Chapter 32
On Monday morning, Willow turned into the Kudos employee parking lot, her tires splashing through puddles.
The Portland sky was as gray as the surrounding office buildings, and she was about to start a long, busy workday, but for once, Willow didn’t care. She still carried that wonderful lightness from the weekend.
If she focused, she could still hear their laughter drift through the greenhouse and feel the warmth of Scottie’s lips on her own.
With a smile, she slung her bag over her shoulder, got out of the car, and locked it.
Before she could take a step toward the building, her phone rang. She fished it from her purse.
Scottie’s name flashed across the small screen.
The way her heartbeat sped up was ridiculous. She fumbled to accept the call before it could go to voicemail. “Hey,” she said, trying to sound casual.
“Hey.” Scottie’s voice, warm and low, rumbled through her ear. “What are you wearing?”
Willow nearly stumbled into a puddle. Her ankle boots squeaked to a halt on the wet pavement, and her face went hot despite the chill in the air. “Uh…”
Scottie laughed. “Sorry to disappoint, but this isn’t that kind of call. I didn’t mean it like that. I’m just trying to figure something out.”
Willow rubbed her burning cheek with her free hand. “How to make my heart rate skyrocket?”
“No. But good to know that does it for you.”
You. You do it for me. Willow bit her lip before she could voice the thought. As Scottie had said, this wasn’t that kind of call. “So what are you trying to figure out this early on a Monday? Shouldn’t you be at work?”
“I’m about to head out, but I just thought of this while I was getting dressed and didn’t want to forget to ask you about it.”
Images of Scottie getting dressed flared through Willow’s mind—Scottie slowly sliding her pants up her legs, her chest still bare in the soft morning light. She suppressed a strangled noise.
What on earth was up with her libido? She had never reacted like this to anyone else.
Willow cleared her throat. “Ask me about what?”
“What you’re wearing,” Scottie replied. “What materials, I mean. Cotton, wool, polyester?”
“Oh. You could have led with that.”
“I know.” Scottie chuckled. “But what would be the fun in that? So?”
“Uh, mostly cotton, I guess.” Willow slowly made her way toward the Kudos Entertainment building, dodging puddles left and right. “Why’s that important?”
“Because of the friction,” Scottie answered.
The way Scottie said friction did things to Willow’s brain—and her body—that she wasn’t ready for on a Monday morning, in the middle of the company parking lot.
“For example,” Scottie continued, “when you wear a wool sweater and you rub up against the back of your chair all day, you’re building up static that could make your tech issues worse.”
Willow suppressed a sigh. The heat dissipated from her body.
Scottie didn’t seem to notice her sudden silence.
“Synthetics like nylon and polyester are bad too. They’re like little lightning factories.
And rubber-soled shoes can trap the charge instead of letting it discharge naturally.
Have you thought about trying leather soles or buying an antistatic wristband?
I sometimes wear one of those when I’m working on a highly sensi—”
“Stop,” Willow said, more sharply than intended.
Scottie instantly fell silent.
Crap. Willow took a deep breath. “I’m sorry, but…can we please slow down?”
“S-slow down?” Scottie sounded so small, so confused that Willow instantly regretted her words.
She shifted her bag higher on her shoulder and glanced left and right to make sure no colleague could overhear her. This wasn’t a great place for this discussion, but she needed to say it now. “I told you I don’t want you to fix me.”
“That’s not what I’m doing,” Scottie replied, a hint of defensiveness creeping into her tone. “I’m only trying to help.”
A sigh escaped Willow this time. “I know. You mean well. But I’ve been living with this my entire life.
If there were any easy solutions, don’t you think I would have found them by now?
I’ve done all the research, worn all the right fabrics, tried all the tricks.
And some of them help a little, but nothing I do can get rid of it.
Believe me; I’ve tried.” She was talking fast and loud, but she couldn’t stop herself.
Years of frustration were leaking out. “When you start suggesting solutions, it makes me feel stupid—like you assume I haven’t thought of it already or I haven’t tried hard enough. ”
“What? No, I—” Scottie stopped herself and took several audible breaths. “I don’t think that for a second. You’re smart and resourceful, and I’m sorry if I made you feel otherwise. I guess it’s a reflex. When I see a problem, I try to fix it. It’s the default mode in my job.”
“But I don’t want to be a job to you,” Willow whispered.
“You’re not,” Scottie said firmly. “Yes, I want to make your work life easier and help with the tech glitches, but I admit it’s for unprofessional reasons.”
A tiny smile snuck onto Willow’s face, and her tension eased. “Unprofessional, hm?”
“Very unprofessional,” Scottie said. “But you’re right. I’ll try to rein it in, okay? No more tech advice—unless you ask for it. And I really hope you will because I want us to be a team.”
“I want that too.” Willow’s voice was scratchy, and she struggled to keep it steady.
Her phone beeped with a low-battery warning, even though she had charged it before leaving home.
“My battery is about to die. If we get cut off, don’t think I hung up on you.”
“Thanks for the warning. I really need to get going too. Do you want to grab lunch together later?” Scottie asked quickly. “We could go to your lunch spot in the park if you’d rather avoid the cafeteria.”
“I’d love that,” Willow said.
They lingered for a moment, neither ending the call, even though Willow’s phone beeped again and she had long since reached the entrance to the Kudos building.
“Scottie?”
“Yeah?”
“I’m sorry for coming down on you so harshly.
It’s just that this is really important to me.
My entire life, as soon as people found out, they’ve reduced me to this one thing.
I’m always either the liar who’s making stuff up to get attention or the weirdo who stops watches and crashes computers. The person you have to fix.”
Scottie sucked in a sharp breath. “That’s not who you are to me. I know you’re telling the truth, and I don’t see you as someone to fix—because you aren’t broken.”
The words landed somewhere deep in Willow’s chest, where she had tucked away all the shame, the pain, and the frustration over the years. She pressed her trembling hand to her breastbone. “You’re making me cry again,” she said with a shaky laugh.
“I wasn’t trying to do that either,” Scottie replied. “I just wanted to make your life easier.”
“You are.” Scottie probably had no idea how much what she had just said was helping. “This…us…is still very new. I guess we’ll both have to learn how to navigate my tech quirks and all the issues that come with them.”
“We will,” Scottie said, her usual confidence back in her voice.
Willow had never wanted to believe something so much. “Yeah,” she got out through the lump in her throat. “We will.”
Her phone beeped another warning.
“I really have to go,” Willow said. “See you at noon, okay?”
“Can’t wait. Oh, and Willow?” Scottie’s voice dipped lower. “If I ever call to ask you what you’re wearing again, it will be one of those calls.”
Heat shot up Willow’s neck and into her cheeks. A low groan escaped her. “You say things like that and expect me to focus on work?”
Scottie chuckled and ended the call.
Willow stood there for a few seconds longer, phone pressed to her ear.
Then she put it away with a quiet laugh.
Scottie really was one of a kind. She was the only person Willow knew who could make her feel so many emotions in such a short time, taking her from anger and frustration to hope, joy, arousal, and that startling sense of being seen and appreciated for exactly who she was.
With a determined tug, she pulled the glass door open, already looking forward to her lunch break.
~ ~ ~
Willow barely had time to stow her bag beneath her desk before Celeste strode over to her cubicle.
“Mr. Sorensen wants to see you.”
Willow swallowed. “Now?”
Celeste gave a curt nod. “As soon as you get in, he said.”
“Oh.” That didn’t sound good. “Did he say what this is about?”
“He’ll let you know.” Her boss’s tone was clipped and her expression as composed as ever, giving nothing away. Only a slight tightening around her jaw didn’t match her calm.
“Okay. I guess I’ll head upstairs, then.” Willow tried to sound as if being called to the fifteenth floor, where all the executive offices were, was an everyday occurrence, but her voice wobbled.
Celeste’s gaze softened for a moment, betraying something like sympathy or concern. “It’s the corner office to the right.” She looked as if she wanted to add something, maybe good luck, but then she gave Willow a curt nod, turned, and walked away with measured strides.
Willow stood frozen for a second. Then she grabbed her ID badge and made her way to the elevator.
Her hand shook as she pressed the call button. A static jolt snapped through her fingertip, stinging hard enough to make her flinch.
Once the elevator arrived, she stepped inside and carefully used her knuckles to tap the button for the fifteenth floor.
For once in her life, she prayed for a tech glitch—something that would make the elevator get stuck again. But, of course, the damn thing behaved perfectly today.
When the metal doors slid open on the top floor, the scent of lime polish and expensive cologne greeted her.
Her thoughts raced as she headed down the hall. What could Mr. Sorensen want? She had met him only once so far, and she doubted he even remembered her—which was the way she preferred it.