by Lee, Geneva
“No, I pretty much swore off men after the last one.” Oh my God. Why did I have to say whatever came into my mouth around him? He was like a walking, six- foot- tall vial of truth serum. Sexy, sexy truth serum.
“Someone burned you,” he guessed. He hesitated as if he wanted to say more. I could see he was holding something back. Probably he wanted to ask if it was Trevor. It was pretty obvious there was something going on there. If I was going spill my guts to him I might as well be honest up front.
“I was dating Trevor—the other intern. He cheated on me.” It stung as I ripped that Band-Aid off and the air of truth hit the freshly closed wound, but not as much as I thought it would. Trevor might be around, but he was definitely wasn’t in my life anymore.
“And then you both went after the same internship?”
I could see him trying to process this information. I needed to be sure he understood exactly how that had gone down, because it might be pretty easy to jump to the conclusion that I’d followed him to the company. “I had applied for the internship while we were together. He decided to as well apparently. I had no idea that he’d also gotten one. You might remember the first time we met in the office.” I gulped down half my glass of wine and reached for the bottle. This truth stuff felt new. Usually, at this point, I was trying to flirt or sound smarter than I felt. With Gavin it was somehow easy to just open up to him, but scary at the same time.
“I remember that,” he said with a smirk. Gavin ran a hand through his hair and I wondered what it would be like to run my own hands through it — to feel his body against mine — to kiss him. “Cassie?”
I blinked, he had said something and I was busy in la la land fantasizing about kissing him. “I’m sorry?”
“Is working with him going to be a problem?” Gavin’s eyes squinted in concern and I refrained from hiding under a throw pillow.
“No! I mean, I’m a professional. Of course, I will put Trevor in line if need be.” It was probably best that he know that now. I’d be totally professional until Trevor stepped out of line.
“I bet you will.” Gavin didn’t seem bothered by this idea, instead he seemed rather amused. “So you’ve sworn off men?”
This was my chance to take that back. Or to make my move. Instead, I nodded. Because it was the truth and I found lying to Gavin impossible. I had sworn off men. “I need to focus on me for a while. I have things I want to do with my life.”
“I get it,” he said. “I kinda said the same thing. I just have the list in my head of all the things I want to accomplish before I turn thirty.”
“You still have a while then…” I was fishing for information. It was obvious and I should have been ashamed of myself. I wasn’t. Finding out info from the source was less pathetic than Google stalking him later.
“Four more years,” he said matter-of-factly. “The thing is I’ve checked off most of my list. It’s kind of strange. I guess I have to figure out what I want to do next.”
God, I hope I was on his next to-do list.
“I understand. I’ve decided I need to get out of school, graduate with honors, get amazing internships, and plan to land a kick-ass job. But now that I’m completely on the path to doing all of those things, I’ve started to think about what happens after all of that.”
“Have any answers?”
I shook my head. “You?”
“No, but I’m excited about the possibilities.” His eyes were blazing and I wondered if maybe he was thinking what I was thinking. What would it mean to be part of Gavin’s life? From the way his gaze seared through me, he was wondering the same thing. Before either of us could find out, he stood and grabbed his jacket. “I should get home. My kid sister is staying in my apartment for the weekend.”
“I’d love to meet her sometime,” I said, my cheeks turning red. I’d gone from keeping him at arm’s length to asking to meet his family. What a difference a non-date made.
Gavin didn’t seem to mind my request, however forward it might be. “She’ll be in the office. She’s spearheading that preservation committee.”
“The one that’s trying to stop us?” I asked, taken aback. “Talk about a case of sibling rivalry.”
“It’s one of her great joys in life: to try to make things hard for me. Actually, we’re pretty close, despite her need to be a pain in the ass.” They had to be if she was staying with him while actively working against him.
He moved towards the door and I followed after. We lingered a moment, a few feet apart, before he reached for the handle. “Don’t work too hard this weekend.”
“Am I that obvious?”
“I think we have a lot in common.”
“Then maybe we can figure out our next steps together.” Did I just say that? Out loud? To him? I was going to have to glue my teeth together when he was around.
Gavin didn’t say anything, but he was smiling as he left.
Chapter 9
I will not Facebook stalk Gavin North. Or Wikipedia stalk. Or Google stalk. I will be an adult.
No matter how often I repeated the words, my willpower didn’t get any stronger. That was pretty much the opposite of how a mantra was supposed to work. Already today I had opened a web browser and started to type his name three times. I’d immediately closed it before I could hit enter, but that was the closest thing to restraint I’d shown. Searching his name would be reading too much into Friday night. So we’d shared a couple glasses of wine and talked. Nothing had happened. Only, nothing had happened and that fact was driving me crazy.
Besides, I’d learned a lot about him from our conversation over the weekend, including fun facts like he was only four years older than me.
Translation: there was a reasonable age gap.
Imogen Sound was his kid sister.
Translation: I didn’t need to be jealous of her and, more importantly, Gavin was single!
None of what I’d learned made him any less my boss. Sure, Northwest Investments was cool with inter-office dating, but it didn’t take a genius to figure out that the boss dating an intern was going to be frowned upon. It might also wreck my chances of landing a permanent position with the company when I graduated. Maybe we could date in secret like in the movies, because that always worked out. And what about the inevitable break-up? I didn’t have the best track record with my ex-boyfriends. Despite the plethora of new information I’d learned from Gavin, my options were looking bleaker. It was easier to tell myself I shouldn’t date him when another woman stood in the way. I was never going to be a cheater like my exes. But if the boundary line was purely propriety, I was completely screwed.
He hadn’t come in for the day yet, so I was left to split my time making notes about the project and overanalyzing every moment we’d spent together. It was impossible not to think about him in the office, but I stubbornly redirected myself until my focus was mostly on the project. I’d finally begun to have an actual idea about how to approach the preservation committee. For some reason knowing that Imogen was the one behind it made things easier. I’d allowed myself to Google her. That was research—necessary research—not crazy-girl research. Still, I jumped every time someone walked by my cubicle. It didn’t garner much info. Imogen was an It-Girl, which meant that I’d have better luck piecing together info about her life from Instagram posts.
I’d spent my weekend binging The Bachelor while thinking of any ideas I could about the Majestic Theater project. To avoid access to Google and the temptation to use it, I’d written 100 tiny notes on Post-its instead of opening my computer. Considering the first thing I’d done when I got access to a web browser was do a search on Gavin’s sister that had been a wise move. This morning I needed to sort through all those notes. By the time I’d finished plastering them across my desktop and the walls of my cubicle, my entire workspace looked like a crime scene investigation. It was actually amazing what a weekend without access to computers or cell phones did for my creativity. Now, I didn’t have one good idea, I had at
least twenty good ones and probably about eighty insane ones.
By the time, I’d filtered through them, I was feeling pretty good. Good enough to pop down to Sound Coffee to pick up a latte and a drink for George. Danny was working the bar and he lit up when he saw me, prompting my usual waves of guilt. Thank God, caffeine usually assuaged it.
“Hi Cassie, how was your weekend?” he asked with a bright smile as he began to pull my shot.
I didn’t know how to answer that. My weekend started with the bad date that had ended with… I wasn’t sure what had happened between Gavin and I. Just thinking about it left me feeling warm and tingly inside, probably an inappropriate thing to share. I opted for the cop-out answer. “I mostly vegged and watched TV. You?”
“I was working. We get pretty busy on the weekends.” He put a lid on my cup and passed it to me and then began working on the drink I’d ordered for George. “I put an extra shot in there for you.”
The trouble with Danny was that he was so nice that he was boring. I hadn’t given him exactly scandalous events to work with, but that was what our relationship boiled down to: small talk about work. He finished up George’s Americano and handed it to me. I grabbed two sleeves from the tray next to the espresso machine. I couldn’t help but stare at the Sound Coffee logo as I slipped them on.
Gavin, like it or not, was the heir to a giant coffee fortune, and yet, he’d chosen to work his way up from the bottom. It was really something special.
He was really something special.
The person behind me in line bumped my arm and I startled back to reality—the place where I had a job and shit to do. I waved goodbye to Danny and headed back to the office, eager to get to work on one of the one hundred ideas I’d thought up over the last few days. Pausing at the reception desk, I held the Americano just out of George’s reach as was becoming our custom.
“You didn’t tell me that Imogen Sound was Gavin’s sister?” I accused him.
He wiggled his eyebrows and pursed his lips like I had been giving him sass. “Honey, you didn’t ask. Why does it matter if she’s his girlfriend or his sister?”
“It doesn’t.” I shrugged in a not-at-all convincing way.
“Umm-hmm.” He took a sip of his drink with one raised eyebrow. He wasn’t buying it, but he didn’t push.
“Enjoy your coffee!” I called before he decided to ask more questions.
It had been a dangerous move bringing up Gavin at all. If I wasn’t careful I would find myself distracted at my desk. I sat down at my computer, determined to get to work, and dug in. When Trevor popped his head into my cubicle, I looked up surprised to see an hour had already passed. So far I had outlined three separate proposals. They were skeletons—ideas really—but any one of them would work. I just had to choose the one that would impress NorthWest Investments most. I did my best to shield my screen from Trevor’s prying eyes, but he craned his neck trying to see anyway.
“Are you working on the Majestic Theatre proposal?” he asked
I snorted. Even if he couldn’t decipher the dozens of random thoughts scrawled on notes all over the makeshift walls, some things should be obvious. “No, I’m solving world peace.”
“Come on, Cassie. I was thinking about it all weekend and it doesn’t make sense for us to work separately.” He leaned against my makeshift doorway and shoved his hands into his trouser pockets casually as he began to whistle his new tune.
If I knew Trevor, he hadn’t spent his weekend working at all. Undoubtedly, he’d been out to the bars or taking some new girl out. He had a firm commitment to a work-life balance that usually tipped the scales firmly toward life.
“I’m actually pretty far along in my proposal already.” I hit the sleep button so that he would stop trying to peek.
“Maybe you could show me what you have, and I can give you some tips.”
“Do you really think I’m falling for that?” I asked. Clearly, he wasn’t as prepared to tackle this project as he’d tried to let on before.
“I’ll show you mine if you show me yours.” He winked in a way that I used to find charming, but now it made me want to gag.
“No thanks. I’ve seen enough of yours already.” I refrained from detailing how little interest I had in revisiting anything he had to show me.
Trevor’s forehead crinkled and his mouth drooped down as he shook his head in a sad, slow way. “You know, we were in love once.”
I didn’t know what to say to this. I couldn’t believe he was bringing it up here. Now. We hadn’t been in love. I had been in love. “If that was true,” I hissed under my breath, “then you wouldn’t have cheated on me.”
“We all make mistakes. You don’t have to keep punishing me.”
“Let me make this clear to you.” I sat up in my seat and crossed my arms over my chest. “I nothing you. I’m not punishing you. I’m not helping you. I nothing you.”
Trevor opened his mouth, the concerned look vanishing and morphing into white-hot rage, but before he could speak, we were joined by Gavin. He looked from Trevor to me and raised an eyebrow. Now that he knew about our past, it probably wasn’t hard to figure out what was going on, especially with me in protection mode and Trevor on stage two of a nuclear-level meltdown.
“Everything cool here?” he asked nonchalantly. If I didn’t know better, I’d think he was just checking in on his interns. Except, I knew better, which made the checking in feel personal, like he was worried about me. I liked it.
“Yeah, we were just working together on the Majestic Theater project.” Trevor shot me a cocky grin while Gavin’s eyes stayed trained on me. I could sense Gavin searching for the truth in what he was being told. I hoped he found it.
“Yes, we were just talking about our separate proposals,” I said with emphasis. Better to spell it out than let him get the wrong idea. I’d told Gavin I could work with Trevor, but I didn’t want him to think I was choosing to do so. Somehow, that felt like it was sending the wrong message.
“There’s definitely a time and place for teamwork,” Gavin said, spreading his hands, “but I can see why you two would want to work on this project individually. If you have any concerns or want to bounce any ideas, come see me in my office.” His eyes never left mine when he made this offer. A low fire lit in my belly and I hoped its heat didn’t make its way to my cheeks. Technically, the offer extended to both of us, but I got the impression that it was meant for me. There was no stopping the flames from coloring my face now.
“Thanks,” Trevor interjected, “I’ll do that.”
Gavin gave him a terse nod and then disappeared toward the corner office.
Trevor watched him walk away before he straightened up and adjusted his suit jacket. “Well, I guess I understand why you don’t need my help now.”
I was too busy fantasizing about bouncing ideas off Gavin in his office for that to process immediately, but when it did, I startled and looked up at him. “What does that mean?”
“That it looks like you clinched this competition.”
“There is no competition. We’re doing our best to help the company.”
“I guess we weren’t sitting in the same meeting,” Trevor said. “There’s a job at the end of this rainbow, and it’s supposed to be mine.”
“Remind me how you got this internship again?” I asked, not able to stop from fuming. Did he honestly believe that he deserved that job? He hadn’t even done the legwork to find this internship. Now he wanted to steal the prize.
“You’d love to be the martyr on this one, wouldn’t you? But I didn’t think you’d sink this low.” He shook his head. This time his disappointed face looked a little too practiced.
“Exactly what are you accusing me of?” I knew. I could hear it hiding under his words, but I wanted him to say it.
He had the decency to lean down and lower his voice when he did. “I’m saying that if you think screwing the boss will get you this job, then I’m disappointed in you. I guess I really can’t
help you out with your proposal.”
I didn’t have to tell him to get out, he walked away following his accusation. I sat at my desk, staring at my blank computer screen. How dare he claim he had a right to be disappointed in me? Gavin wouldn’t be the only one making the decision about how to pitch the preservation committee. And it wasn’t like anything had happened between Gavin and me. In fact, I’d been trying like hell to make sure nothing did happen. Was I guilty just because I’d had a few daydream fantasies and shared a glass of wine with him? So much for innocent until proven guilty. I wanted this job. I’d worked for this internship. I wasn’t about to let my reputation be skewered by an ex’s revenge- driven tactics. There was only one thing I could do. It took nearly a half an hour to screw up the courage, but I got up and walked toward Gavin’s office. I paused before knocking on the door, but I didn’t wait for an invitation before I strode in. Gavin looked up, obviously surprised, because he had a guest.
“Cassie,” he said my name with a familiarity that wrapped itself around me like a warm blanket. “Is there something I can do for you?”
“I’m s-s-sorry,” I stammered, losing some of my nerve. “I can come back later.”
Or never. If I didn’t do this now, I would never get up the guts again. I would just have to go into hiding. Maybe permanently. Maybe it was time to get a shopping cart and find a spot under a bridge and hide out forever. That suddenly felt like a much better life plan.
“It’s fine. I did tell you my office was always open,” he said. There was a double meaning in that. I could feel it.
Imogen, who up close was a more delicate version of Gavin with the same blue eyes and dark hair, bit her lip as if holding back a smile. Maybe I wasn’t the only one aware of the simmering attraction between him and I. Nope. The list of people who’d picked up on it was growing. Trevor. Imogen. George. If I wasn’t careful, by the end of the day, everyone in the office would know.
When I didn’t say anything, Gavin rescued me. “Actually, I wanted to introduce you to my sister. Imogen this is Cassie. Cassie this is Imogen.”