Playing Mr. Perfect (The Bradens at Ridgeport #1)

Pepper

Focus , I tell myself for the millionth time Thursday afternoon and stare down at my notes.

Ravi and I have a conference call in twenty minutes with the executives of a major medical supply company to pitch the concept for our migraine device in hopes of securing funding. This meeting has to go well, and I’m definitely not at my best. I haven’t been sleeping well. I can’t stop thinking about Clay, wondering if I made the right decision. Every time I start reading my notes for the pitch, it brings back our last night in Paris, when he had a migraine. It still boggles my mind that he was going to play it off like he wasn’t in horrible pain just so he didn’t disappoint me.

I glance at my phone and tap the screen. It lights up, revealing a few unread messages from my family, but nothing from Clay. It’s been two days since I’ve heard from him, and even though I’m the one who severed that connection, a pang of sadness moves through me. I keep telling myself the longing will pass. It has to. I can’t function like this. I glance at my notes again, trying to concentrate, but it’s Clay’s smiling eyes I see, and in my warped brain, they intensify, the way they did over the weekend when he looked at me like I was all he saw. Nobody has ever looked at me the way he does.