Page 9 of Catalyst
“If we push through, we’ll be done faster than if we take a break,” I remind him.
“Thanks, captain obvious,” Nolan retorts. He’s only in running shorts. His cutoff T-shirt is long gone from the heat, and his shaggy brown hair is slicked back with sweat. At twenty-six, he still holds a naïvety that only the baby of the family can have. He’s also our resident goofball. I don’t think he’s capable of letting a serious moment go by without making some sort of quippy remark. The idea that Ellie is only a year older than Nolan is hard to grasp. She’s leaps and bounds more mature than him.
“Maybe if Nolan would quit taking ‘water breaks’, we’d be done even faster,” Carter says, using air quotes. He’s the quietest of us all. And the smartest, too. At thirty, he’s already the head engineer for the biotech firm he works for in Westlake.
I shove Nolan in the shoulder, pushing him off the ramp leading into the back of the truck. He laughs good-naturedly like I knew he would before hopping back up.
His sunny disposition reminds me of Ellie. She’s spent the last two weeks finding ways to sneak motivational quotes into my office. On fucking rainbow sticky notes, no less. It’s been driving me crazy.
My office isn’t a place for silly behavior. If I’m not taking my job seriously, then what’s the point of doing my job? Her putting smiley faces on my reports or quippy notes in my schedule is completely inappropriate. Even if they sometimes make me smile.
Not only does she seem to enjoy riling me up, but she’s also been wearing the most alluring outfits. They’re stupidly professional, following all of the dress code guidelines, but they sure as hell highlight her phenomenal hips and incredibly long legs. Sometimes both at the same time, which is monumentally worse.
This last week, I’ve ended every day with a raging headache from clenching my jaw for too long. I’ve also never had to focus this hard on financials and contracts to keep my body from reacting to the fuck-hot sight of her flouncing around my office.
She doesn’t flounce. You’re just acting like a horndog.
She’s actually completely professional, minus the sticky notes and smiley faces. It makes it so much harder to be annoyed with her. I don’t think I’ve ever been this frustrated by someone in my entire life. Which is saying something, since Nolan Ellis is my little brother.
I also don’t fully understand why my body is reacting to her so strongly. I’ve never had any issues finding a date—or, more accurately, a one-night stand, since I don’t have the time or the desire to date. It’s too much work when I could easily find a willing woman at Donna’s Bar in about twenty minutes.
Not that I actually do that. I just know I could.
Which makes my response to Ellie all the more confusing. What is it about her that fires up my system the second she walks into my office? Most of the time, she drives me crazy. Her constant need to make everyone around her smile is annoying. She makes enough jokes to rival Matthew’s humor.
She goes against everything I am, so wouldn’t it stand to reason I should want to run in the opposite direction?
I don’t know. And because I don’t know, I don’t think I can keep working with her. She’s the winds of a hurricane destined to blow down anything in its path. Your only option is to take cover and let it ride. Which is the problem. I’ve never been one to lie down and take it. If I want to regain control, Ellie can’t stay.
It takes us another couple of hours to finish unloading the truck before we’re able to relax. We gather around the large island in the kitchen, with pizza boxes strewn across the granite countertop and beer bottles sweating in our hands. The place is huge, big enough to fit our whole family, along with Sara’s zoo, as we’ve lovingly come to call it. Ever since Sara was little, she’s had an affinity for strays. Especially the ones who were left behind because of a handicap. At this point, she has three dogs—one of which is Ben’s—a cat, a lizard, and a hamster.
Being the middle child, surrounded by boys, I think this was Sara’s way of finding something she could call her own. For the most part, she had to do everything the rest of us were doing. If we played soccer, so did she. If we tried karate, she tried karate, too. She didn’t seem to mind, and, in all honesty, she was usually better than us at whatever activity we were doing.
I think finding strays and nursing them back to health was her way of doing something just for her. Ben doesn’t seem to mind, although I did hear him put his foot down on bringing home another dog. It made me laugh that he thought his demand would stop her from doing it anyway.
“Adam, how’s your temp assistant working out?” Nolan asks, bringing my focus back to the room.
“I think I’m going to have to find someone to replace her.”
Matthew’s head whips up to look at me, and I grimace. I haven’t told him about my frustrations. Mostly because I knew he’d talk me around since he loves Ellie.
“What do you mean, you’re going to get someone else?” Nolan frowns. “It’s only been a couple of weeks.”
“It means exactly what I said. She doesn’t take anything seriously. I need an assistant who is going to focus on the tasks I give them, not try to find ways to ‘spice up my life.’” I quirk my fingers in the air to quote Ellie’s reasoning behind her sticky notes.
“Is she doing a bad job? Not getting things done?” Matthew frowns. I’m sure he’s confused by my decision. He’s probably thinking he’s not been paying enough attention to how well Ellie’s been able to do her job.
“No, she’s staying on top of everything, but the woman uses a purple, sparkly pen, for God’s sake. And she keeps putting these affirmations on my computer every morning.” I’m not going to mention how distracted I’ve been by her outfits.
Everyone stares at me for a moment, the silence making me want to fidget, until they all start laughing. I grit my teeth, swallowing the string of expletives that want to explode from my mouth.
“Seriously? That’s why you want her gone? Because she uses a purple pen?” Matthew asks, his eyes wide with incredulity.
“No. I just… She doesn’t take anything seriously. She’s too happy.” I frown, pissed at myself for sounding ridiculous.
“So, you can’t be happy and work in an office?” Sara asks. I can tell she’s enjoying this interrogation far too much.
“That’s not what I said,” I grit out.
