By the time Jared arrived at her place Olivia had managed to calm herself down a little. Enough to admit Luke was maybe a tiny bit right when he’d said she knew he hadn’t meant to try and impose his own will on her as her employer. That wasn’t the kind of guy he was. He had just been frustrated and trying to convince her to do something she wasn’t sure she wanted to—not an easy task by any stretch of the imagination—and she’d had a lot of pent-up frustration and anger to lay on someone… and he’d taken the brunt of it.

She didn’t really feel better though; she’d just traded misery and self-recrimination for frustration and anger.

On the other hand, wasn’t it about time she let herself have a good wallow?

Which was why Jared found her in her pajamas already working on her second glass of chardonnay. He raised his eyebrows as he raked his gaze over her red silk pants and matching button-down shirt but didn’t comment on them. Smart man. Olivia liked her old-fashioned pjs and she was definitely not in the mood to be teased about them.

“Patrick’s a little upset you didn’t text him when you left Marquis,” he said instead, entering her apartment and immediately making the entire place feel smaller. Jared was the tallest, broadest shouldered, just overall biggest of her friends and he took up a lot of space. He was just a big teddy bear though for the most part.

“Tell me something I don’t know,” she muttered, having already ignored multiple texts from Patrick. She’d sent him back one—I’m home and I’m fine’—and he didn’t need more than that. Dammit.

“So what’s going on?” Jared asked, heading for the kitchen like he lived there. After being friends for so long they didn’t really stand on ceremony and tended to treat each other’s places like they lived there. The whole group was like that actually.

“Luke.”

“I thought we liked Luke.”

“We did.” Olivia scowled as Jared poured himself a glass of wine. She wasn’t scowling at him though. Just at the situation. “Do. I think. I don’t know. I’m still mad at him right now, but not so mad I won’t get past it. Eventually. Probably. But right now I’m mad.”

“Makes sense,” Jared said amiably. He leaned his hip against the counter looking at her. “So Luke sucks.”

“Good boy.”

The look he gave her said she wouldn’t have gotten away with calling him that if he wasn’t feeling at least a little bit sorry for her right now.

Worth it.

“So what happened?” Adam asked, settling down across the table from Luke.