All Chapters of My New Boss Is the Man I Had a One-Night Stand With: Chapter 11 - Chapter 20

"I really shouldn't—""Stop." Maya's hand shot out the BMW window, phone first. "Put your number in. I'm not asking twice."Sloane took the phone. Typed. Handed it back."Tonight. I'll text you the address." Maya's grin was wide and unapologetic. "You just got back to Chicago. You need this." The window rolled up. The car pulled away.Sloane stood on Michigan Avenue holding nothing, committed to something she already regretted.The Velvet Room was exactly the kind of bar that made Sloane's chest tighten the moment she walked through the door — dark lighting, expensive liquor, bass thudding through the floor like a second heartbeat. Beautiful people doing beautiful damage to themselves under colored lights.The last time she'd walked into a bar like this, she'd walked out carrying six lives she hadn't planned for.Don't think about that."Sloane! Over here!"Maya waved from a

"I really can't — I shouldn't just show up to someone's birthday after years of—""Stop." Maya's arm was already out the window, phone extended. "Number. Now."Sloane took the phone. Typed. Handed it back. That was apparently that."Tonight. I'll text you." Maya's grin was wide and bright and slightly dangerous. "You're back in Chicago. You need this, trust me." The window rolled up. The BMW pulled into traffic. Gone.Sloane stood on the sidewalk, staring at nothing, already regretting every single one of her life choices.The Velvet Room was exactly the kind of place that cost forty dollars for sparkling water and charged you for the air. Dark velvet walls. Amber lighting that made everyone look gorgeous and slightly guilty. Music that pulsed through the floor and into your bloodstream whether you wanted it to or not.Sloane smoothed her denim skirt and walked in.The last time she'd walked into a

Something was wrong with this conversation.Everyone at the table could feel it — the strange charge in the air, the way Declan Pierce was looking at Sloane like she was the only person in the room, like Maya and Tyler and all the birthday candles and cocktail glasses had simply ceased to exist.Tyler felt it too. His jaw tightened. His eyes cut to Sloane's face with something sharp and unreadable burning behind them.Maya, never one to leave well enough alone, stepped forward with her most dazzling smile. "Mr. Pierce — do you actually know Sloane?"Declan didn't look at Maya.He looked at Sloane."A place like this," he said quietly, his voice dropping low enough that only she could catch every word, "isn't somewhere you belong."Sloane's breath hitched.What does that mean? What was he — was that a threat? Was he angry? She'd just used his name as a human shield in front of his own brother,

Two hundred dollars.Sloane stared at the price tag on the panda puppet and did the math she already knew she didn't want to do. Six kids. One toy. Five more disasters waiting to happen if she walked out of this store with a panda for Jax and nothing for anyone else.She gritted her teeth and bought it.And then — because the universe had a standing policy of finishing what it started — she bought five more things.Cole got a plastic gun that made genuinely alarming sound effects. He held it up like a trophy and immediately aimed it at a mannequin.Jax clutched his panda to his chest with both arms and refused to put it down for the rest of the afternoon, narrating its adventures to anyone who would listen.Cassidy and Juliet picked matching kites — pink and silver — and spent the walk to the next store debating whose was superior.Ava chose a plastic ring set that she immediately distributed among her fingers

Two o'clock. Not a second late. Not a second early.Sloane stood outside Declan Pierce's office door and gave herself exactly three seconds to fall apart — the racing pulse, the cold hands, the very specific terror of a woman hiding six children from the most powerful man in Chicago — and then she knocked."Come in."Two words. Low, magnetic, inevitable. She felt them in her sternum.She pushed the door open.The office was vast — all dark wood and floor-to-ceiling glass, the Chicago skyline spreading out behind him like a kingdom he'd personally arranged. Declan stood with his back to her, hands clasped, silhouetted against the light in a way that made him look less like a man and more like something carved from the city itself.The air felt thick. Pressurized. Like walking into a room where a decision had already been made.Sloane walked forward until she reached a reasonable distance from his desk. Stoppe