Chapter ThreeFischerOctober 8
Chapter Three
Fischer
This might be hell.
Okay, that’s an overstatement. Hell would have fewer flowers and wouldn’t smell like a garden on a spring day after rain. But that doesn’t mean this situation is much better than hell would be, which has me wondering if maybe I died on the way to Ember Events.
It’s probably the caffeine that’s making me dramatic.
As I sit on a hard metal chair, squished into Micah’s cubicle which is literally full of flower bouquets, I rub my chest and try to ignore the way my heart is racing while she goes on and on about the schedule for planning the Greenwood opening.
I should be listening, but my pounding heart is taking most of my focus.
I told her I don’t drink caffeine. That is true. But I also don’t drink coffee in general, which has me wondering why I drank the coffee that was meant for Grant.
I’m not actually wondering. I drank it because she handed it to me.
As I’ve done multiple times since sitting down, I massage the palm of my right hand, trying to remove the feel of her hand in mine.
It started with the handshake, which doesn’t usually bother me.
I shake hands with people all the time, and those touches never linger.
But the way Micah held my hand was different.
Intentional. Especially in the conference room.
And that has me on edge.
“It’ll be tight,” she says, “but we should be able to get everything done by the 26th.”
“You’re not inspiring a lot of confidence,” I mutter to myself, though I don’t think I say it quietly enough for her not to hear. I really need to work on that.
Then again, she’s been nothing but smiles since the moment I stepped off the elevator, and it’s completely unnerving. Pretty much everything she’s done feels worrisome, so I can’t really explain why I let her convince me to not recommend Grant pick a different company.
I guess she surprised me with her own confidence.
“You’re the ones who waited until now to hire an event planner,” she says with a smile.
“We didn’t.” I don’t have to explain anything to her, but I do it anyway. “We had a planner up until last week, when they told us they had to back out for, uh, personal reasons.” Otherwise known as they found out that I was working with Grant, and they got spooked.
That’s why this event has to go well. Grant took a chance on me—a huge one—and I can’t let him down.
Twisting her bright red lips, which I have been trying to ignore for the last twenty minutes, Micah studies me for longer than I would like.
I don’t know what it is, exactly, but she has this way of looking at me like no one ever has.
Like she’s digging beneath the surface to find the juicier tells.
She can’t be older than her early twenties—fresh out of college, maybe even an intern—but she seems to think she has some sort of control over what is happening around her.
Yes, assistants like me do a lot more behind the scenes than people think, but not everyone is as incompetent as Grant is right now.
Micah probably does nothing but answer the phone and send emails.
That’s what I’m telling myself, anyway, because so far she’s made me feel like I’m doing something wrong.
She seems to actually like her job. She seems to like everything , like nothing will ever bother her.
It’s unnatural.
“Give me your email,” she says, holding out her hand as if it’s a physical thing I can give her.
My hand itches to wrap around hers again, which is ridiculous. I don’t like being touched, so I shouldn’t want to be touched by her.
I also don’t like coffee, but I’ve been sipping the mug of decaf since she gave it to me. It’s like there’s a part of me that took my attraction to her and set up a whole bunch of rules to follow, like do anything she says .
Wait. Nope. I wasn’t supposed to think that word.
Attraction . It already made me play a stupid joke pretending to be Grant, and I don’t need to let anything else distract me from doing my job to the best of my ability.
Besides, I would guess she’s at most twenty-five.
I’m thirty-two. There’s seven reasons alone why I shouldn’t be contemplating why her touch didn’t bother me the way What’s-Her-Name, Grant’s neighbor, did yesterday.
Micah turns, piercing me with her blue eyes. Not a color I would have expected to go with her auburn curls. They’re a soft blue, almost the same color as the forget-me-nots in one of the many blooms on her desk.
I clear my throat, handing her a business card because her hand is still out and waiting. She seems surprised but starts typing in my email anyway.
“I take it you like flowers,” I say, feeling pretty pathetic for making a business meeting awkward.
This is my thing. What I’m good at. Whatever it is about Micah that has me stumbling through this whole thing is really starting to bug me.
If I can’t even set up a calendar with a coworker, how am I supposed to make sure this event doesn’t completely bankrupt Grant’s company?
Micah shrugs as she starts clicking and dragging blocks around her calendar. Whatever program she’s using, it looks way friendlier than mine. “They’re great,” she says, and the phrase is open ended.
It isn’t any of my business. “But?”
She glances over, her smile growing. I don’t think she’s been without a smile since I got here. “But none of them have guessed my favorite.”
“None of what?”
“My dates.”
These are all from guys? I look around the cubicle more closely, counting five different arrangements.
The oldest can’t be more than a week old, and she said dates .
As in plural. “Not a boyfriend?” I ask, reaching out to touch a rose petal.
Whoever sent her these, he picked yellow roses.
Code for friendship. Probably not the message he was hoping to send.
Micah snorts. “Is that your way of asking if I’m available?”
“I don’t date coworkers.” Especially when they apparently have an ego to rival their famous brother’s.
I’m honestly surprised Houston Briggs agreed to come to our reopening when I imagine him to be too self-important to care about anything that doesn’t get him in the spotlight.
I suppose this does put him in the spotlight, if only a small one.
But nothing quite compares to pitching in the World Series.
Micah’s smile somehow grows even more, which I didn’t think was possible.
“Oh, me neither. After I went out with the guy who delivered our lunch whenever we ordered Chinese and it didn’t go anywhere, things got so awkward.
We had to stop ordering from that restaurant until he became the assistant manager and no longer did deliveries.
You can’t believe how much I missed their honey walnut shrimp. ”
“That’s…” I don’t even know what to say to that. “That’s not what I…”
She pats my arm, and I instinctively flinch, expecting the discomfort that usually comes from unexpected touches. It doesn’t come.
I massage my palm again. How can I still feel her? It’s been at least fifteen minutes since she held my hand. I should be itching to scrub my hand free of her touch, not hoping for more.
“Okay, you should get an email with the link to our calendar app,” Micah says right as my phone buzzes.
I pull out my phone, frowning at the email. “You can’t just send it in Outlook or something?” I spend enough time as it is making sure Grant gets to everything on his calendar, and I don’t need the risk of missing something.
Micah does a full spin and then some in her chair, four hundred and fifty degrees until she comes to a stop facing me with her unending smile.
“Trust me. Once you use this app, you’ll never go back.
Plus, most of our vendors use it too, so it makes it way easier to schedule tastings and design meetings. ”
I’m wary, based on the sheer amount of color in the preview photos on the app store, but I click download anyway.
First coffee, then giving Ember a chance.
Now I’m downloading unnecessary apps onto my phone.
I’m a little worried what else Micah Taylor might convince me to do if I’m here for much longer.
I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I was feeling perfectly normal when I woke up this morning, all the way until I stepped off the elevator on the fourth floor.
Then I saw a girl in a sky-blue sundress and bright red lipstick, and it’s like I’ve devolved into a caveman driven by pheromones.
Yeah, she’s gorgeous, but I can’t forget she’s a colleague.
She’s far younger than me. I know nothing about her.
I have no intentions of dating right now.
Or ever.
“Price!” Grant’s voice precedes him through the door of the office next to us, and he narrows his eyes at me as if I’ve done something wrong. I probably have, at least in his mind. “Time to go.”
Micah looks at me. “Your name is Fischer Price?” she whispers, her eyes wide.
I hold back a groan as I stand. “Go ahead and laugh. Get it out of your system.”
She bites her bottom lip, teeth white against the red.
“I’ll be in touch once the calendar is set up,” she says after a moment, saying nothing more about how my name resembles a toy company.
She looks behind me. “Mr. Bradley, it was good to meet you. I hope you get everything you’ve always wanted from Ember Events. ”
Grant glances at Lila, who gives him a look that heats the room by an uncomfortable twenty degrees.
It’s the same look she gave me when I first got here, and I don’t like the way Grant puffs out his chest. He’s distracted enough as it is, and he doesn’t need to be pursuing an attraction to his event planner.
Still, I know the feeling. And I know Ember is going to be dangerous for us both. I nudge Grant toward the elevator before either of us can get into trouble.