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I PASSED TOM IN THE hall and we brushed against one another as we passed. Electricity ran down my spine. He told me how busy he was today, so I wondered if that would be the only touch I’d get.
Considering the rather explosive presentation the previous morning, the next day at work was relatively normal. Or at least...as normal as things could get at Larchwood.
Kiev and Mariska came flying in at around eleven, high on the adrenaline of a fresh kill. It was indescribably creepy to watch how their eyes actually dilated when talking about demolishing someone in court. Mariska said with a laugh (these two didn’t really laugh, it was more like a glitching, robot sound) how she thought she might have gotten the man’s tears on her jacket. “We’ll sue him for dry cleaning,” Kiev responded dryly. And just like that, the office joke for the day was started. Anybody have a problem? Sue him for dry cleaning.
Pia Montera, the head of Global Investment Research, went into some sort of lactose intolerant triggered rant about silver mines in Poland, and by lunch, the entire firm knew to stay out of her way. My own supervisor, Patti Macer, had just made an uncharacteristically selfish purchase and was gleefully showing anyone who ventured close enough about a million pictures of her new dog. And Mr. Trask? Well I was actually playing a little game with myself where I counted how many times in an hour he wandered out of his office and ‘discreetly’ checked to see what Rosalie was doing. It had gotten up to seven times by one o’clock. I was hoping by two, we could break the record.
“Jenna?” Rose poked her head in and I jumped in my chair.
“If you’ve come to command me to look at that Beagle puppy again, I can’t. There is actual work to do, and I’m developing serious dog-envy.”
She laughed lightly. “Nope—just wanted to know if you wanted to come and take a look at...” she tapped an escalating drumbeat on the door, “my new office!”
“Oh, absolutely!” I got to my feet. “Where did they end up putting you? You’re not next to Bagelle, are you? Because he dozes off in the early afternoon and that man can snore!”
“Gosh, I hope not.” She shuddered. “And truth be told, this place is way smaller compared to my last office, but hey—it’s only temporary, right? I’ll take advantage while I can!”
I chuckled. “You are such a freaking snob, how are we even friends?”
She smiled brightly. “Because you’re a snob too, Jenna.”
We were still chuckling as I followed her out to the hall, but the second I’d gotten through the door, my intercom buzzed and I had to double back.
“Harks,” I said in a professional monotone, raising one finger to get Rose to wait.
‘I’ll meet you’ she mouthed and headed off down the hall. Much to my surprise (and slight disappointment), it wasn’t Tom who was on the other end, but Jamie.
“Hey, Jenna—I need to talk to you for a minute. It’s kind of important, can you come to my office?”
My hand tightened around the phone reflexively as a familiar wave of adrenaline hit my veins like a drug. It had been that intern, hadn’t it?! Jackson or Jason, or whatever his stupid name was. After all this time, all this careful planning, we’d finally been caught. It was only a matter of time, really. What had we been thinking?! What had I been thinking! Throwing away an opportunity like this for a man?
I breathed in through my nose and out through my mouth, willing myself to calm down. If anyone had to find out, maybe it was best that it was Jamie. Jamie could be reasoned with. Over the last few weeks, we’d struck up a surprisingly fast friendship. He was the one who got me in the door, after all—covering for my lie on the first day. Maybe, just maybe, he could find it in his heart to give me a second chance and look the other way.
“Um, yeah, of course,” I answered breathlessly. “I’ll be right there.”
I crossed the thirty yards from my office to his as if I was floating instead of walking. All my extremities had gone numb. From my fingertips to my toes. Maybe my heart was literally skipping so much that it had affected my circulation...? I started pinching the tops of my hands with a nervous frown as I pushed open the door.
Jamie was sitting behind his desk, but he looked up anxiously as I came inside. His eyes had that same haunted look they’d gotten when the Nicks lost to the Pistons, and his face was stiff with tension.
“Can you, uh,” he cleared his throat gruffly, “can you shut the door?”
Whatever blood was still managing to color my face drained dead away as I forced myself to nod. “Of—of course.” I went through the motions mechanically and sank down onto a chair with a feeling of utmost dread. No, this wasn’t going to be good at all... “So,” I tried to make my voice at least a little normal, “what’s up, Jamie?”
His eyes fixed on me for what felt like a very long time, before he finally took a deep breath. “I need to talk to you about...relationships. Uh,” he looked highly embarrassed and uncomfortable to continue, “romantic relationships...”
Oh my gosh.
Should I be going to get Tom? Should I be calling my lawyer? Did I have a lawyer? Or would Kiev and Mariska automatically represent the firm? My ankles started shaking in my chair as I imagined going up against them in a court of law. I couldn’t imagine going up against them in the hallway...
“The office is not the place for this,” Jamie emphasized each word carefully, “I think we both know that. But...”
He took another deep breath, and I actually closed my eyes.
“How do you know when it’s the right time to propose to someone?”
There was a pause.
My eyes slowly opened, and I stared incredulously across the desk. “How do you know when...?” I couldn’t make sense of what he was trying to say, my brain had temporarily frozen.
“When it’s time to propose,” he finished in a rush. Before I could say anything, he dropped his head to the desk in an uncharacteristically unguarded moment. “Jenna, I’m over my head here. I don’t know what to do.”
“To Stacy,” I said with sudden understanding. “You’re talking about Stacy?”
He looked up sarcastically. “No, the Easter bunny. Yes—Stacy! I just...I don’t...”
Much to his surprise, I burst out in sudden, hysterical laughter. He stared in shock as I covered my face and tried to get a handle on myself. My arms and legs flooded back with sudden warmth and feeling and I was grinning so hard I thought my face might crack. When I finally pulled myself together enough to look back up, he was staring back at me rather dryly.
“Glad to know my personal struggles are so amusing to you.”
“Oh no, Jamie, not at all!” I exclaimed, actually coming around the desk to reassure him. “I think it’s amazing about Stacy—I really do! I’m sorry, you just...caught me off guard.”
He sighed. “Well, I didn’t want to call you at all—I know this isn’t really something to discuss at work and I didn’t want to bother you. I just...need a female perspective. We’ve been going out for almost seven years now—”
“Again, this is you and Stacy?” I interrupted cheerfully.
He shook his head. “You’re sharp today, Harks. Yes, me and Stacy. Anyway, it’s been seven years, and we’ve talked about marriage off and on, but we’ve never said anything definitive. And this is coming from a girl who makes plans, you know?”
I nodded seriously, determined to make up for my earlier rude behavior.
“If she wanted to get married...she would have said something, right? Dropped hints or brought it up over dinner or something? I’ve been with her basically since high school—I have no experience with women as a whole—just with her. And I don’t...” He dropped his face into his hands with a frustrated sigh. “I don’t know what to do.”
My heart melted, and I patted him sympathetically on the back. “Well, let me ask you this...why are you talking about it now?”
His face stilled. “Because I want to marry her.”
Just saying the words aloud made him grin, and I answered with a huge smile.
“Then there’s your answer.”
His eyes flashed up nervously. “But what if she isn’t the marrying type? What if—”
“If a girl ‘isn’t the marrying type,’ she says that pretty much within the first month or so of dating. It’s not one of those things you want to get cornered into by surprise. You’ve been with Stacy for seven years. If she didn’t want to get married, she would have said something. If she does...well, then she’s just waiting for you, Jamie.”
He was silent for a few minutes, absorbing this and trying to fit it into the internal narrative warring on inside his head. I watched him with a tiny smile. I liked Jamie—a lot. He was handsome, intelligent, sensitive, and approachable. Just last week, I’d heard a pair of interns giggling and calling him ‘dreamy.’ In fact, if Jamie hadn’t been so happily taken, I might have made some sort of move when I’d first gotten here. But as it stood, we’d fallen into a fast friendship. The kind of thing I leaned on heavily in my first weeks at the company. Truth be told, I was actually rather honored that he’d call on me with this important of a question.
When he was finished thinking, he glanced up with an embarrassed grin. “Thanks, Jenna. I’m sorry for calling—I hope I didn’t interrupt anything important.”
“Are you kidding?” I laughed as I slid off the desk. “You spared me another ‘Beagle viewing’ down the hall.”
He snorted and opened the door for me. “Oh—that’s right. I’m supposed to go over there...”
Even as he spoke the words, Macer poked her head out of her office and motioned for him frantically, holding up a picture on her phone. He held up a finger with a thoughtful frown and mimed a phone call.
“I’m on hold with China,” he whispered loudly.
She nodded feverishly and flashed him a thumbs-up. If there was one thing that trumped even Beagles in Patti Macer’s mind, it was the merger with China.
“Slick,” I complimented. “Do you ever get rid of me like that? I seem to recall you being on the phone with China several times when I needed something.”
“When am I not trying to get rid of you?” he teased, giving me a playful shove. “Get out of here, Harks. And don’t bring your private life into work.”
“Me? Really?” I smiled, heading backward down the hall.
“What do I look like, your counselor?” He grinned and shut his door.
By the time I got back to my own office, Rose was already there waiting for me. The second I saw her, I slapped my forehead. “Sorry Rose, I forgot. Jamie called me in for a second. Let’s go right now—I want to see your office.”
She shrugged. “I’m over it. It really does suck compared to the other one. You’d think that having a ‘corner office’ would mean something, but apparently, not here.”
I blinked. “Wait...they gave you a corner—”
“Anyway, I need a favor. And by favor, I mean, we’re going out—so get your coat.”
I chuckled briefly and grabbed my jacket, wondering if I was going to get any actual work done today. “And where might we be going?” I asked, following her out.
“To lunch with Michael and Thomas Larchwood.”
I stopped dead in my tracks.
“Don’t look at me like that, Jenna. This is for work—strictly professional. If I’m going to work up profiles on these guys, I’m going to have to talk to them at some point.”
“So talk to them,” I said, inching back toward my office. “You don’t need me there.”
She grabbed my arm and pulled me forward. “I do need you there. You know both of them, I don’t. And they’re more likely to relax and be less guarded—giving me the answers I need—if they don’t feel like it’s an interrogation.”
“Well that’s clever, really clever Rose,” I hissed, yanking her toward me, “but if you recall, I have a bit of a...past, with both brothers, so forgive me if I want to skip mimosas.”
“Look,” her face softened infinitesimally, “Michael stole one kiss—and I promise I’m going to get him back for that—and as for Tom? He was a monster, Jen, but it was just a weekend. And you didn’t even sleep with him. And it’s not like there’s anything going on now, and to be perfectly honest, you’re going to have to get used to working with him if you want to keep working here. Which I know you do. So stop making that face.”
She tugged me into the elevator and grinned at my petulant expression.
“I just don’t know how you think you’re going to catch them off their guard by offering them a plate of pasta.”
“Oh, not pasta. Sushi.”
I turned to her quickly. “Tom hates sushi.”
Her face lit up with an evil grin.
“I know that...”