Chapter 9
It’s becoming a problem.
My attraction to my temporary executive assistant is definitely becoming a problem.
The thing is, I don’t know what to do about it.
Elizabeth Rixon is good at her job,I remind myself. She’ll find a replacement soon. With fingers tented over my desk, I eye Gwen. “That wasn’t what I expected.”
“Oh… er—it wasn’t?”
“No. I asked you to give me any important messages, not a long-winded summary of one message from Kate.”
“Well, it felt important. I thought… um… I thought you should know the details since ya know… Her situation.”
I bite back an irritated sigh.
Gwen is beautiful. She is nurturing and good with animals and people alike.
But she is not efficient.
Right now, I need efficiency.
It would also be good if I could stop running scenarios. These scenarios… these mental images and thoughts about what it would be like to hold her, to kiss her… they’re not healthy. Not appropriate. Not professional.
I pinch the bridge of my nose and try to get my blood to cool.
It’s just the two of us in my office.
She’s stiff, sitting erect. One leg crossed over the other. She can feel the tension in this room, too.
And this time around, she’s not happy about it.
This morning, I didn’t yet have my guard up. Rolling out of bed and greeting a woman while still half-asleep, fresh from a hot shower, will do that to a man. The same goes for being only half-dressed. The entire situation was disarming.
I sense that right now, both of us miss the informal setting of my home and the added distraction of the dogs.
In here—in this professional space, closed in with her—the tension has skyrocketed.
She keeps pulling at the collar of her sweater. Her pale, slender neck has faint blotches. “Maybe you should call her,” she says quietly. I think she’d like to talk to you.”
“Gwen.” I bite back another sigh.
The clock on the wall ticks.
I like that ticking sound. When I work, it reminds me that every second counts.
Right now, Gwen—beautiful and sweet as she is—is wasting my time.
“What?” she asks.
“I don’t need advice about my sister.”
“Well, she’s going to be in that hotel in Anchorage all on her own until Thursday afternoon, when his boat gets in. She says she’s going out of her mind with nerves, and she’s got no one to talk to about it. I just think if you could call her one time and just chat with her for a few minutes, it’d mean the world to her.”
“Fine. Maybe I will.” Probably not. I won’t elaborate on the odds with the bleeding heart before me, though.
Gwen leans forward over the tablet on her lap and swipes busily. It’s very becoming when her hair falls over her eye like that.
I shift in my seat and draw a deep breath through my nostrils.
Cool it, Brock.
“Next?” I bark.
“Sorry… I’m getting there. There was an email about some letter thingy from your accountant…”
“Letter thingy.”
Her vocabulary was sweet when used last night with the dogs.
Here in my office?
I’m not sure.
Yes, my heart feels ticklish. Strangely happy, when she uses these silly words. But, that part of me has never made millions.
“Yep, letter thingy,” she murmurs. “I just can’t remember the letters. API? AIP? KTI… Oh, never mind, nowhere close. Here it is”…
She’s asking about the newest ‘KPI and Metrics report.’
“Am I supposed to know what that is?” She looks up at me.
Those blue-green eyes…
I blink a few times.
“I mean,” she lifts the tablet, “it’s probably on here somewhere… I just don’t know where. Dropbox or something?”
“She’s talking about the Key Performance Indicators and Metrics report. It’s found in the accounting software that Mandy had access to.” I still feel a bit dazed after falling into those eyes of hers.
“Okay. I think I can get that to her.” When the cell phone rings, she glances at me nervously. “Should I get it?”
“Yes,” I grunt. “You should get it.”
“‘Kay. I wasn’t sure about the protocol since this is a meeting, and I know your time is valuable.”
I wave at the phone.
She picks it up and launches into her greeting.
I tap my fingertips together.
She doesn’t know the protocol of being in a meeting with me. I’d fill her in if I had a clue. But the truth is, I don’t know how to handle this meeting, either.
Internally, I try to sort through our timeline with any scrap of logic I can muster.
She was at my house late last night and again first thing this morning. I heard about her feelings for me—her crush. We flirted over coffee.
And now, we’re both trying to pretend none of that happened.
But it’s not working.
“Mm-hm…” She says into the phone. “I see. Yes, got it. Yes, I can tell him… Sure thing. You said Brian, right? Is that Brian, I-A, or Y-A?”
I tap my pen against the side of the desk.
My knee bounces.
Mandy never took this long on calls.
Then again, Mandy was cold and often snappy.
Gwen doesn’t have an ounce of ‘cold’ in her. Right now, she sounds like she’s made a new best friend.
“Oh, cool,” she says into the phone, a smile on her pretty lips. “I’ve met people who spell it the other way, too. Do you have Irish ancestry? Oh, wow. Neat. Yeah, my mom works over on that side of town, too… Okay, for sure. I’ll ask him to call you.”
When she hangs up, she pulls a bright-pink Post-it pad out of one of the giant pockets of her forest green sweater. She leans forward to place the pad on my desk, and then she jots down a quick note.
“I’m right here,” I tell her.
“I know, but it helps me to write things down.” She keeps scribbling. Then she peels the paper off and leans even farther over the desk to smoosh it onto the side of my computer.
I reach for it and peel it off.
“Oh,” she says, disappointed.
“I don’t like clutter.”
“Well, you need reminders. Because, apparently, you don’t like calling people back, either.”
“I don’t like calling Kate back. Other people are no problem.”
She narrows her eyes at me.
Then, she reaches forward and scribbles another note on the top Post-it. She smooths it defiantly onto the edge of my computer screen.
‘CALL KATE!’it says, in all caps.
I clench my jaw. “Gwen… let’s talk about the message you just took.”
I leave the annoying ‘CALL KATE!’ Post-it up for fear that if I remove it, she’ll replace it with another.
The minute she leaves, it will come down.
“I’m assuming that was Brian Campbell, my PI?” I scan the message she wrote, then read it aloud: “Brian—back from trip to Arizona. Saw his nieces, had a good visit. Great weather, so he took his nieces to the park to play pickleball a few times and they all had fun. Call him ASAP, please.”
Surely hearing it aloud will help her see the faults in it.
I wait for her to apologize.
She doesn’t.
So, I crumple it up to make a point.
“Hey!” she gasps.
I make a show of taking a three-point shot into the basketball hoop pinned to the wall. The paper tumbles into the trash can below. “Three points.”
“That had a message on it.”
“All you had to do is tell me he wants a call back. The stuff about his visit with family is clutter that I don’t need to be made aware of.”
“You could ask him about his nieces or something…” She shrugs. “I don’t know. It seemed relevant to me.”
“That’s because you’re too nice for your own good, Gwen.” I glance at the clock wall. “In ten minutes, I have my next call. Think you could get through a couple more business items, in that time? How did it go talking with Pete about those audio edits?”
“Well, he was up all night with Maria.” She narrows her eyes at me. “You do know he and his wife just had a little girl, right? Maria was born on Friday evening.”
“Okay, this isn’t working.” I push back from my desk and stride over to the chin-up bar I have mounted on the wall by the basketball hoop. Maybe it will make me feel better—less restless—if I get my muscles burning.
I grip the cool bar and hoist myself up.
My muscles protest.
I force them to work. Mind over matter.
I grunt with my chin resting on the bar and lower down so I can repeat.
“Should I…” she squeaks.
“Continue,” I say before heaving myself up for the third repetition.
“Okay… Well, this sure is different as far as meetings go… never had this before in Shipping. Well, guess I’ll do my best.”
She then rattles off a whole story about how Pete enjoys being a father but has been having difficulty getting through his editing jobs due to a lack of sleep.
“And, of course, that’s expected,” she adds, as if I should be very interested. “When Manuel—you know, Warehouse Ops, the big guy?—when he and Gabriella had baby number three, he had to take two full weeks off just so he’d be up for operating the forklift safely. I mean, Pete’s not operating heavy machinery, but still, those edits require attention to detail. Are you going to send him a gift?”
“A gift?” I grunt as I pull my weight up for a sixth time.
“Like a onesie or something. There are really cute ones these days, with print on demand. Maybe one with little headphones on the front since Pete’s a sound guy.”
“I will not be buying Pete a gift. I need him to edit the intro to this week’s podcast by tomorrow.”
“Oof. That’s going to be tough.”
“I don’t care if it’s tough. Life is tough.” I grunt as I touch my chin to the bar for the last time, then lower down until my sneakers touch the floor.
My whole upper body burns.
Ah.
Better.
“I’ll message him myself,” I say as I check the clock. “Six minutes to go.”
When my fingers snap together, it’s out of habit. Other assistants adapted to the snapping.
Gwen lifts one eyebrow. “Whoa. Wait a sec. You’re… um… you’re snapping at me?”
“I need you to pick up the pace.”
“Monday…” she whispers under her breath. “Only ‘til Monday.”
“What about Monday?”
“Nothing.” She bows over the laptop and takes forever reading the screen, trailing her finger down it. Sighing.
“Okay, here’s one that might be important to you. Vanessa’s trip to Cabo has been delayed. She wants to know if you’d like to get coffee this Saturday.”
“That’s a hard ‘no.’”
“Are you sure? She sent more emojis. I’m sure they’re an important part of the message. They’re how we convey emotion in this modern era, as you know, so I really don’t want to leave that off. Without them, the computer age would be very robotic and mechanical, no heart to it. Anyway, speaking of hearts, that’s what she sent. Four hearts. One was the sparkly heart, which I assume means her heart is bursting with love for you.”
“Well, she can burst with love for someone else. And we are officially out of time. Get that KPI and Metrics report to accounting. I’ll take care of the rest.”
“And you’ll call Kate?” She stands and gestures to the Post-it still hanging off my computer like a misplaced flag. “She’d really appreciate it.”
“I’m thinking about it.” And I’m thinking ‘no.’ I seal my lips.
“You’re not going to call her, are you?”
“That’s none of your business.”
“Well, I’m having a hard time telling what is my business, and what isn’t.” She bites her lip. “It’s getting a tad complicated, isn’t it?”
She couldn’t be more correct.
But I won’t admit that to her. I stride to the door and open it.
“You’re going to call that Brian guy back? He sounded like a nice guy.”
I nod and wait with anticipation for her to pass by me. As I suspected, I get a thrill when she draws near.
Her eyes meet mine, and she lingers in the doorway with me. “Why do you have a private investigator, anyway?”
“Also none of your business,” I tell her.
“I’m a curious person. Like you.”
“You can ask, but I don’t have to answer.”
“What if I say something like that next time you ask me about my relationship status?”
“Fair enough. I’ll still take good guesses.”
“Well, I have a guess about this detective of yours.” Her big, blue eyes examine my face. I watch her gaze travel to my scar. “I bet it has to do with your past—your personal past—something that happened to you that you don’t want people to know about.”
“You’re wrong.”
“Hm…” she keeps her eyes pinned to me. “Maybe you’re the mystery, not me.”
We lock eyes. I’m falling again… a strange sensation since my feet are on the floor.
Though it’s only a beat in time, marked by the ticking clock, it feels like time morphs and stretches for us.
The moment is weighted by things neither of us have said.
The things we’ll never be able to say.
The things we’ll never be able to do.
A strand of her hair is lying over her eye. I want to reach out and tuck the stray, wavy lock behind her ear to better see her eyes.
I want to reach for her and pull her body against mine. Right here in the doorway.
I want to tell her she’s the worst at relaying messages. Inefficient with her words. Too soft-hearted for the hard, edgy, shark-filled waters of the business world. I want to tell her that if she wants me to, I’ll keep her safe.
All those wants tumble out of me, unsaid but felt, all while I look at her.
While she looks back at me.
Complicated.
Yes, she’s right about that.
She is complicated, and my encounters with her are becoming very complicated.
“Maybe you’ll tell me about this detective of yours another time,” she says softly.
“Maybe.” Probably not.
She peels away and walks to the elevators. After pressing the down button, she glances back at me.
I’m still in the doorway.
Still watching her.
I should be at my desk. My coaching client is probably trying me right now as I stand here like an idiot.
Yes. My attraction to Gwen is a problem.
And soon, whether it’s right or wrong, I’m going to have to do something about it.