Total pages in book: 105
Estimated words: 102781 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 514(@200wpm)___ 411(@250wpm)___ 343(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 102781 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 514(@200wpm)___ 411(@250wpm)___ 343(@300wpm)
I looked down at the file. Whatever page was on the top was upside down. “Huh?”
He discreetly pointed his eyes in the direction of our assistant, whose desk was in our line of sight down the hall.
Following, my eyes widened “Is that…”
He turned a page in the upside-down file and grinned from ear to ear. “Yup. I think so. I did a drive-by and checked her garbage: two wadded up balls of tinfoil. And our leftovers are missing. I went looking for them to have for lunch, and when she saw me pass by, she smiled like she was on the crazy town bus with Jack Nicholson driving to go fishing.”
I laughed—something I didn’t think I’d do for a while after this morning. “You know what I think?”
“What?”
I shut the folder he was pretending to look at and dropped it into the file cabinet. “I think you’re both nuts.” I slammed the drawer.
He followed me back to my office. “At least when I ate hers, it was a legit accident.”
“Right. You meant to steal from someone else.”
“Exactly.”
I sat down behind my desk. Bennett helped himself to a visitor’s chair. Apparently, he wasn’t leaving.
“Did you bring lunch?”
“No. I forgot it in the fridge at home, actually.”
He picked up a small picture frame on my desk and examined it. It held a picture of mom and me on her wedding day to Matteo. Andrew had taken it. Bennett grinned and set it back down. “My girl looked beautiful.”
I shook my head. Wiseass.
“I had a lunch meeting that canceled. Want to order in and I can show you the new logo concepts I did this morning? I’m in the mood for Greek.”
God, he’d already drawn new logos. I couldn’t afford to be distracted.
“Sure. I’ll take a gyro with the sauce on the side.”
“Great.” He stood. “And I’ll take a falafel with a side order of patates tiganites—those fried potato things.”
“What are you telling me for?”
He jammed his hands into his pockets. “So you can order. The name of the place is Santorini Palace. It’s on Main Street.”
“Me? Why am I ordering? You asked me to order with you.”
He pulled a billfold from his pocket and slipped out two twenties. “I’ll pay. But you have to order.”
“Is ordering beneath you or something?”
He walked to my door. “I went out with the woman who takes the orders a few months ago. Her family owns the place.”
“So?”
“I don’t want her to spit in my food.”
I shook my head. “You’re unbelievable.”
***
“The yellow and black look really good.”
We’d just finished lunch, and Bennett now showed me four different versions of the logo he’d developed this morning based on the sketches we came up with last night. He really was a talented artist. I pointed to the last one. “I like this one the best. The font is crisper.”
“Sold. We’ll move forward with that for our meeting with Jonas on Friday. Did you make any progress on the tagline and ad ideas.”
“I…sort of had a bad morning.”
“Get your head stuck in some other handsome guy’s windshield wiper?”
I smiled half-heartedly. “I wish. I just…I had a rough start to the day.” As if on cue, my phone began to buzz. Andrew flashed on the screen. I stared at it.
After the second ring, Bennett looked at me. “Aren’t you gonna answer that? Andy’s calling.”
“No.”
I’d thought I’d hidden my sadness, but after the phone stopped ringing, Bennett said. “You want to talk about it?”
My eyes jumped to his. His concern seemed genuine. “No. But thank you.”
He nodded and gave me a minute by cleaning up our empty food containers. When he sat back down, he turned over the paper he’d brought in with the logos and started to draw something. “I have an idea for an ad.”
I stared down at the paper the entire time he sketched, lost in thought.
“What do you think?”
I sighed. “I ran into Andrew at the gym this morning with another woman.”
Bennett wrinkled up the paper he’d just sketched on and wadded it into a ball. He leaned back in his chair, stretched his long legs out in front of him, and folded his arms across his chest.
“You just happened to run into him?”
I thought about saying yes, but decided to admit I was a loser. I hung my head and shook it.
“Who was the woman?”
“I don’t know. He didn’t say.”
“What did he say?”
“Not much. He was definitely surprised to see me. I hadn’t gone to the gym in a while since it became awkward seeing him there.”
“And you’re sure they’re a couple?”
I shrugged. “He said they hadn’t come together. I think he saw in my face what it looked like to me—the same way the two of us used to walk into the gym together after spending the night at my place.”
“You said yourself that you could both see other people.”