CHAPTER 32 DELILAH #2
Maggie barks out a laugh. “Yes, those two things were not conditional upon each other.” She reaches back into her top desk drawer and pulls out an envelope, tossing it across to Jackson. It hits him in the middle of his chest. “Congratulations. You’ve been promoted.”
Aiden suddenly appears in the doorway, wielding a long, narrow tube. He twists the bottom and confetti explodes in the tiny office. A surprised laugh bursts out of me. Jackson flinches so hard he drops his envelope.
“Aiden,” Maggie sighs. “I said no confetti.”
“I never received that email,” he deadpans, tiny bits of colored paper stuck to his hair. With his sharp features and severe expression, the contrast is striking.
“I didn’t send it in an email, I said it to your face. A half hour ago.”
Behind me, Jackson is trying to wipe glitter off his glasses. “Were you standing outside the office this whole time?”
“Sure was. Found the confetti canons in Hughie’s stash of questionable office supplies and thought they’d come in handy.
” He reaches behind his back and pulls out another tube.
A quick twist of his wrist and more colored paper explodes everywhere.
I grin at Jackson as the color swirls around us, hot pink paper stuck in his hair.
I am of the firm belief that every meeting should start and end with confetti.
“Well,” Maggie says, sounding thoroughly done with everything. “As fun as this has been, I’d like you all to leave my office now.”
“Happily.” Jackson curls his fingers around my elbow and tries to march me bodily from the room. “Do you still have time for lunch?” he asks, his eyes bordering on desperate.
I grab his hand and twist, glancing at his watch. Disappointment settles like those little flecks of paper. “I have to be in Canton in a half hour.”
“And you”—Aiden pokes at Jackson with an empty cardboard tube—“are due in the booth.”
Jackson frowns at him over my head. “For what?”
“A meeting.”
“Since when?”
Aiden looks like he’s having the time of his life. “Since ten minutes ago.”
Jackson’s sigh is weary. I find his hand and squeeze. “It was easier in the mountains, wasn’t it?” I whisper.
Jackson squeezes back. “For so many reasons.”
It feels like it’s been one obstacle after the other since Jackson crawled into my bed and put his mouth against my skin. I got a taste of him, and now the universe is dangling the promise of it just out of reach.
I’m frustrated. A little bit sad. Confused.
“Walk me out?” I ask, doing my best to pack it away. We’ll have time, I reassure myself. He wants to figure it out too. All of this is still so new. I shouldn’t make assumptions when Jackson has proven time and time again that he shows up when it’s important.
Jackson nods.
But our escape from the office is delayed by the sudden appearance of an immaculately dressed man in the threshold, one hand curled around the edge of the doorframe.
He either doesn’t see us trying to leave, or doesn’t care much about holding us hostage, his attention fixed firmly on Maggie at her desk, still covered with tiny flecks of gold glitter, yellow and pink paper in her blunt bob.
Her face darkens when she sees him. He grins.
“Hello, Margaret.” He glances around the crowded office. “This looks festive.”
His dark hair is combed neatly back, his suit tailored within an inch of its life. He doesn’t look like he belongs in a moderately run-down but delightfully charming local radio station. He looks like he should be smoking a cigar in a dimly lit room. Maybe tying someone to a bedpost.
Sharp, blue eyes. A devious tilt to his mouth. His grin settles into a smirk, forcing a divot to appear in his cheek.
Jesus.
Maggie’s eyes narrow. If looks could kill, the stranger would be dust in the hallway, floating merrily to the ground like the paper from one of Aiden’s confetti cannons.
“How did you get in here?”
The other three people in this office might as well not exist. Maggie and the stranger are two sharpshooters in a spaghetti western, staring each other down along an abandoned stretch of roadway.
“I walked through the front door,” he says, thoroughly amused.
“Why? Have you had security installed since the last time I visited your little hovel?” He glances up at the ceiling in distaste.
Specifically, at the pieces of confetti that have wedged themselves into one of the air ducts.
“Are we celebrating something? Perhaps you received the sponsorship of that fried chicken place your hosts won’t stop droning on about.
” Aiden makes an offended sound. “A new desk chair?”
Maggie’s eyes narrow to slits. “Maybe we’re celebrating your completely accidental and easily explained demise.”
“Woah,” Jackson mutters.
But the man just laughs, rapping his knuckles against the doorframe. “Lovely as that sounds, it’s not quite time for you to pop the bubbly on that milestone.” He beckons her forward with two fingers. “Come, Margaret. We have reservations.”
A disbelieving laugh sputters out of her. “I’m not going anywhere with you.”
“Of course you are.”
“I’m not.”
“You are,” he says again, voice sharpening.
“Unless you’d like to explain to your executive team that keeps the power on in this little shack why you turned down a personal invitation to a brainstorming session from Orion.
Six times in a row.” He levels her with a look.
“This is what happens when you stop answering your phone, Margaret. I magically appear.”
“Like Beetlejuice,” she mutters.
“Please. I’m much better dressed.” He pushes off the doorway and strides down the hall. “Let’s go,” he shouts over his shoulder.
Maggie seethes silently.
Aiden scratches at his jaw. “Is that—”
“Cooper West? Yes.”
“The acquisitions guy?”
Maggie squeezes her eyes shut. “Yes, the vice president of acquisitions for Orion,” she grinds out.
“Fuck my life,” she adds in a whisper. She gives herself another second of silent meditation, then grabs her wool coat and tosses it over her arm.
“If I’m not back in an hour, one of us has murdered the other. ”
She brushes past us to the hallway. I can hear the click of her heels against the floor. Cooper’s voice, lazily asking—
“Should I drive, or shall we humble ourselves with public transportation?”
“Shut up.”
“I could—”
“I said, shut up.”
A door slams. The walls rattle. Silence descends. Confetti blows across the floor like a multicolored tumbleweed, and the three of us stand unmoving in Maggie’s abandoned office.
“Is it . . . always this exciting over here?”
Aiden tosses his confetti canons into the waste bin. “I’d like to say no, but I think that would be a lie.” He claps Jackson on the shoulder. “Come on. You have a poorly disguised interrogation to attend.”
Jackson gives me a faintly pleading look. I laugh and swipe some of the glitter off his glasses, then abruptly drop my hand. I don’t know what he does and doesn’t want from me when we’re in front of other people.
I tuck my hands behind my back, twist my fingers together, and try not to feel embarrassed.
Jackson frowns.
“I’ll see you later?” I ask. But I’m already moving toward the door.
“Yeah, of course you will. But, Delilah, listen—”
I slip out of the office before he can finish that sentence, fixing a smile on my face. I’m not sure I want to hear what he has to say right now. The more I prolong the conversation where he has to let me down gently, the better.
Just keep smiling, I say to myself as I turn and walk away.
You’re almost there.
A few more minutes.
Just keep smiling.