“I just thought it was one of those things.”

“One of what things?”

“One of those things you say when you’re drunk,” she fires back.

I grit my teeth and breathe in hard through my nostrils. “But yet I meant it.”

She pushes back in her chair. “Look, I didn’t want to be presumptuous and assume the raise still applied. I didn’t want to put you in a position where you felt obligated,” she says, enunciating that last word with precision, and it almost feels as if she’s throwing it back at me for some reason.

And that pisses me off even more. These last few weeks have been nothing but us tiptoeing around each other, and now here she is making motherfucking decisions for my business that she’s not authorized to make.

“This is my company. I decide what to pay you.” I don’t raise my voice. She gets my meaning by the coldness of my tone, and the way I hold up the check and rip it down the middle.

I grab a new one and write the correct amount. A bigger amount. I hand it to her. “I told you I was giving you a ten percent raise, and I meant it. I made you a promise, and I goddamn intend to stick to it, whether I had a few beers or not. I’m a man of my word, and I sure as hell expect the people I work with to treat me like it and to act the same way.”

“Thank you.” With shaky hands, she takes the check, lowers her face, grabs her purse, and scurries far away from me. I sink down in her chair, anger seething through me, and I drop my head in my hands.

“Fuck, fuck, fuck.”

I shouldn’t be so pissed. I know that. But tell that to the fury that’s racing through me right now. I hate feeling like this. I pride myself on being a laidback guy, and I’m the opposite of that now. I head home, change into shorts, and work out in the gym in my building, lifting more weight than I should, running faster than I usually do, and generally pushing myself into stupid-guy zone, because I’m pissed.

And I hardly know why.

But after a hot shower at home, the knotted up thoughts begin to untangle. Soon enough, I know why I’m mad.

It’s not because she tried to subvert me by paying herself less. That’s ridiculous.

It’s not because we were drunk and pieces of the night are still a haze to me. It’s because we’re not the same. We didn’t go back to being Natalie and Wyatt. We went into full-on boss-assistant mode, and I liked it much better when we had a good time together at work, before work became as pleasant as a root canal.

I pull on jeans and a T-shirt, drag my fingers through my mostly dry hair, and leave my building in the West Fifties. I hoof it across town and hope to hell she’s still at the dojo on Sixty-Fourth. As the clock ticks toward nine, the lights from the studio shine brightly, and I spot Natalie inside, closing the place. Jamming my thumbs into the pockets of my jeans, I wait.

A few minutes later, the lights flicker and turn off. The door opens, and Natalie locks it then turns around.

“Oh.” Her eyes widen.

“Hey,” I say softly.

“Hey.” Her tone matches mine, and that instant gentleness is like a caress.

“I was an ass. I’m sorry.”

She smiles. “It’s all right. I shouldn’t have—”

I cut her off. This one is on me. “No. I would have done the same if I were you. I should never have put you in the position of doubting what I would pay you. Is that why you took the substitute job? Because you weren’t sure if the raise was real?”

She nods guiltily. “I needed the extra money.”

My heart falls. “I’m sorry, Nat. I mean it. I don’t want you to doubt your value, or my words, or what I promise you. I need to do better. I want to do better. And I want to pay you what you deserve for the amazing job you do.”

“Thank you.”

“I couldn’t run the business without you. That’s why you got a raise. No other reason.”

“Thank you. I really appreciate that.”

“You really deserve it.” I take a beat. “So are we good?”

“We’re good,” she says, and for the first time since I woke up with a hangover, I feel like that might be true.

Her stomach rumbles, and I smile. “I think you might want something else, though. Dinner? I’m buying. Burgers and beer?”

The grin that stretches across her face is the first one since we returned from Vegas that feels like her. Like the woman I’ve known. “I’m in.”

The smile reassures me, too—tells me that sliding back into who we were before is going to be so damn easy.

I just know it.

20

Natalie points to my chin. “Ketchup,” she says. I grab the napkin and wipe it off, then finish my story.

“Then, there was the time we took her copy of Gone With the Wind, cut out the last ten pages, and wrote Rhett leaves. He’s a dick.”

She smacks my thigh. “You were so cruel.”

I nod in agreement as I take a swig of my beer. We’re seated at the counter at The Best Burger Joint in the City on Lexington as we work our way through the jalapeño hot sauce burger bites. “We were the worst. Josie had been dying to read it. She went through a Scarlett O’Hara phase and dressed up as a southern belle for Halloween, complete with a parasol.”

“Oh, that’s adorable. I’ll have to ask if she still has pictures. But you and Nick were terrible. Cutting it up then spoiling the story.” She shakes her head in amusement as she digs into a mini burger drenched in chili peppers.