Boss I Love to Hate An Office Romance - Mia Kayla Page 0,3

drink. I had purposely remembered to pace myself.

I averted my gaze, disappointment seeping deep into my skin. I had known this night would come. I was hoping it wouldn’t, but it had with the previous girls I dated. Like clockwork, after sex, I lost interest. Not because the sex was bad. It was good, as all orgasms were, but that closeness I had been hoping for—that familiarity—wasn’t there.

This was our sixth date. I’d thought dragging it on would be sweeter, and we’d have more of a connection, but I guessed not.

It wasn’t only Olivia’s red hair and deep brown eyes that had caught my attention; it was also her sharp wit and intelligent, investment banker self. Now, her red hair had lost its sparkle, and her brown eyes, which had once seemed endless and deep, were now shallow. I’d spent time getting to know her, wanting to know her, yet something else was missing.

She pulled the sheets to cover her breasts and sat up straighter on the bed. “Are you really doing this right now, Brad?” Her once-strong tone turned whiny.

This was the part I hated, but honesty was better than leading her on.

“I really do have to get to work early.” I walked closer to the bed and sat at the edge, finishing off the last button. “You are welcome to stay till the morning. Breakfast will be delivered.” I took in her tousled red hair, her once-piercing brown eyes … but there was nothing. No spark. No sudden urge to kiss her. Only an unbearable itch underneath my skin to get up, leave, and shower again at home.

“You’re not going to call me.” Her tone was resolute, soft, her high-pitched, trying-to-be-cute voice gone.

This was better than the previous psycho woman who had destroyed the hotel room when I left, but it still sucked.

I sighed resolutely, trying to add some feeling into it. “You’re way too good for me, Olivia. I’m too busy, I would never pay you any attention, and I’m an asshole.”

All of this was true, but really, she wasn’t the right girl for me. Maybe I was looking for something that didn’t exist. My parents had been married thirty-five years, and when my father had met my mother, he said he had known. It was in the way she’d made him laugh. He’d just known that she was it for him. I knew Olivia wasn’t it. And the woman before her hadn’t been it and the woman before that.

Will I eventually find someone I want to be with? What if it isn’t in the cards for me—to have what Charles or my parents had?

My gut clenched at the thought.

She leaned into me and rested her head on my shoulder, and I resisted the urge to cringe.

“But, if you change your mind, you will call me, right?”

“Of course.” I forced an even smoothness in my tone, knowing I wouldn’t, and I kissed her forehead one last time before standing up to leave. Relief flooded me once I was out of the hotel.

I hopped into my Aston Martin and headed home to the suburbs. I didn’t want to sleep alone tonight, not at my condo in the city. That wasn’t where I called home anyway.

As I drove and the city lights disappeared behind me, my shoulders slumped. I should’ve felt energized. Olivia was a freak in the bedroom, but all I felt was fatigue in my bones and an undeniable desire to knock out on my bed. All this work when dating—the wining and dining and the sex—was tiring. I didn’t mind the sex, but it seemed as though I were on the hamster wheel of dating. I’d pick a girl, repeat the cycle, and hope that it was different this time, that I’d like a girl long enough to keep her. But finding her hasn’t happened yet and round and round the cycle I went.

I hated when my brothers were right, and they were; I was already tired of the game.

I waved at the guard at our palatial estate to open the gates and drove up the winding road to the mansion that my parents had built and expanded over the years.

Thinking of not having them here anymore always sent an ache to my chest, an unbearable tightness in my lungs. It was almost four years ago, and it seemed as though tragedy had hit us one after the other during that time.

Charles’s wife, Natalie, had died when giving birth, leaving him to raise two girls by