Chapter Six
Blake
Seriously?
I couldn’t believe it was her.
I’d purposely avoided Scooter’s in order to avoid running into her , yet here she was, Scooter’s Amy, standing in front of me in the 6:30 a.m. line at Peet’s Coffee.
Wonderful.
She hadn’t noticed me yet, thank God, so I kept my eyes on my phone in hopes of keeping that whole invisibility thing going. I’d just finished my run and wanted to take a coffee home with me while I showered and got ready for work, but she looked ready for work already.
High heels, sleek ponytail, black laptop bag.
On a side note, why would she be going in so early on her second day? I knew Pam rarely showed up before nine, so the only thing she could be doing with a two-hour head start was shopping for shoes while attempting to appear hardworking.
Which was on-brand for the person I thought she probably was.
She did smell really fucking good, though; I’d give her that. Whatever scent she wore wasn’t too flowery, wasn’t too sweet, yet smelled like something I wanted to hyperventilate on.
I kept my eyes trained on my inbox until she ordered.
“Can I please get a large mocha?” she asked.
No latte today, Amy?
“Sure,” the barista said. “What’s the name on the order?”
I don’t know what came over me, but I couldn’t stop myself from saying, “It’s Amy, isn’t it?”
That ponytail whipped around so quickly I nearly lost an eye. She blinked in surprise, looked down at my crappy running clothes, and then returned her gaze to the smiling woman behind the counter. “It’s Izzy, actually.”
I instantly regretted saying anything, because I had zero desire to talk to her, but apparently my petty side had a mind of its own.
“And he will have…” She turned and looked at me with raised eyebrows.
“What?”
She pointed her wallet at me and gave me a fake smile. “I’m buying you a coffee—what do you want?”
I glanced past her, and the barista was watching me with her eyebrows up, as well, waiting for my order.
“No, thank you,” I said, a little thrown by the offer.
“Aren’t you here for coffee?” Izzy asked, her eyebrows dropping and scrunching together in confusion.
“Well, yes, but I can get it.” I cleared my throat and said, “Thanks, though.”
She tilted her head and looked at me like I was the world’s biggest asshole. “You won’t accept a coffee from me?”
“It’s not like that,” I said defensively, mostly because she was watching me like I’d just delivered the world’s nastiest insult.
“You just enjoy paying, is that it?” she said, and I think she was being funny but I couldn’t quite tell. “You prefer to part with your money instead of just politely taking coffee from someone who wants to apologize to you?”
I couldn’t let someone on my team spend money on me, so I said, “You can’t apologize by buying me coffee—”
“So that’s a no, then?” she interrupted, her smart-ass smile disappearing as she glanced at the line behind me.
“It’s not appropriate for me to accept a coffee from you,” I corrected quietly, gritting my teeth to hold back the irritation in my voice. “But I appreciate the thought.”
“Sure you do,” she muttered under her breath, turning away from me. Her voice was rich with sarcasm when she said, “I guess it’s just the one coffee, then.”
She paid and moved to the other end of the counter to wait for her drink, and it occurred to me that I was going to have to do the same. I was going to have to stand beside her while we both waited for our coffees.
“What can I get for you ?” the barista said, looking at me like I’d just done something atrocious.
I glanced over at my newest employee, who was staring at the ground with pink cheeks, and I decided to save us both.
“Uh, I think I’m going to hold off,” I said. “Thanks, though.”
I turned and headed for the exit, moving as fast as my legs would take me.
I was going to Scooter’s, damn it.
Izzy
Well, that went well , I thought as I watched him exit the coffee shop.
I’d gone through the five stages of mortification as soon as he’d walked into Peet’s, I swear to God.
Stage 1: Oh, God, please don’t see me.
Stage 2: Oh, he’s mocking me to the barista. How fantastic.
Stage 3: Be the bigger person and apologize.
Stage 4: He’s refusing my apology, holy shitballs.
Stage 5: Be defensive and awkward as hell.
I was glad he left, because I wouldn’t have been capable of not acting like an absolute sketch ball while we waited for our drinks together, but now I was more nervous than ever about going to work.
Because that man was definitely going to fire me.
I mean, when I offered to buy him a coffee, he looked at me like he was a father staring at his most disappointing child, like my mere existence was taxing to his Zen or something.
I wanted to scream, All I did was snag a drink, you dick , but that definitely wasn’t going to help my situation. But it was hard to believe that the coffee was it, the only thing that’d changed him from a flirtatious, charming stranger to the glaring executive who seemed to hate me on sight.
I mean, aside from my snarkiness after the fact, but that’d been after the fact, so I didn’t think it counted.
I walked to the Ellis building and went straight to my office, because I had a lot of work I wanted to tackle before Pam got there. I wanted to read the employee handbook, log in to the HR software to get my bearings, and memorize the building layout so I didn’t get off on an incorrect floor and look like a noob.
My employment at Ellis might be precarious, but until Blake Phillips fired me, I was going to give it my all.
···
“This isn’t something you’ll normally be involved in, but since you’re shadowing me, it’s your lucky day.”
I grabbed a notepad and my coffee before following Pam toward the conference room. “Boring?”
“If you make it to lunch without nodding off,” she said, giving me a look, “I’ll be surprised.”
I wasn’t looking forward to sitting through a boring meeting, but I was a little interested in the process. It was the annual benefit renewal strategy session, where our current insurance provider would be pitching its plan for the upcoming year, which Pam would in turn pitch to Ellis’s board of directors, who would ultimately make all the decisions.
Exciting? No. Interesting? I kind of thought yes, but I’d always been into administrative red tape; as a kid, Businesswoman with Many Files was my absolute favorite game of pretend.
Pam introduced me to the broker, Kelli, before we took our seats around the huge conference table. We were early, so Pam chatted with people as they filtered in while I doodled on my notepad.
Just before the meeting was about to begin, I heard his voice. He was talking quietly, but my ears definitely picked up the Blake in the room, and it took every bit of discipline I had not to turn and look toward the doorway.
Kelli launched into her presentation, projecting slide after slide of cost analysis and comparisons of what the plan had cost the year before. I took copious notes at first, but after a couple hours, I lost my verve and switched to mere listening.
Just when my eyes were getting heavy, a question came from the other end of the conference table.
“Do those numbers reflect the midyear change to the 505? I didn’t see that in the data.”
Since everyone looked at the speaker, I allowed my eyes to seek him out. I turned my head toward Blake’s voice, and my stomach dropped when I looked at him.
What was he, the freaking king? He was sitting in a conference chair, just like everyone else, but there was something about him that just screamed LEADER. Maybe it was his posture, the superhero-esque girth of his stupendous chest, or the arrogant hawklike intelligence in his stare; I didn’t know what “it” was, exactly, but the man had an aura of power.
He was dressed impeccably, like yesterday—perfect suit (charcoal this time), pressed shirt, tie—but he was wearing glasses today. A pair of stylish frames sat atop his strong nose, making him look like the most intelligent human hottie in the cosmos. He looked smart and so attractive that I wondered how many women in that room were fantasizing about him that very minute.
I would guess all of them.
As if hearing my thoughts, he locked his eyes on mine. Kelli answered his question, and he appeared to be listening, but his eyes were just a little to the left of Kelli’s location, wholly focused on me while his jaw did that little flex-unflex thing.
Yes, I know you hate me—no need to give me the flex.
I rolled in my lips and met his gaze, lifting my chin a little just to make sure he didn’t think he intimidated me. It was mind-blowing that this man had seemed kind of into me twenty-four hours ago when all I got from him today was supreme irritation.
“Does that answer your question, Blake?” Kelli asked.
He gave a nod. “Yes. Thank you, Kelli.”
When the meeting finally ended, I followed Pam out the door, wondering how many people were exiting between Blake and me. Was he still lingering in the back of the conference room, discussing data with the people who cared about data, or was he exiting right behind me, his big body mere inches from mine?
A tiny shiver slithered down my spine at the thought, which was ludicrous. Get a grip, Iz , I thought as I headed back toward my office. Unfortunately, the tie on the back of my straitjacket sweater caught on the door hinge, jerking me backward.
“Gah!” I looked down at where I was connected to the door just as Blake was approaching the doorway, talking to two other executives. No, no, no. I looked over my shoulder, reaching a hand around to untether myself as quickly as humanly possible.
“Izzy?” Pam said, stopping and turning around.
Blake and his cohorts reached the doorway at that moment, and I watched his eyes absorb my situation in a split second. Please kill me. Just let me die of embarrassment this very minute.
He almost looked like he was going to smile—almost—before he said, “Hang on.”
He stepped closer, his cologne swirling around my sensibilities like some kind of olfactory roofie, before he said, “Looks like you’re stuck.”
Does it? Gee, thanks for the summation, Bloke.
“Little bit,” I said, feeling like the world’s biggest idiot.
“Here.” He unhooked my tie from the hinge in a half second, freeing me.
But I felt all of his fingertips like they were burning my skin through the sweater. The awareness of him that’d existed in the elevator ride yesterday was instantly back.
And it almost felt like his left hand—just the tippiest tips of his fingers—had rested on my lower back for the millisecond it’d taken for him to disengage me from the door.
“Thanks,” I said, my cheeks on fire as I met his gaze.
It feels like he’s reading my mind somehow , I thought as his dark eyes moved over my face.
I gave him what I hoped looked like a smile before taking off in the closest thing to a sprint I could manage while wearing three-inch pumps.
The rest of the day was blessedly uneventful, with nary a Blake sighting, and I breathed a sigh of relief. Pam had intimated yesterday that he wasn’t often seen in our department, and I was damn glad to hear it.
Because men like Blake turned women like me into bumbling idiots, and I had no interest in playing that part. Ellis could be a career launchpad for me, a place where I could figure it all out, and I wasn’t about to let AVP Blake screw it up for me.