Total pages in book: 49
Estimated words: 46792 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 234(@200wpm)___ 187(@250wpm)___ 156(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 46792 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 234(@200wpm)___ 187(@250wpm)___ 156(@300wpm)
“Hey, you okay?” she says in answer.
“No,” I whisper-hiss, leaning my back against the stall door. “The client I’m meeting with wants to date me and he’s a lot older than me and why am I so awkward?”
“Hang on.” She moves the phone away from her mouth. “Hey Zee, keep an eye on the boys for me. I’ll be back.”
“He’s an engineer. I said I’d have coffee with him.”
I hear a door close on her end. “Okay, so you like him, then.”
“I have no idea. I’ve never thought of him in a romantic way.”
“Oh.” There’s a frown in her voice. “Then why did you say yes?”
“The company he works for is a huge client of the firm. I don’t want to offend him.”
She scoff-laughs. “You can’t date him just so you don’t offend him.”
“I mean...I don’t know if I like him. Maybe I do? Or would if I tried? He seems like a nice guy.”
A few seconds of silence pass.
“Tess? Are you there?”
“Yeah, I’m here.”
“And?”
“I don’t know. You sound more panicked than happy.”
“Because I am panicked. I didn’t see this coming.”
She laughs lightly. “Didn’t you say he made a reservation at Sophia?”
I groan. “I don’t know shit about fancy places, you know that.”
“Okay, my advice is to relax. It’s going to be okay.”
A woman in a stall next to me grunts and I side-eye the wall between our two stalls, lowering my voice even more. “You think so?”
“You’ll have coffee with him and see what you think of him in a nonwork setting.”
“Okay.” I breathe in and out, steadying myself. “I should get back.”
“Sneak a picture of him and send it to me.”
“Absolutely not.”
“Come on.”
“I have to go.”
“Wait! Have you talked to Rowan?”
I furrow my brow, confused. “No. I told you he sent flowers, I texted him and he never responded.”
“Oh.” She sounds disappointed. “Is the engineer as hot as he is?”
I roll my eyes. “Is anyone?”
“Well...Dom.”
“I have to go.”
“Okay, you can catch me up on everything that happens when you get here.”
That’s exactly what I won’t feel like doing after a long evening of work. I’ll just want to pick the boys up and get them home to bed.
“Nothing’s going to happen. This is just a meeting. I’m hanging up now before he thinks I climbed out the bathroom window.”
I end the call and put my phone back in my bag. After a quick check of my reflection in the mirror, I leave the bathroom and go back to the table.
When I pull back the curtain covering our table and step inside, I see that Harrison has taken off his tie and undone the top two buttons on his shirt.
Two. Not just one. The dark tuft poking up from where the second button was opened is my first encounter with a client’s chest hair.
There’s also another bottle of wine on the table. I hide my alarm and sit back down.
“Okay, back to the contract.”
“Don’t you like the wine?” Harrison asks.
“I do. It’s delicious. But I need to be able to concentrate.”
He nods. “I understand. We won’t have to worry about work getting in the way next time.”
My blood pressure cannot be good right now. I’m sweating and my heart is beating rapid-fire. It’s not like the nervousness I felt with Rowan. This is more of a what the hell am I going to do kind of thing.
I need my job. And I need to keep a good working relationship with the Sundrift employees I work with. How can I do that with Harrison now?
Whether we decide to date each other or not, I have a feeling this is going to end badly for me.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Rowan
“Really?” I glare at Dom, who’s pounding the buttons on his PS5 controller from the other end of the couch in his game room. “Was it necessary to set me on fire and blow me up?”
He shrugs. “That was for Cam, doucher.”
“Why? What did I do to Cam?”
Another shrug. Classic Dom—he has no idea what’s going on, but he assumes he does.
I roll my eyes. “I sent flowers to her office. She told me she just wanted to be friends. You’re pissed off at me, but I’m the one who got rejected.”
He glances at me, brightening. “No shit?”
“Yeah, no shit.”
He hums as if just figuring something out. “I guess that tracks. Sorry I blew you up.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“In the game. I just--”
“Not that, dumbass. The other part.”
“Oh. Cam’s seeing some other guy now. She met him through her job.”
My heart drops into my stomach. “What the fuck do you mean she’s seeing some other guy? What guy? When did this happen?”
The game ends and he sets his controller down on the couch cushion next to him. “Recently, I think. She called Tess a few nights ago when she was out at dinner with him.”