Chapter 15
Chapter
Fifteen
I wake up the next morning, determined to have a good day if it kills me. Or at least, a better day than yesterday, which really shouldn’t be hard.
Every inch of me aches as I drag myself into the shower, and small wonder. My knees are scraped, and though I can’t see it, I’m pretty sure my butt’s bruised. But after I pop an Advil and do half an hour of yoga, I feel marginally better. I heat up a frozen breakfast burrito, wriggle into my second-favorite pair of jeans and the white, drape-collar top Charlotte bought me for my birthday, do my makeup and tame my hair, and I’m ready to go. Grabbing Donovan’s sweatshirt and my laptop bag, I head out the door.
Don’t think about the monster , I tell myself, and mostly, I manage it, except for the part where I make sure my mace is clipped onto my keychain and there’s no one lurking on the porch or the sidewalk.
Things look up from there. I’m worried my car won’t start, but miracles of miracles, it does. I get a spot right in front of Smashbox, my favorite barista makes me a perfect chai, and Sloth Security recognizes me and lets me right up.
Score: Rune, 4. Fate, 0.
I know I need to find out what that horrible premonition means. I need to call an alarm company and wait to hear what Charlotte discovers. Right now, though, I just want to go to work, like a normal human being.
But ‘normal’ goes out the window when I walk into the office that Donovan and I are supposed to share.
The first thing I notice is that the place is spotless. The desk that must be Donovan’s has a closed laptop, two curved monitors, and absolutely nothing else. No cup of cooling coffee or scattered papers. No framed images of the extraordinarily photogenic Jenny. It’s the desk of a man with an obsessive need for order. Or maybe a control freak.
Shocking, I think as I place his sweatshirt in the middle of it, just to mess with him.
What is actually shocking is the desk on the other side of the room, set at an angle to give whoever sits at it the ideal view of the window that overlooks Orchard Street. On it is arranged, with perfect precision, a Smashbox to-go mug, a vase of asters, a granola bar, and, inexplicably, a small stuffed mouse toy, with a feathered tail.
I’m staring at this bizarre collection of objects when someone clears his throat behind me. I turn to see Donovan standing there, wearing dark-wash jeans that look like they were custom-made for him and a blue button-down that does altogether too good of a job at bringing out his eyes. “Um,” he says. “Hi.”
“Hi,” I say back, feeling oddly self-conscious.
Both of us fall silent, and I heave an internal sigh. If this is going to be the scintillating level of our conversation, it’s going to be a long six months.
“So,” Donovan says, shoving his hands into his pockets, “what do you think?”
I tilt my head, confused by the question. “What do I think? I think that if Robert’s Rules of Order were an object, it would be your desk.”
His face falls, and too late, something occurs to me. Surely not, but?—
I gesture at the vase of asters and its buddies. “Did you do all this? And if so, when?”
Donovan shrugs. “It wasn’t a big deal. You needed a place to work. Facilities said it would be a couple weeks before you could requisition something, and I couldn’t exactly have you sitting on my…” His voice trails off, his face heating like it did at the Grille, and I have to bite my lip to keep from laughing. Weirdly, his gaze tracks to my mouth and lingers. Maybe I have spinach from my breakfast burrito stuck in my teeth? I try to surreptitiously ferret out the offender while Donovan shifts his weight, like he’s uncomfortable about something. And then I process the words that left his mouth.
“Hold on a hot minute. Did you buy me this desk? And everything on it?”
“I’ll get reimbursed,” Donovan says, his tone brusque. “Like I said, you needed to have your own workspace. Efficiency is important, and everything I read said designers need visual inspiration to be at their best. So, I faced the desk toward the window and got some of the same flowers you have in your front yard.”
I don’t know whether to be amused, touched, aggravated, or some combination thereof. “And the mug?”
“Hydration matters. And food,” he says, jerking his chin at the granola bar. “Can’t have you passing out. How will we meet our deadlines then?”
My lips twitch. “I see. And what about the toy? Is that to keep me entertained, so I don’t talk too much and annoy you?”
“Don’t be so egocentric.” He prods at an invisible scuff on the hardwood with the toe of his black Oxford. “That’s for Valentine.”
I narrow my eyes at him, hands on my hips. “What is your obsession with my cat?”
It’s his turn to heave a sigh. “I’m not obsessed. ”
“Tell that to your sweatshirt.” I point at it, befouling the perfect symmetry of his desk, and I swear I can hear him start to decompensate as he strides over and scoops it up, tucking it into a messenger bag hung on a hook beside our office door.
“You can, um, hang your purse there, too, if you want. There are two hooks.”
“Oh, are there really? Thank goodness.”
He rolls his eyes so hard, it’s a wonder they don’t get stuck. “Just give me your laptop, Chaos. We’ve got a lot of work to do.”
“I’m not sure how I feel about that nickname,” I say, handing it over. “I might be tempted to return the favor.”
Settling behind his pristine desk, he opens my laptop and grimaces. “Do your worst,” he mutters, cleaning the screen with a tiny cloth he’s produced from somewhere. “I can’t wait.”
After he proclaims my laptop fit for service, we get stuck in a meeting with Ethan, who, of course, heard about our wreck yesterday through Sapphire Springs’ grapevine. As soon as we assure him that we have, indeed, survived in one piece, he launches into a spiel about how he has to deliver a presentation to our mysterious client tomorrow, and he needs us to start prepping materials for it immediately. We try to ask questions, but Ethan just emails us both links to a Dropbox file, hands me a folder filled with potential branding ideas and Donovan another one stuffed with God knows what, and hustles off down the hall to the lobby, yelling, “Sorry! I have a meeting!” over his shoulder.
Donovan stares after him, then looks at me, nonplussed. “A presentation. Tomorrow.”
“That’s what he said.” I thumb through the papers in the folder, looking from one subpar logo concept to another.
“Without even talking to the client.”
“Guess so.”
“What,” he says, gritting his teeth, “and I don’t say this lightly—the fuck.”
This is how we find ourselves alone at Smashbox nine hours later, when everyone else has gone home for the day. My eyes are bleary from staring at my screen, trying one color combination after another, and based on the muttered obscenities emanating from Donovan’s side of the room, I’m pretty sure he’s not doing much better. I’ve long-since devoured the granola bar and am subsisting on bad break room coffee. Donovan, whose eating habits are as obnoxious as the rest of him, is sipping hot tea. He’s scored an orange from somewhere, but he hasn’t touched it. All he’s done is poke at his keyboard and mutter.
“Won’t Jenny worry about where you are?” I say at last, to break the silence that’s sprung up between us.
He peers at me over the rim of his mug. “Jenny Abruzzo? What do you mean?”
“I mean,” I say, annoyed at having to spell out the obvious, “since you two are dating and all, won’t she be a little upset if you just, like, spend your whole night working at Smashbox with me?” Not that I’m any kind of competition, but still.
Donovan blinks at me owlishly, his dark lashes feathering over his cheekbones. “I’m not dating Jenny.”
Now it’s my turn to blink. “But, yesterday, when we ran into her, you told her you’d see her that night. And you have that sweatshirt with Valentine’s face on it.”
“Because I volunteer at the animal shelter.” He says the words slowly, as if to be sure I understand. “I clean up after-hours, and help them with their website. The sweatshirt was from a fundraiser, like I told you. I got my clothes dirty one day, helping out, and they gave it to me.” Setting his mug of tea down, he points at the stuffed mouse with the feathered tail, now edging perilously close to the edge of my desk. “I got a bunch of toys for the shelter’s cats, and I had a few left over. So I brought one for Valentine. God knows, she’s got her paws full, putting up with you, Chaos.”
The last is said dryly, but I’ve spent enough time with him by now to know that the slight upward tug of his lips indicates amusement. “Very funny. So to recap, you’re a good Samaritan who’s really not dating Sapphire Springs’ one claim to beauty pageantry glory.”
Donovan picks up the orange and begins to peel it, setting the pieces of the rind in a neat pile: one, two, three, four. “I’m not dating anyone,” he says. “To be perfectly clear.”
“Oh,” I say stupidly. “Why not?”
A fifth piece of the peel joins the rest. “I work a lot. How about you? Is there a Mr. Chaos who’s going to be wondering about your whereabouts?”
“Why?” I counter. “Are you wondering whether such a mythical creature could possibly exist?”
“Just curious.” He’s succeeded in denuding the orange of its peel and is methodically separating it into sections. The entire office smells of it, tart and sweet.
“No Mr. Chaos. Mythical or otherwise.”
“Hmmm,” Donovan says, as if weighing this information.
My stomach growls, having apparently decided that a granola bar was an insufficient dinner, and his eyebrows rise. “Hungry?”
“I’m fine,” I start to tell him, but he’s already gotten up and is striding toward me, orange in hand.
“Open up,” he says, to my surprise, and when I do, he slips the segment of orange into my mouth. The pad of his thumb grazes my lip, sending an involuntary shiver through me.
“Can I ask you one more question?” he says, studying my face. “Why did Charlotte call me Sex Spreadsheet Guy?”
I almost choke on my orange. “You heard that?”
“Yep.” He grins at me.
“You are such an…an….ugh!” I shove his shoulder, which is pretty damn muscular for a guy who spends so much time in front of a computer. “And you just let me go on and on with that text spreadsheets nigh bit? What is wrong with you?”
“Me? I don’t think I’m the problem here.” He offers me another piece of orange. “Focus, Chaos. Sex Spreadsheet Guy. Discuss.”
Maybe I never woke up after I passed out last night. Maybe this is a hallucination. I decide to go with that theory, which is my only excuse for what happens next. “Blame Georgia in Marketing,” I say, violating the #1 rule of the sisterhood: Never throw another woman under the bus. “She thinks you have sex according to a color-coded spreadsheet. She’s pretty convinced of it, actually. Because you’re so, you know, organized.” And hot, I think, but mercifully manage to keep to myself.
Donovan blanches. “Holy shit. She…what? Is she friends with Mrs. Grant? Are they part of a cult?”
Despite myself, I snicker. “No cult. Just a lot of free time.”
“Hmmm.” He regards me, his gaze lingering on my mouth again. “How did Georgia come to this conclusion? Did she take a poll?” His eyebrows knit. “Did you vote in it?”
“There you go again,” I sigh. “Always obsessed with the data.”
For the second time since we met, I startle Donovan Frost into an honest-to-God laugh. “Rune,” he says when he winds down. “This might be inappropriate, in which case please tell me so, but I, um, I really…”
There are so many ways he could finish that sentence: I really think you’re weird. I really dig oranges. Or something else entirely, which, even though this man drives me insane, I would 100 percent be here for. Whether I was willing to admit it to myself or not, ever since I woke up to the sensation of his fingers stroking my cheek, I’ve wanted to feel it again. And the way he’s looking at me right now, I could swear he’s on the same page.
I hold my breath. And naturally, at this inopportune moment, my cell phone rings.
Slipping it out of my jeans pocket, I glance down to see Charlotte’s name on the screen. I’ve managed to keep my worries about the monster at bay, but now they come roaring back with a vengeance. “I have to take this,” I say, slipping past Donovan and out into the hallway. Whatever information Charlotte might’ve gleaned, I don’t want an audience when I hear it.
“Hey,” I tell her. “Hold on.”
When I’ve gone far enough down the hallway to ensure privacy, I lean against the wall, across from a framed photo of a Tuscan villa. My heart’s beating so hard, I can feel it pounding everywhere, in my wrists and throat and chest. “Okay,” I say, though it’s anything but. “Tell me.”
Charlotte clears her throat. “There’s no easy way to say this, Rune. Your monster died in his cell last night.”