Chapter 27
My legs were still weak as we descended, but this time they weren’t shaking from fear.
“Hurry up, Munroe, I’m hungry,” Jack called behind me.
“Patience is a virtue, Shane.” A frisson of energy ran through my body.
After everyone disrobed and hung their suits up in the safety of the changing room, we congregated back in the lobby to await our next instructions. My stomach veered between being too nervous to eat and ravenous. Jack licked his lips as someone mentioned burgers, and my stomach tied in a sailor’s knot.
The redhead with the tablet had returned, doing a silent headcount as her eyes ran over us. “How did everyone enjoy that?”
Half of us grumbled while the other half cheered. Jack joined in with the cheering. Traitor.
“Amazing, but that’s not all we have set up for you today. After lunch downstairs, you’ll be joining Yanis for hot yoga in the hotel.”
Everyone looked confused. A brave soul at the front asked, “Uh, what’s hot yoga?”
The redhead gave her a sympathetic smile. “It’s similar to yoga, but the room temperature is set between eighty and one hundred degrees. It can help loosen muscles and increase flexibility.”
The courageous woman again asked the question running through all our minds. “What does that have to do with team building?”
Redhead looked offended. “You’ll be pairing up to help each other with poses and rotating to a new partner throughout the ninety minutes.”
One hundred degrees, sweating, the risk of bending over and farting in a stranger’s face—or worse, Jack’s—for ninety minutes? I could tell from the V on Jack’s forehead he was thinking the same as me.
“Fuck that,” I whispered out the side of my mouth.
“I concur,” he whispered back.
“If you could make your way down to The Salad Bowl, we’ve laid a spread out for you in keeping with the wellness theme of today, and I’ll be there in an hour to take you down to the yoga studio. Enjoy.” The redhead tapped her tablet and sashayed away from us.
The group made for the elevators, but Jack and I hung back, insisting they all go down and we’d catch the next.
“Hot yoga sounds like my idea of hell,” Jack commented the second the door slid shut.
“Didn’t you hear her? Between eighty and a hundred degrees! It is hell,” I moaned. “Why can’t we bond over burgers?”
“They don’t serve burgers in The Salad Bowl. They sell lettuce,” Jack moaned. “A client requested I meet her for lunch here a few months ago. The minute she got into her town car, I headed for the nearest food truck.”
“No burgers and working out in a sauna. This is a time when I wish my IBS would kick in,” I said, hitting the button for the elevator.
“Would that render you incapable of working out?”
I crossed my arms. “You were in David’s office that day. Could you work out after that?”
“I’m surprised you’re still alive,” Jack commented as we stepped into the elevator. His mouth twitched, then he looked at me. “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?”
“That we fake me being sick so we can get out of hot yoga?” I said.
“And go eat burgers?”
My stomach growled. “What if Sally finds out? Or David?”
He held up his hands. “Who’s going to deny a sick woman? Never mind a woman so ill that she needs to be accompanied home. He wanted us to get along—mission accomplished. Without the need to roast us alive.”
“I’m terrified that we’re on the same wavelength.”
“More terrified than you were hanging over that ledge?” he queried.
Even more so because this time I feel like I’m falling.“I dunno.”
He laughed. “I bet you’ve never called in sick before, huh?”
“Not even when I went down with appendicitis.” I smirked. “Finished a listing meeting then went to Lenox Hill.”
Jack clapped. “Congratulations, you’re a machine.” The elevator doors opened on the restaurant floor. “What’s it gonna be? Sick or sweat?”
Could I do this? The rational, logical part of me screamed no. Scarlett Munroe didn’t slack off or break the rules.
We both stepped out of the elevator and watched as a server pointed the group in the direction of their table.
Jack licked his lips in that slow, deliberate way, and I felt jealous of his tongue.
My hands clutched my stomach. “Jack, I don’t feel so good.”
* * *
We followed everyone to the back of the line, picking and choosing what to put on our plates. Everything came in varying shades of green. They wanted to feed us rabbit food, then expected us to work out?
“Here, take some of this.” Jack dropped a tiny ceramic bowl of coleslaw on my plate.
“I can’t eat that. It’ll set off my IBS,” I hissed, ready to lift the offending item from my plate and throw it into the nearest trashcan.
Jack gave me a look, and it dawned on me that he’d done it intentionally. How did he know that would cause an IBS flare up? Despite a list, a note on his fridge, and text reminders, Denzel always made sandwiches laced with mayonnaise then got pissed when I declined them.
The bowl remained on my plate as I moved further down the line, reluctantly taking a slice of cucumber and two cherry tomatoes before we headed over to a table.
“I say give it ten minutes, run to the toilet, and I’ll give it five minutes and follow you out. Then I’ll come back in and tell them I need to take you home,” Jack whispered behind his glass of water.
“Uh-huh,” I mumbled, my mouth wrapped around a tomato. Something that now felt sexual.
Jack’s eyes dropped to my mouth, and I licked a drop of tomato juice from the corner of my lip.
Jack didn’t share my self-consciousness, popping one tomato after another into his mouth. The ceramic bowl of coleslaw remained on my tray, a fork dug into it in case someone questioned what caused my digestive distress. I had to give it to him, he paid attention to details.
The rest of the group chatted at the other end of the table and crunched on their greens, leaving us to our own devices. They were all twenty-something Gen-Zers who didn’t know the joy of scouring Myspace for friends. Or what Myspace was.
“Ready?” Jack asked, ten minutes later. “Remember, you need to look like you’re running for the bathroom. Pull a face. Grab your stomach.”
“Thanks for the tips, Scorsese. Remember my handbag.” I pointed to the pink satchel on the seat next to me.
Turned out I didn’t need to pretend to shake or feel sick, because I did as I flew past our group and turned right out of the restaurant door.
I darted into a gender-neutral bathroom outside, then pulled my phone out and paced, waiting for Jack’s signal that I could come out.
Fifteen minutes went by then three sharp raps came on the door.
After checking my hair in the mirror, I unlocked the door and peeked out. Jack’s grinning face looked back at me. “They bought it.”
“You sure?”
“Hook, line, and sinker. Redhead sends her love.” He checked over his shoulder. “You’ll still need to fake it until we get out of the building. Do that scowl you always give someone when they say something stupid.”
I stared at him.
He cocked a finger at me. “Perfect.”
* * *
“Where to?” Jack asked when we were outside and down the block. He’d wrapped his arm around my shoulders in the elevator and all through the lobby in an act of helpfulness as I hobbled out, lest Sally or the redhead should decide to check the security footage. It wouldn’t do for us to skip out of the place.
“You wanted a burger,” I pointed out, annoyed when he removed his arm.
The street bustled now that the city had woken up. People in shorts and messy hair walked dogs and enjoyed a lazy Sunday. Women in sharp blazers and coiffed hair headed to brunch.
“You want a burger?” he asked as we waited to cross the street. The more distance between us and hot yoga, the better.
“No,” I blurted out, paranoid that he now felt obliged to spend the rest of the day with me. No girl wanted a pity date. “I mean, we could just go home?”
He rubbed a hand down his stubble. “Do you want to go home?”
I want to spend time with you if you want to spend time with me. “No, do you?”
“No, but it’s not safe for us to be in public. Never know who you could run into,” he mused.
“You mean our client who almost fired us? And if he finds out we played hooky during the activity meant to bring us together we will get fired?” I babbled.
“In a nutshell,” he said.
“I have a little rooftop patio,” I offered. “It’s not huge, but it has a magnificent view of the city. And a lot of takeout menus.”
Jack chewed on his lip. “Do you have alcohol?”
“I’m a single woman in New York,” I told him. “My kitchen is built out of alcohol and ice cream.”
“Then what are we waiting for?” He stuck his hand out to hail a cab.