Chapter Three
Stalking in your romance books. For or against?
Will
Ruby’s office door shuts behind her, and I pause, staring after her, hoping she’ll come back out.
She doesn’t, of course. She rarely ever does.
Her assistant and mine watch me with amused pity from their desks. I shoot each of them a rueful grin.
“I’ll just be in my office if you need me,” I tell Clarise.
“You got it, boss,” she responds, pushing her mane of dark, curly hair out of her face so that she can share a look with Charlie, Ruby’s number two guy. Me being number one, of course.
Another flash of my teeth, and I’m in my office, door shut, leaving the whispers of giggling employees in the hallway.
I whistle as I make my way to my desk.
Today is a good day.
Today, Ruby called me Candy.
I love when Ruby calls me Candy.
It reminds me of the best day of my life – the day she professed her undying love for me. Never mind that she pretty much immediately forsook that love. Pre-teen girls are fickle. I’m positive that with enough determination and perseverance, she will once again remember how incredible and sweet – like candy! – I am.
Which is why I’ve spent the last fifteen years trying to remind her of exactly that and staying loyal to her through it all. And I’ll keep on this path until the day comes when she tells me to move on. Because when a girl as perfect as Ruby Camilla Vann says she loves you, you store that love in your affection-deprived heart, to have and to hold, forever and ever.
Yes, please. I do.
My top-of-the-line ergonomic chair – thank you, Liam, best boss ever – rolls away from my desk as I fall into it. Grabbing the desk, I pull myself back before I can roll too far away, then I open my phone to the app that controls the lighting in my office and bring it up from dim to just light enough to read any papers that I might need to without straining my eyes. Not that I get a lot of physical paperwork these days, but the odd stack does come through. If Ruby comes by, I’ll lower it back down.
I’ve found that while her vision is pretty much gone, she can still see light just fine. Which means she can also see the absence of it.
With this information, I set up my office to optimize light and shadow. Huge floor-to-ceiling windows cover one wall, which I dragged my desk directly in front of. After that, it was only a matter of foregoing the overhead fluorescents in favor of dimmable floor lights set on either side of the door, several feet behind where Ruby settles when she visits me, whether she chooses to stand or to sit.
She hasn’t confirmed it, but the way her eyes watch my shoulders when I’m backlit by the sun on the mornings we have our meetings in my office tells me that my set-up lets her at least know the outline of me.
My lips quirk as I remember two weeks ago when that outline had her losing her train of thought mid-sentence.
She’s totally on my hook.
I just have to figure out how to reel her in.
Kicking my feet up on my desk, I lean back in my chair and study the poster-size prints hung on my wall while I contemplate my dilemma.
There are three prints. One of Roman and me at college graduation, Ruby squished between us, her soft pink dress a stark contrast against our black gowns. Her nose is wrinkled and her eyes are rolling, but she doesn’t fool me. I see the uptick of her mouth. Just there, at the corner of her lips.
I blink. Best not to get distracted by those right now.
The next picture isn’t much better, a huge version of a photo I have framed in my kitchen at home. It was taken at Thanksgiving four years ago at Ruby’s parents’ house. Ruby and I are making a pie, and I’ve just mushed leftover dough under her eyes. She looks like a holiday-themed football player, except about a thousand times cuter than you’d think. I’m smiling. She’s adorably outraged.
Her mom snapped the photo, declaring us “the cutest couple ever ”, and Ruby shoved the unbaked pie in my face in retaliation. I’d kissed her cheek, rubbing pie filling all over her in the process.
We’d had to spend an hour in the bathroom washing it off.
An hour alone with Ruby.
Talk about bliss. Even if she did spend the entire hour cussing me out under her breath.
So worth it.
The third picture is a family photo taken the Christmas after that Thanksgiving. Ruby’s parents – Rhonda and Roger – Roman, Ruby, and me. We’re all piled onto the huge sectional at Rhonda and Roger’s house. Somehow, Ruby had ended up in my lap. My teeth shine megawatt from my beaming face. Her smile is soft – embarrassed – and her face is beet red above her dark green turtleneck. I’m in green too, and I remember teasing her about us matching. The perfect couple, I’d called us. And we were.
And we are.
Just as soon as Ruby comes to her senses and loves me again.
Hmm.
My gaze slides back to the first photo. To that tiny quirk of her lips. So little. Anybody else would probably miss it, but then, anybody else wouldn’t know Ruby the way I do. Wouldn’t have studied her expressions the way I have. Wouldn’t have spent years watching her. Learning her.
I freeze.
Am I…
My brows furrow.
Am I a stalker?
My head swivels, eyes roaming my office.
Framed photos of her, and not just those three. I have two on my desk – a selfie I took of us last summer and a snapshot from the marathon we ran the summer before. Two more flank my door, family photos from other holidays where we got shoved together, much to my delight.
I frown.
This is… not looking good.
But surely I’m not, right? I mean, I don’t follow her around all the time. Only sometimes, like if I catch her in the hallway and have a little bit of time to kill and just want to see what she’s doing.
And I don’t take pictures of her that she doesn’t know about! Except, you know, the odd candid. But in the totally normal way that a man takes candid photos of the woman he loves, who doesn’t love him back quite yet.
And I definitely don’t collect any weird momentoes from my time with her. Just the normal type of momentoes – ticket stubs, cards, a hair ribbon that fell out in my car one night when I was taking her home after work.
Okay, so maybe I have a few stalker-esque tendencies.
Am I okay with that?
My eyes catch on Ruby’s mouth – that miniscule smile – and I decide that, yeah, I’m okay with that.
“Come in, Mr. Hart. Over,” Clarise’s voice crackles from my desktop.
I beam as I pick up a black walkie-talkie labeled “the best assistant EVA” from the row of the strongest walkie-talkies money can buy on my desk. They have a range of thirty-something miles, which means they can even reach all the way to the top floor, where Liam’s desk houses a match to the bedazzled one sitting at the front of the line on my desk.
I had Clarise spend an afternoon setting them up a couple of years ago and haven’t regretted the decision since. It took surprisingly little finagling to get Liam to use the system, and six months before Ruby acquiesced to it, but now we’re one big happy walkie-talkie family.
And Ruby thought Liam would replace us. When we contribute so much?
What a silly woman she can be.
“Go for Clarise. Over,” I answer the best assistant EVA, spinning in my chair.
“Copy. Code Jewel is requesting security clearance for the Q4 report, sir. She says she needs it by end of day today, and I quote, ‘or else’. Do you copy? Over.”
Oh, Ruby, you impatient queen.
“Copy. On it. Over,” I respond, wiggling my mouse to wake my snoozing computer.
The screen comes to life at brightness level nine thousand, and I squint my way through dimming it down as Clarise sends through an over and out.
It takes only a moment to find the correct doc and send it. Then I click through to the video I watched on inclusion for deaf people when interpreting. I walkie-talkie Liam to make sure he’s interested, then shoot it over with a couple of pages of notes about how the information could be adjusted to be used for his blind employees as well – or employee, as the case may be.
I check my sent folder to ensure both emails went through, then sit back, allowing my gaze to wander back to Ruby’s smile on my wall.
I give her a tiny smile of my own, then I blow her a kiss.