Chapter 58
CHAPTER 58
ABIGAIL
“S top.” I ducked my head, trying to hide my smile. “You’re going to make Jeffrey uncomfortable if you keep looking at me like that.”
“He’s in his own world. He won’t even notice.” Simon’s voice was gentle and his tone genuine, and when I glanced up at him again, I saw his eyes reflecting those same things.
As he said it though, Jeffrey came back to the table, immediately jumping back into his breakdown of the scientific properties of each ingredient used in Fit Gal. I hadn’t looked away from Simon yet though, but as he’d predicted, Jeff didn’t even notice.
He seemed completely unaware of the world around him until his phone started ringing. Blinking hard, he reached into his pocket and pulled it out, seeming a bit off-kilter now that he’d realized that he was inside a packed restaurant with Simon and I sitting at the table with him.
“Excuse me.” His cheeks flushed a little as he stood up. “I’m sorry. I know this is an intriguing topic, but I need to step out and take this. I’ll be back in a few.”
As he went outside with his phone pressed to his ear, Simon wasted no time in turning his full attention back to me. Those forest greens were serious and filled with remorse, his broad shoulders held rigid, as if he was really stressed about something.
“I bought the bracelet for you,” he said, reiterating what he’d told me the other day without preamble. “That night at the ball, I had it with me and I was trying to find you to apologize for acting like an ass in the park, but I was nervous about trying to explain why, so I was fidgeting with the damn thing in my pocket.”
“How did Ashley get it, then?” I asked, desperately trying to gauge if I was being played, but there was no trace of deceit on Simon’s expression.
He sighed. “While I was fidgeting, it slipped out and it landed right at her feet. She thought it was for her. It’s almost like I’m cursed, right?”
“Yeah, it is.” For some reason, I totally believed him. “That doesn’t solve all our problems though, Simon.”
“I know.” He held my gaze intently, leaning forward in his chair and propping his elbows on the reclaimed wood tabletop between us. “All these situations keep popping up that make me look like a player, but I swear to you, I set that lifestyle aside as soon as I started feeling things for you again.”
“As soon as you started feeling things for me, or as soon as you saw me again?” That made a difference to me. A big one—and not even my skipping heart or the hope taking root in it would change that.
Simon smiled. “Those two events happened at the same time for me, Abi. My feelings for you never really went away, so as soon as I saw you again, they were there. I haven’t looked at another woman since, and to be completely honest, I wasn’t all that interested even before we ran into each other at the race. The truth is that I’d already realized that who I really wanted, who I’d always really wanted, was you.”
I blinked a few too many times, not entirely sure how I was supposed to respond to that. On the one hand, his confession had sent the purest elation through my very being, but my heart?
As much as it belonged to him, and as much as I wanted to deny that it did, I couldn’t just jump back in. Not again. Too much had happened. I wanted Simon and I was really starting to accept that would never change, but I couldn’t just forget about all the hurt any more than I could just put him behind me.
“So you have feelings for me, huh?” I tried to fight the smile that begged to break free, but I didn’t succeed completely. I wasn’t sure where that left me, but I had a feeling I was looking pretty constipated right about then.
Simon didn’t seem to care, though. He chuckled and dipped his chin into a nod, those gorgeous eyes crinkling at the corners. “Yeah, Abi. I do have feelings for you. It just depends on the day what those feelings are. Some days, you’re a total savage and I feel like I want to run away from you. That’s a feeling too, you know?”
I definitely didn’t succeed in holding back the smile this time, so instead of adding to the constipated look, I just let it go and laughed. “Don’t pretend like you don’t love it. I know you do. I was too much of a pushover for you before and I know how much you like a challenge.”
“You were never too much of anything for me. You are now and always have been perfect, but I am willing to admit that you’re not wrong about the challenge thing.” He looked at me in that soft way he used to just before he’d tell me that he loved me, but he stopped short of going quite that far today. “Would you like to spend Saturday with me? I know I still have a lot of explaining to do, but Jeff’s going to be back any minute and what we need to talk about isn’t really something we can rush through.”
“What did you have in mind?” I asked while wondering if I should just turn him down outright.
The thing was that I still hadn’t heard the whole truth. But what I had heard so far was promising.
He shrugged. “I’ll plan a whole day for the two of us, but all I really want is time with you.”
My eyelids malfunctioned for another quick moment, blinking way too many times as I cocked my head at him. “Since when do you say stuff like that?”
“Since the last few days have sucked,” he admitted. “Not getting to be around you, or talk to you, or know if I was ever going to be able to do it again, it really got to me.”
“I’m not sure,” I mused, even though my heart was fluttering and I already knew what I was going to say. I had promised myself that I’d make him work for it, though. “I should really be prepping my presentation for the client and?—”
Simon’s face fell and I laughed, shaking my head as I decided for sure to give him just one more day to prove himself. “Just kidding. You can pick me up at eight.”
“In the morning? Dang, I guess that means no sleeping in.”
I shrugged. “Well, if that’s too early for you, I suppose you haven’t missed me that much.”
He winked at me. “I’ll be there at seven fifty-nine on the dot.”
“Okay, Simon,” I said slowly, hoping like hell that this wasn’t a mistake. As I held his gaze though, I felt my lips creeping into a smile, that same sense of belonging I’d always felt with him blossoming in my chest. “I need you to show up, do you understand me? I need you to not get scared off by your dad or to call at the last minute to say that something has come up. If we make these plans right now, I need you to keep them.”
I couldn’t get any more honest or direct than that. Humor flared to life in his eyes and I could tell that he wanted to make a joke, but he didn’t.
Slowly reaching across the table for my hands, he squeezed my fingers. “I promise that I will be there, Abi. Seven fifty-nine, okay?”
Jeffrey came back into the restaurant. Pulling my hands back at the same time Simon did, I shook off my uncertainties as well as my excitement about Saturday and sat up a little straighter. I turned to Jeffrey as he rejoined us, sending him a quick smile and inclining my chin toward his phone.
“Is everything okay?” I asked lightly, hoping that he wouldn’t pick up on all the emotion that seemed to be floating around this table right now.
Thankfully, he pushed his glasses back to the bridge of his nose and exhaled deeply before returning my smile. “All good, thanks, Abi. My office just needed to know a few things about a website we’re designing for a client. There’s been some back and forth about the user-friendliness of the build, but I just don’t get it. It’s not that hard.”
Without skipping a beat, he launched into an explanation that I suspected was supposed to make it clear how uncomplicated the website was, but as far as I was concerned, he might as well have been speaking Ancient Greek. I had no idea what he was saying, and as Simon and I finished our meals, our eyes met across the table and we exchanged a smile.
He had no idea what Jeffrey was talking about either, but we both tried to listen and I, for one, was seriously starting to consider offering Jeffrey a job at Walker and Co when the whole Fit Gal thing was said and done. I wouldn’t have been surprised if Simon was contemplating the same thing, wondering what it would take to coax him away from his current employer.
Jeffrey marched to the beat of his own drum, but he was one of the most brilliant people I’d ever met and having him onboard would definitely give our firm an edge we didn’t have right now. Frankly, it was an edge I hadn’t even known we were missing until I’d met this guy.
“We still need to take a picture,” I reminded them both once we were done eating. I pulled my phone out of my purse. “How many more clues do you think we have left?”
“Probably a few,” Jeffrey said as he stood up, leaning in. “This has been fun so far, though. I’m actually starting to look forward to what they might have for us next.”
“So am I.” I motioned for Simon to get a little closer, then took the picture and sent it to Blake while Simon asked for our check.
We were told that Fit Gal had already paid. Pleasantly surprised, we left the restaurant for an afternoon that turned out to be genuinely fun. With Simon and Jeffrey warming up to one another as they got to know each other, we laughed a lot and completed every challenge.
Blake posted the final clue under the headline, Grand Finale—Come see what else we’ve got planned next . A random bunch of numbers accompanied it and Jeffrey took one look at it before he grinned at me. “It’s coordinates.”
Simon’s eyebrows shot up. “What? How did you know that so fast?”
Jeffrey shrugged, but he seemed pleased as he flashed Simon a bit of a smirk. “It’s GPS. Welcome to the twenty-first century.”
Simon laughed. “Okay, tell me where we’re going, but I’m going to need an actual address.”
“Already on it.” Jeffrey’s fingers flew across the screen of his phone, and only a few seconds later, he started directing Simon to the location of our final stop for the day.
We headed on over and Blake sent us another message, this one with the caption, Welcome to the future Fit Club—Fit Gal’s first ever gym. It’s going to be the biggest in the city .
My jaw dropped as we looked up at the massive building we were in front of. From the outside, I counted at least six floors, which gave it two floors more than the existing biggest gym in the city. Jeffrey glanced at the text we’d all just received from Blake.
The color drained out of his cheeks as he looked at me, blinking hard. “This says that it’s going to be a fitness club of two hundred thousand square feet. Do you have any idea how big that is?”
I gaped at him before slowly turning my head back to the building. “Standing where they’re going to be creating their first Fit Club is so cool.”
My heart was racing, but so was my mind. Clearly, Fit Gal had even bigger plans than we’d realized and I’d had the best day on their scavenger hunt. Every single time we went into their offices, I walked out wanting the account more and more, but realizing now what an empire Blake and Ashley were truly building, I knew that the competition was only going to get tougher—and that meant that George Astor was going to stick his nose in again. I could feel it in my bones.