Chapter 8 Nash
Chapter eight
Nash
Monday morning, the office buzzed with the last week of work energy before the holidays. I couldn’t say how productive those hours were for anyone, including myself, because Stephanie’s desk was in my line of sight when I glanced out my open office door.
Late morning, I slid off my glasses and rubbed my eyes. After three straight hours of staring at the computer, I was desperate for scenery not burning into my retinas.
“Knock, knock.” Stephanie poked her head in the half-open door and frowned. “What’s the matter?”
Perfect timing. I popped my glasses back on and gestured at the computer. “Just some light reading.”
Approaching my desk, Stephanie set down my black coffee. Like she did every day like clockwork. But then she surprised me with a new move. Coming around to my side of the desk, she leaned down slightly to view my screen, her hazel eyes scanning the news article with speed.
I remained where I was. Her shoulder brushed mine as she hovered over my back. With our height difference, we were nearly cheek to cheek. A delicate whiff of vanilla filled my nose, familiar and sophisticated. Wholly Stephanie.
“Are you worried about Nova Designs?” Stephanie said at last, pulling me from the vanilla haze of my imagination.
“Hmm? Oh. I don’t know.” I sighed, leaning back in my chair as she perched on the edge of my desk.
“I try to keep tabs on them. More so than our other competitors, and this article resurfaced about the allegations of them stealing information from SkyLark. No way to prove it as there wasn’t a paper trail, but SkyLark was planning their launch for three weeks after Nova swept in with theirs. ”
It hadn’t been the first time such allegations had followed Nova either.
Nova Designs, headed by none other than Hiram Addams, Stephanie’s dad, was our biggest national competitor in the marketing world.
Speculations, hearsay, and accusations of bribery littered the papers when it came to winning bids on projects.
Nearly as much as the gossip magazines were filled with Hiram’s latest conquest on the potential marriage market.
His name had been attached to nearly every prominent socialite or actress between the ages of twenty-five and fifty.
“And it feels like more than coincidence.” Stephanie’s forehead wrinkled in a frown. “I wouldn't put it past him. But it’s hard to take precautions against a ghost if there’s no proof. Are you worried about interference with the spring launch?”
“I don’t know. It’s just a weird feeling.
” I groaned, scrubbing a hand over my jaw.
Stephanie’s insight and honesty were things I loved about her.
She was an excellent listener and had a way of drawing me out of my head, helping me see the big picture.
More than once she’d served as my sounding board, even if it wasn’t in her immediate job description.
But I valued her thoughts, and she had good instincts.
Oblivious to my ponderings, she smiled wryly and nudged the coffee towards me.
That smile was a gut punch after her reluctance to agree to real dating.
But I could be patient and play the long game.
Prove to her I could be the guy for her.
That didn’t mean it hadn’t stung when she shot me down, though.
But I hoped it was more fear than repulsion that made her hesitant.
That it wasn’t me she was against dating, but the dating concept itself that had her glitching.
For half a second, the moment in the café had taken me back to Alexis’s rejection.
But Stephanie isn’t her. Her reaction wasn’t artificial; she was genuinely nervous.
Taking a sip, I sighed, refocusing on the present conversation. “It doesn’t matter what I think. Vigilance is key.” I drummed my fingers on the desk absently. “We’ve all worked too hard for me to let him ever sweep in here and try to pull one over on us.”
“We won’t let that happen,” she announced with a nod, something like anger burning in her eyes.
I appreciated her confidence and loyalty. I had no reason to suspect Hiram of interfering in our upcoming software program launch as there were no hints of it. But having those articles pop up this morning gnawed at my gut in a way I couldn’t shake.
Stephanie rose. “Five minutes till your eleven o’clock.” At the door, she paused. “I dropped your dry cleaning off this morning. Anything else before your meeting?”
I shook my head. “Thanks, Stephanie. I should be done by lunch.”
“I’ll have it waiting for you.”
I swiveled back to my computer and pulled up the virtual link for my meeting.
As a marketing firm, we worked with businesses to give them a polished branding package and presence.
But there were plenty of small businesses and entrepreneurs who weren’t looking for our big corporate packages and wanted a small-scale approach, which was where our new software program slated for spring came in.
It fit a small budget and offered creators more supportive do-it-yourself and design options than were available to them anywhere else on the current market.
Kelsi, Ryan’s wife, had been the one to propose the idea over dinner one night last year.
As an independent author, she was responsible for all her own marketing and design, which was a big job on top of writing.
She’d test run the program and all but begged me to make this a reality.
The balls were all in motion, and after the new year, we’d head into our final phase before launching in early March.
Hovering my cursor over the Join Meeting button, I rolled my shoulders. It was go time.
I logged off just after noon and stretched with a groan. We were on track and according to plan.
“Hey, Stephanie, is the big man in?”
I froze when I heard the familiar upbeat voice. He wouldn’t.
“Ryan, Emmett, hey. Yeah, he’s back there now.”
Apparently, they both would. I heard her shuffle a few things on her desk, no doubt checking my calendar like the diligent worker she was. She’d know I had finished my meeting.
“He’s free. Head on back. Oh, and take him this, will you? I’m out for lunch.”
Usually, she would have paged me and asked if I was taking visitors, but she knew they were my best friends. Why wouldn’t I want to see them? And it was my lunch break after all.
Except they were the last people I wanted to see right now because I’d been avoiding their texts all weekend like the mature man I was.
Not for any particular reason, but I wasn’t sure how to act around them after my meeting with Stephanie on Saturday.
I wasn’t egotistical enough to think she’d jump at my offer to date for real just because I’d asked.
But I had thought there was something there between us and that she might at least consider it.
And she was considering it—she’d been uncertain, not given me a flat-out rejection. That was something.
My door flung open, and Ryan marched in, grinning like the Cheshire cat himself.
He broke every stereotype of being a staid high school history teacher, and some days I questioned the mental state of whoever decided to put him in charge of impressionable teens, but his students loved him like he was a second John Keating.
Meanwhile, Emmett’s hulking, silent presence slipped in behind him.
The man was an accountant who could pass for a bearded lumberjack bodyguard. I’m dead.
“Nash, I see you haven’t perished from off the earth,” Ryan said too loudly, flinging his arms wide like he was welcoming home a long-lost brother from war.
I glared at him, not rising from my chair. “If you’re going to be obnoxious, shut the door so my employees don’t have to know I have such deranged friends.”
Ryan slapped a hand over his chest dramatically, but Emmett closed the door. That was why Emmett was my favourite. The strong silent type. Solidarity, brother.
“You converted to Hallmark yet?” Emmett asked, setting down a brown paper bag on my desk. No doubt with the soup and sub Stephanie had ordered.
Scratch that. Emmett was not my favourite friend.
I would disown both of them and be in the market for new friends if I thought there was hope of finding replacements.
But once you hit a certain number of years in friendship, you didn’t get rid of your friends.
They knew too many embarrassing stories and secrets. “No.”
“So defensive,” Emmett tsked with a wry chuckle.
Ryan dropped into one of the overstuffed leather armchairs and crossed his ankles. “We’ve been talking—”
“You’ve been talking,” Emmett grumbled, leaning against the far wall. “Like always.”
“Right. Like I said, we have been talking,” Ryan continued, “and we’ve decided it’s about Stephanie, isn’t it?”
“Is what?” I asked slowly, crossing my arms as I reclined in my chair.
“The fake dating question.” Ryan pinned me with a glare, adding to Emmett, “Back me up.”
Emmett just shrugged and watched the standoff.
“The nature of my relationship with Steph will stay between the two of us,” I said firmly. “I’ll be meeting her family for Christmas, though, so I’ll be out of your hair.”
Oh boy. We hadn’t discussed talking about the complexity of our arrangement with our friends.
This was something we definitely should have planned for.
At least I should have, with my level of nosy friends.
And yes, I said friends because Emmett was the biggest sap for gossip, even if his gruff and grumbly exterior dissuaded all manner of confidences.
Ryan’s eyes sparked with glee.
Yeah. This was definitely something we should have talked about.
“That’s not a no, and meeting the family already?” Ryan crowed, throwing his head back. “Dude, you’re so gone!”
Emmett smacked the back of Ryan’s head—something I sorely wanted to do myself at the moment—then fixed his steely grey eyes on me. “Christmas. With her family. Hiram Addams’s princess, yeah? Isn’t this all rather sudden?”
I had a sudden sympathy for all small animals being hunted by a deadly jungle cat.
Wow, I did not think this through well enough.
But neither was I expecting to be ambushed at work by my soon-to-be former best friends.
As if I could get rid of them. “She’s not his princess,” I growled.
From the moment Stephanie applied for the job, she’d been upfront about her father.
The kingpin of the rival marketing company to my own, Genesis.
Nova Designs and Hiram Addams were the equivalent of cuss words in the Genesis office.
Ryan perked up. “Yeah. On Friday you protested that she wasn’t even your crush, and you never said anything about a girlfriend. What gives?”
“Can’t a man have a few secrets?” I fiddled with the cuff of my navy dress shirt, wishing I had left my suit coat on in a power move, but alas, the thermostat was still on the fritz, and a suit coat would have been the sweaty death of me.
Emmett grunted. “Not in this group apparently.”
“Think about it this way,” I said. “You both get a Christmas free of a third wheel. Whatever will you do without Uncle Nash there to rile up your kids?”
Ryan nodded solemnly. “We owe Stephanie our thanks.” He tossed a teasing wink at me over his shoulder as he left the room.
Emmett hesitated at the door, clearly warring with himself on whether he wanted to say whatever was brewing in his mind.
With how long Emmett tended to deliberate over things, I’d be here till New Years if I left him to it without some encouragement. “Spit it out, Mitchell. I can take it.”
But Emmett didn’t smile. “You didn’t do this because of us, right? We didn’t make you feel unwelcome?”
The thoughtfulness—and uncertainty—in Emmett’s question surprised me.
Ryan was a goof to his core but could be serious when the situation demanded it.
Emmett though… He didn’t do feelings stuff if he could help it—which was particularly amusing to watch as he had three young daughters, one of them a preteen. That meant this really bothered him.
I offered him a half grin. “Nah, man. As much as I’d like to trade you in for new friends when you get on my back about Hallmark, I couldn’t ask for better ones.
This is…” I hesitated, trying to find the words to explain it.
“This is for me. For Steph. It’s been a long time coming.
” As long as the week didn’t burn up any chance I had of convincing her to make this real.
Emmett studied me for any hint of a lie. But he must not have seen one because he relaxed. “She’s good for you. Better than Alexis ever was.” He dipped his chin slightly. “She sees you.”
Tension coiled my muscles, and my jaw clenched till it ached. But I forced myself to take a slow breath. “Yeah. Right.”
Emmett nodded apologetically before slipping from the room.
It’d been years since either of them had mentioned the name of my ex-girlfriend-almost-fiancée from a decade ago.
I hadn’t dated seriously since her, despite the guys’ attempts to wrangle me into blind dates on a handful of occasions.
And she was the reason I’d started my company in the first place.
But when it came to Stephanie, I’d considered breaking my no-serious-dating rule. And I could only pray she wouldn’t break me like Alexis did. Whether it was real or not, despite all my past hang-ups and doubts… I was already in, my heart on the line.