Free Filthy Rage (Second Chance With My Brother's Best Friend, Book Five) by Paige North Page B

Whatever. Every company has an asshole like him, so I’d better get used to dealing with his like. Whether he knows it or not, he’s offering me valuable life experience.
    Dane enters the conference room, and my heart hitches. I drag my attention to my iPad and open up the note-taking program.
    “Morning, everyone,” Dane says in that smooth voice of his. “Let’s start the meeting by discussing the progress on our current accounts.”
    For the next several minutes, I busy myself with typing on the iPad as fast as I can. The work draws me in, and I find my earlier tension slipping away. This is what it’s all about. Identifying client needs and addressing them the best way we can.
    Dane mentions the Sanderson account and how the client liked the informal pitch he presented to them last week. When I finish writing his statement and Lauren’s voice chimes in with an update on the client she’s in the middle of working with, my eyes are drawn up and connect with Dane’s.
    The way he’s staring at me, like I’m the only person in the room and he can see right through me into my head, into my soul, makes the air whoosh out of my lungs. Those chocolate-brown eyes are locked on mine with a knowing look. Right now, I can’t tear my own gaze away, even though my pulse is roaring in my head and my hands clench involuntarily.
    Because I suddenly know that he knows.
    It’s right there on his face, in his eyes, in the press of his lips and tension of his jaw. He read my journal. He saw my deepest, intimate secrets, and he’s letting me know it. And not just the secrets about him, but about my brother’s accident too, about my lingering sadness over Mom’s death. The loneliness. The guilt and anger and frustration I feel over the burden of being Robert’s caretaker. All my heart, ripped open and laid upon the page.
    All there for him to see.
    To judge.
    My throat tightens so much that it hurts to swallow. I drop my gaze back to the tablet and struggle to listen past the painful throbbing of my heart, which is pumping blood to every extremity in a hot rush. My fingers shake as I type.
    Oh God, oh God, he knows, and I just want to die. The words ricochet through my head in a panic. How am I going to get through the rest of this day? How will I get through the rest of my employment here, for that matter? How can I ever look him in the eye again, knowing that he’s aware of all the wicked things I want him to do to me?
    I’ve never felt more embarrassed in my life.
    “—that’s all, then we can move on to new business,” Dane is saying, jarring me out of the cycle of fear in my head. Nothing in his voice indicates that that moment happened between us, something I’m thankful for and also kind of frustrated about, if I’m honest. I’m clearly the only person shaken up about this. But that’s good, right? It means he isn’t so horrified with what he read that he can’t keep his cool façade.
    It also means he doesn’t feel for me anything close to what I feel for him.
    Perhaps I imagined the moment, I decide. Maybe what I took as an all-knowing look was really just him being impatient with my typing speed. Or maybe I want him to know my feelings for him to the point where I’m starting to hallucinate.
    I’m so mixed up that I don’t even know how to handle all of this.
    I stiffen and attempt to shake off my own personal misery, blinking back tears that threaten to fill my eyes. Either way, I’m sure as hell not going to screw this opportunity up by doing what I so desperately want to do—run right out of the building and never look back.
    Whether he read my journal or not, I need to keep the act going, just like he seems to be doing.
    “Dane, I think we should start pursuing bigger fish,” Carl says. He has that egomaniac smile on his face, the one that makes me want to roll my eyes. But for once, I’m semi-happy to be in the same room as him, if only because he distracts me from my own problems.
    “Do you