“You weren’t a bad boss” she said, probably in an attempt to appease me. “But you were sort of a terror about having your shit just so, and not very forthcoming in the thank-yous...and I have people pleaser issues, which made it doubly aggravating.” She shrugged in a “what are you going to do” gesture. “It’s going to take time to wean myself off reacting whenever you look unhappy or asking you what you need.”

“I haven’t asked you for a single thing, Alba,” I reminded her and then immediately regretted it.

“I realize that, Theo,” she said with clear exasperation. “But you aren’t supposed to be here at all. You wedged yourself into my new job for some unfathomable reason, and now I have to...” She clamped her jaw shut and pushed the door open. “You know what? Never mind. This room is fine. I’ll see you at dinner.”

She slammed the bedroom door in my face.

Chapter Nine

Alba

Whether my cheapness would end up biting me in the ass for coming to the penthouse instead of getting a hotel was yet to be seen, but I could not deny my new digs were extremely nice. And so far Theo was respecting my boundaries. Since I’d locked myself in my room to unpack, he had not come to mess with me once. All in all my arrival had gone better than I’d expected.

I still couldn’t figure out what Theo’s end game was. Maybe it was a pride thing. I told him he didn’t have anything that could bring me back and this was his way of proving me wrong. He was enough of a headass to do something super extra to make a point. But that would mean I was important enough for him to bother with all this, which I knew couldn’t be it. He had been flirting pretty shamelessly with me, but maybe that was because he could now that he wasn’t my boss. It’s not like I didn’t think I could pull a guy like Theo. But he was way too controlled to spend this much time and effort just to fuck around. It had to be the Valle Mar thing, and finally proving himself to his father.

Still, none of that explained the personality transplant I’d witnessed since he’d shown up in Texas. Walking around shirtless and grinning all the damn time...joking about my music tastes, wearing jeans. That shit I could not actually explain or honestly handle for very long. Dallas Theo was a conundrum, a mystery. A sexy-as-fuck mystery who seemed weirdly invested in making me food and coffee.

“Yo, it’s us!” Julia shouted on the other side of the door, blessedly pulling me out of my Theo ruminations.