Needing Her

Chapter Three

Maci

“WELL, WELL, LOOK who it is . . . here all bright and early like she actually has a job or something.”

I glanced at the clock and raised an eyebrow without ever looking up at him. “Screw off, Dylan.”

“I’m Dakota.”

Forcing my eyes to remain on my computer screen instead of looking up to confirm I was correct, I scoffed and kept clicking furiously on my mouse. “Dakota already tried that on me yesterday. You forget I’ve known you both my whole life . . . and you’re twenty-­five. Aren’t you both old enough that you could stop trying to get ­people all confused?”

He sat down with a huff on my desk and brought his feet up to the arm of my chair. “But I did confuse you, right, Mini?”

“Didn’t. And speaking of bright and early, I’ve been here for four hours. Where were you until just now?”

“Not your business. At least I still showed up, you didn’t come at all yesterday.”

“I told Dakota I was cramping.”

He kicked my chair back so I wheeled away from the desk, taking my wireless mouse with me.

“Excuse you. I was about to beat my fastest time.”

“You used the cramping excuse last week.”

“Shit.” I bit down on my lip and looked toward the back of the office. “Did Dad still buy it?”

“Yeah, he did that thing where he looks like you’re about to throw snakes on him.”

I laughed when Dylan tried to re-­create the way Dad would jump back and alternate throwing his hands up to his ears like he didn’t want to hear it, and throwing them back at you, as if to push you away from him.

“So where were you?” Dylan asked when he sat back on the desk.

“I’ve been here all morning, where were you?”

His expression went blank for a few seconds before he kicked his foot at me again, connecting with my knee. “I meant yesterday, Mini.”

“Shit, that hurt!” I sat there holding my knee, breathing in and out dramatically through my teeth like Peter from Family Guy for a minute before glaring up at him. “I’ll tell you if you tell me.”

“I’ve been in meetings with clients since nine, so I didn’t stop by here first. Now. Spill.”

“Oh . . . huh.” I’d been kind of hoping it would be something that I could tease him about. “I had cramps,” I said as I scooted my chair back to the desk so I could start another game.

Dylan grabbed the arm of my chair and wheeled me back before hopping off the desk and grabbing each arm, caging me in. “You better tell me the truth before I get the others and we find every guy in your phone and beat their ass.”

And this is why I can’t have a boyfriend. I sighed and pushed on his chest until he moved away. “No need. I went shopping.”

“Shopping.”

“Yes, Dylan, shopping. Now go away.”

“You ditched work on a Thursday to go shopping? What was so important that it couldn’t wait two damn days, Mini? Was there a special on training bras?”

“I didn’t go to the mall, asshole,” I said as I scooted back toward the desk again.

“Then where were you?”

Turning to look at him, I flung out the hand that was still holding the mouse. “Why are you so interested in knowing my life all of a sudden?”

“Because we all agree you’re being sketchy lately, and I’m about to go pound some dude’s face in for touching my sister! Who is he, Mini?”

Shitfuck. “Who is who?”

“The guy I’m about to kill, who are you fuckin’ around with?”

“You have a boyfriend, Maci?” Dakota asked as he rounded the corner into my office. “Oh, fuck this. Who is he?”

I groaned into my hands and stared down at my desk. “I don’t have a boyfriend. Dylan is being paranoid because I didn’t come in yesterday.”

“Yeah, where were you?” Dakota asked, but before I could answer, he leaned over me and paged the back office from my desk phone. “Maci has a boyfriend,” he stated. Not five seconds later, I heard my oldest brothers, Craig and Sam, running down the hall.

“Who is he?” Craig, the oldest, asked.

“No one, I don’t have a—­”

“Where’s her phone?”

I looked over to see Sam rummaging through my purse, so I pulled my phone out of my pocket before handing it to him. I wasn’t worried about them finding anything, because I had a password that would take them forever to figure out.

Sam looked at my phone in his hand before handing it back to me. “She doesn’t have a boyfriend, dumbasses. She wouldn’t give up her phone like that if she did.”

Ha. Win.

“Ask her where she was yesterday,” Dylan prompted, and both Sam and Craig gave me a suspicious glare.

“Where were you?” Craig asked.

“I went shopping.”

“Yeah,” Dylan interjected, “but she wasn’t at the mall, and won’t say where she was.”

Sam snatched the phone back out of my hand, and Craig caged me in the way Dylan had earlier. “Who are you hiding from us?”

“What’s your password?”

“Screw all of you! I’m not giving you my password. I told you what I was doing yesterday, and I don’t have a boyfriend!”

“You know we’re going to find out, Maci, you might as well just tell us now so we can get this over with.”

“Craig, there’s nothing to tell!”

“Either we give your boyfriend the message now, or he lives in fear of when we find him. Your choice.”

“Jesus Christ! There’s no boyfriend, no message needs to be delivered.” God! How long had I been hooking up with Bryce and I’d never had to deal with this, but one day of pranking Connor, and all hell breaks loose with my brothers.

“Maci—­”

“Daddy!” I yelled, and let a slow, coy smile spread across my face when all four of my brothers froze. “That’s right, bitches. I just used the ‘daddy’ card.”

They all stood and crossed their arms over their chests as they waited for what would come next. Four pairs of gray eyes were plotting another intervention, or my “boyfriend’s” death. A ­couple seconds later, loud thuds could be heard coming down the hall until my dad appeared in my office.

“Boys, what in the hell is going on in here?” his deep voice boomed, and I couldn’t help but smile when all four of them subtly flinched.

“Maci has a boyfriend,” Craig answered for them.

Dad raised a graying eyebrow; but before he could respond, I pointed at Craig and said, “Now that’s a damn dirty lie. They’re harassing me because they think I have a boyfriend.”

“But you don’t?”

“Nope.”

He studied me for a second before turning around to go back to the hall. “If she says she doesn’t have one, then she doesn’t. In my office, boys.”

The boys all stood there glaring at me until Dad’s footsteps could no longer be heard. One by one, they all turned and began leaving. When only Dylan was left, he grabbed a box of paper clips off my desk, opened it up, and threw the contents at me.

“Are you serious?”

“I’m gonna figure out who it is, brat,” he called over his shoulder as he retreated down the hall.

I shook out my shirt and listened as more paper clips hit the floor. “Real mature.”

Looking at the mess on the ground and under my desk, I sighed and lazily fell out of my chair to the floor to begin picking them all up. Crawling on my hands and knees under the desk to grab the dozens that had scattered there, I was just leaning back when I heard a soft laugh and froze.

“Do I want to know why you’re down there?”

I jolted up and back, but misjudged the distance and ended up smacking my head on the corner of the desk. My hands flew up to hold my head, causing me to drop all the paper clips I’d just spent minutes on picking up. When I went to sit back on my heels, I rocked back too far and kept going, falling into my chair, which rolled to the side, leaving me to hit my head on the wall as I fell back.

“Son of a bitch, that fucking hurt! Ow, ow, ow! Shit,” I hissed when I was fully, and safely, on the ground. “You don’t scare someone who’s under a desk, you motherfucker.”

“I’ve always loved that mouth of yours.”

My eyes shot open at the admission, and I found intense, blue eyes directly above my face. I’d officially stopped breathing. What’d he say?

Connor’s face fell before he backed up and sat next to me. “Jesus, you hit your head that hard? I meant the way you can’t finish a sentence without swearing.”

And let’s bring back the insecurities from last night. There’s nothing about me that Connor Green finds appealing. Well, except the fact that I have lady bits. The anger and humiliation I’d felt last night came flooding back and I glared up at the ceiling.

“You okay?”

“Fine,” I bit out. “Why are you here?”

He breathed heavily through his nose and drummed his fingers on the floor. “I came to check on you.”

“Well . . . looks like you did a helluva lot of good with the checkup.”

“It’s not my fault you’re prone to hurt yourself on every surface available and enjoy being on your back . . .” he trailed off.

“Fuck off, Connor. I don’t need your shit today.”

“Where were you when I came over this morning?”

“Not in my apartment . . . ?”

A low growl built up in the back of his throat as he leaned back over me. “You knew I was coming over. I thought you were sleeping, so I let you sleep until I was done cleaning that shit up. By then, you should’ve been getting ready to leave for work. I went to wake you up, and surprise, surprise . . . no Maci. Where were you?”

“Oh, so I’m back to being Maci again?” When Connor just looked at me confused, I rolled my eyes and looked past his head at the ceiling. “Thought I was Mini last night.”

“Stop acting like a child. You knew I was coming over this morning and you weren’t there. No note, nothing. I called you and you didn’t answer, I was worried about you.”

A short, humorless laugh bubbled out of my chest. “I can see you were really worried. It took you almost five hours to come check where I work from when you last cal—­” I cut off quickly and internally cursed for giving myself away.

His blue eyes narrowed. “I drove over here at eight, I saw your car here so I knew you were okay. Now. Tell me why you weren’t there this morning, and why you weren’t answering my calls, since apparently you knew I was calling.”

“That’s really none of your business, and I don’t know why it’s such a big deal that I wasn’t there. All you needed to do was clean up the polish—­that doesn’t require me being there, right?”

“It does, because I wanted to talk to you.”

Part of me was dying to know what he wanted to talk to me about. The other was remembering him calling me Mini, and balking at the idea of me thinking he liked my mouth. “Well I don’t want to talk to you. So if you could leave now, I’d appreciate it.”

Those intense blue eyes widened and he stared at me for a handful of seconds before shifting back and standing up. I scrambled awkwardly until I was vertical again, and fell into my chair. Trying not to show how much my head was still throbbing, I refused to grab my head again until he left.

“Why were you outside my door last night when Sadie came over?” he asked when he reached the door to leave. His back had been to me as he asked the question, but he turned to face me as he waited for my answer.

“I already told you la—­”

“I’m not buying that.”

“I don’t care if you are or aren’t. I told you why I was there, and you’re just trying to make it out to be something different than it was.”

He took three large steps until he was on the other side of my desk, and bent down to rest his hands on the wood. “I saw the way you looked, you can’t keep tell—­”

“Did you remember to pay Sweetheart before she left? Oh, wait, I forgot. You actually remembered this one’s name. Did you remember to pay Sadie?”

Connor’s head jerked back and his eyebrows slammed down. When he spoke, his voice was dark and sent chills through my body. “Come again?”

But he and I both knew there was no need to repeat the question. I glanced at his clothes, and noticed that he was in slacks and a button-­down with a tie. His badge, gun, and handcuffs were all attached to his belt. Damn, I’ve always loved the way he looked in his detective getup. Forcing my eyes away from him, I woke up my computer and pretended to start a new game.

“Sorry you felt the need to come all the way over here to check on me, but you should probably go back to work, Detective Green.”

“Watch yourself, Maci,” he said in warning. “You’re starting to look jealous.”

I didn’t look back at him as he walked out of the office. As soon as the door shut, I let out the breath I’d been holding and dropped my head onto my desk.

“Don’t act like you’re asleep, Mini, I just heard you talking. Who was here?”

I glared up at Dylan and rubbed at the back of my tender head. “Connor.”

Dylan walked over and opened the door, looking out into the parking lot. “Well why’d he leave before talking to us, did he get a call?”

“He didn’t come to see you two,” I replied immediately, not realizing what I’d said until Dylan’s expression turned murderous. Trying to keep calm, I thought quickly and rolled my eyes. “Oh God, come on, Dylan. Not like that, he was apologizing for the sounds his skank was making last night. Our walls are really thin.”

It was beyond stupid that my heart was racing, and I was terrified of my brothers finding out about this unreciprocated crush I had on their best friend. But when they’d taken my phone, which had conversations between Bryce and me, I hadn’t flinched.

“Lucky bastard.” Dylan shook his head and smacked his hand on my desk, causing me to jump, before walking down the hall again.

“Yeah,” I mumbled softly and failed at ignoring the pain spreading in my chest. He views you like a sister, Maci. Nothing more. “Lucky bastard.”

Connor

“WHAT THE HELL, what the hell, what the hell?” I pulled my car into a strip-­mall parking lot, threw it into park and groaned into my hands. “What. The. Hell?”

I didn’t know why I’d gone there. I didn’t know why I’d been worried about her in the first place. She spent nights away all the time, but she’d known I was coming over this morning. There was no way she hadn’t heard Sadie, because she’d been fucking obnoxious before I’d finally kicked her out. And for some damn reason, I’d spent the rest of the night wondering why Maci had still been outside my door, why she looked like she was trying to keep herself together . . . and why the fuck I’d had to picture her to get off.

This was Maci. Maci. I knew I couldn’t think about her like this; and I knew that to continuously entertain the thoughts that had been playing in my mind since the night before would be dangerous. But even in the office, the only thing that had kept my mind clear enough to stop me from covering her body with mine and claiming her mouth was the fact that her brothers and dad were all in the back.

That mouth. Jesus, that mouth was perfect. How had I never noticed that? I loved that Maci swore just the same as her brothers did. It was just . . . so . . . Maci. But the way those full lips fell into her natural pout in the office had had me straining against my pants.

“Fuck!” I growled and slammed a hand down on the steering wheel before raking both hands through my hair.

I can’t think about her like this!

And yet, I couldn’t stop thinking about her like that. Her wild, vibrant red hair on my pillow with her body underneath me. That raspy voice of hers breathing out my name. Those full lips wrapped around my cock. All of it. All of her . . . was continuously playing through my mind.

Like a bucket of ice-­cold water had been thrown on me, my phone rang, displaying Dylan’s name.

“Yeah?” I answered cautiously.

“Mini said you stopped by. What? No love for me and Kota?”

“Had to get back to work. Sorry.”

He grunted. “Have a question for you about Mini. Is she seeing someone?”

I muted the relieved breath that left my lungs, and didn’t even have to think about my answer. Maci would kill me if she found out I told them about the douchebag who came over. “No, she’s not.”

“You’re sure?”

“Yeah, Dylan, I’m sure.”

He spoke away from the phone, telling what I’m guessing were the rest of the brothers what I had said. “Okay, well, hey. Let’s all get together this weekend, grab some food and beers.”

“Okay, I’m off after today, so just let me know.”

“And, Connor.”

“Hmm?”

“My sister doesn’t need to hear your women screaming. Try to get them to keep it down, all right?”

So she had heard. Why is that bothering me so much?

“Connor.”

“Yeah, I got you. It won’t happen again. I’ll make sure Maci’s gone, or I’ll go to their place . . . something.”

“Appreciate it, bro. I’ll call you later, we’ll set something up for tomorrow night.”

“All right. Later.”

As soon as we were off the phone. I pulled up Maci’s name and sent her a message.

I’m sorry about last night

Maci Price: I’m not sorry I made your face green ;)

Which reminded me . . . hope she didn’t have any plans for the evening.