Actually, he’d done everything wrong. All his usual things. He’d forgotten meetings and lost paperwork and blown off dinners and missed deadlines. As always.
Piper really did have bad taste in men.
“We’ll just hire someone else to do all the Piper stuff around here,” he said.
“Oh sure,” Cam said. “We’ll just hire someone to replace the woman who’s been with us for five years, knows all of us better than our own parents, and knows and loves our business as much as we do.”
“I only need someone who can get me coffee in the morning,” Ollie said. Grumpily.
They all scowled at him. Yes, he was reducing one of their favorite people to a coffee-gopher. But they all knew he didn’t really mean that.
Or did he?
Piper didn’t help him with his actual work. The writing. The creating. That was all him. He did it alone. That was all his.
Sure, once it was done, Dax took it—well, now the other designers took it—and turned it into graphics and moving parts. Aiden and Grant and Cam dealt with the legal and business parts of everything that was necessary for his writing to turn into Warriors of Easton.
Piper booked him flights and hotel rooms and ordered him lunch and kept track of which documents needed his signatures and if there were calls and meetings he needed to be a part of.
But she didn’t help him write, dammit. And that was the most important part.
Grant had initially hired Piper to babysit Ollie. Ollie was okay with that. He liked having people who would rein him in. He had no gauge for what was over the top and what was brilliant. Hell, most of the stuff he wrote into his scripts seemed over the top to him and ended up being called brilliant, so he really didn’t know.
The guys were the guardrails for him. So was Piper. Piper looked things up like how much liability insurance would be if they brought in acrobats to ride unicycles across tight ropes at a town festival. Then she said they couldn’t do it.
He was disappointed when people told him no, for sure, but he was okay with it too. He knew they, collectively, were being creative but reasonable.
That’s what he needed. Someone to keep him reasonable. And someone to make reservations and keep track of paperwork and run errands for him and yes, get him his coffee the way he liked it.
He pushed back from the table. “Let’s get an ad out. Online. Newspaper. Tack it up at the bakery,” he said to Aiden. “Whatever. However this works.”
That was the kind of thing Piper would have done for them.
Grant gave him an annoyed but longsuffering look. “You going to be able to handle it if Piper comes in to train the new person?”
Ollie shrugged. “Sure. Why wouldn’t I?”
She was the one in love with him to the point that she couldn’t work near him anymore. Who got that worked up over him? Maybe she was a few bananas short of a bunch already.
And hey, Piper training the person would require zero input from him. She’d be able to tell the new person that if they really wanted Ollie’s attention on something, they needed to print the paperwork in eighteen-point font and put it in a bright-red folder. She’d definitely be able to inform them he hated onions. On anything. She’d certainly mention that he couldn’t work with music or conversation around him, but he also couldn’t work without his white-noise machine on. Or Norah Jones music on. He didn’t know why Norah worked for him, but she did. Something Piper had discovered.
But that could all be passed on to someone new. He turned on his heel and stalked toward the door.
“You’ll have to tell her or him how you like your special coffee, Princess,” Grant said dryly.
“Piper knows,” he said, pulling the door open. “I’ve got work to do.” As if he had a prayer of getting anything done with Piper on his mind and his severe lack of caffeine. He slammed the door behind him.
“Um, so I probably need to get back to work,” Drew said suddenly, cutting off what he’d been saying.
Piper frowned as he focused on something over her shoulder. “What? Are you okay?”
“Yeah. I’m just about to become a third wheel,” he said with a grin, lifting his coffee cup to drain it.
Piper looked over her shoulder. And felt her heart flip.
Ollie had just entered Buttered Up bakery and stood looking around. His gaze landed on her and their eyes met. He started in her direction immediately.
God, he looked good.
She wasn’t the only one who noticed either. Several women in the bakery stopped and checked him out. He didn’t seem to notice. He had homed in on Piper. She swallowed hard as her heart rate kicked up.
He was in a suit. No tie, of course—it was probably in his pocket. It was a dark navy blue. The button-down shirt under it was crisp white and unbuttoned at the collar. He looked hot and in charge and… on a mission.
Oh boy… She pivoted back to face Drew at their tiny round table.
“You don’t have to leave,” she said quickly.
For some reason, she kind of wanted someone with her when she talked to Ollie for the first time in over a week.
She’d never felt that way before. From the first day she’d met him, she’d been perfectly comfortable with Ollie, in every situation, whether they were alone or not. Sure, she felt butterflies when he smiled at her in a certain way—when he was fully focused on her and amused or pleased with something she’d just said. Sometimes she felt warmer when watching him squeeze one of his many stress balls with his big, wide hands, or when he licked his lips while eating or drinking, or when he linked his hands behind his neck and his shirt stretched over his abs and chest.
But she’d never felt anxious about being alone with him.
Now she did.
Of course she’d never gone over a week without seeing him at all. And she’d certainly never had a hot, deep, sexy kiss and his hand on her bare butt as the last memory of him.
Now it had been nine days since she’d kicked Ollie out of her hotel room and she’d been thinking about all of that every single day—well, mostly every single night—since then. She could still feel his hand on her ass if she let herself think about it.
She really tried not to do that.
“Oh, I think I do have to leave,” Drew said. “He’s never liked me much and he looks particularly… intent, right now.”
Dammit.
“Stay.”
“Nope.” Drew pushed to his feet. “Hey, Oliver,” he greeted as he pulled his ball cap back on.
“Hey.” Ollie didn’t sound friendly.
Ollie never sounded friendly to Drew. It made Piper roll her eyes every time. He acted jealous. Yet he acted shocked to think that she had feelings for him and clearly the idea of wanting her for something other than her fixing his stupid coffee perfectly—in a way he hadn’t even known about until she’d done it the first time—had never occurred to him.
He’d wanted you during that kiss…
Yeah, okay, so he’d discovered he wanted her. But he didn’t want want her…
She took a deep breath and focused on Drew. “Thanks for breakfast.”
“Of course.” He gave her a grin. “Talk to you later.”
“Oh, you’re leaving?” Ollie asked, pulling Drew’s chair out and sitting down in it before Drew even answered.