while falling down that ridiculously tiny hill—but she was fine.

“You’re bleeding.”

Her mouth fell. “What?”

“You’re bleeding.”

“I can’t be bl—”

He stopped, spinning them, and in a heartbeat, he had her pinned between his chest and a tree trunk, her purse crammed into her abdomen. One hand lifted, brushed lightly against the top of her cheek. He held it up so she could see the bright red painting his fingertips. “You’re bleeding.”

Her heart stuttered. “Just a little.”

Eyes flashing again. He was fierce, glaring down at her, with the setting sun gathering in the trees, shafts of sunlight highlighting motes of dust in the air, the wind lightly rustling through the leaves. “A. Little?”

The last was said so dangerously that she shivered, heat trickling down her torso, gathering in her stomach, making her thighs tremble.

In a second, his expression