by L. A. Witt
Except that would get weird. Reuben probably didn’t have it in him to do this often, and anyway, he and I were still on shaky ground. Or at least uneven ground, which suddenly seemed tilted at a precarious angle as I fumbled with my feelings about how I wanted him here professionally, and how attractive he was, and how fucking delicate our sort-of truce was.
I blew out a breath and rubbed my eyes. Yeah, I was definitely still attracted to him. And I was professionally impressed by him. I wanted to protect him, escape him, fuck him, argue with him, and somehow I was supposed to keep all of that contained until we got back to Seattle.
Oh God. We’re still stuck together for how many more days?
***
Trade shows always meant early mornings and late nights. By the time I made it back to the room the first day, it was nearly nine o’clock, my feet hurt, and my voice was scratchy. As much as I wanted to hit the hay, I needed to suck down some tea if I had any hope of being able to speak tomorrow.
Reuben had bowed out of going to dinner with me and some clients, which hadn’t surprised me. He’d probably had all the people he could handle for one day and needed some downtime. That was fine with me. Wooing, wining, and dining clients was what I got paid for.
When I let myself into the room, he was still awake. Again, not a surprise. He’d always been a night owl. He sat cross-legged on his bed, a pillow between his back and the headboard, and his laptop propped on his thigh.
His eyes flicked up as I came in. “How was dinner?”
“Boring and overcooked.” I pulled my conference badge’s lanyard over my head and dropped it by the TV. “But I’m pretty sure I kissed enough ass to keep us in the good graces of everyone who matters.”
Reuben laughed without a lot of feeling. “Better you than me.”
I grunted as I thumbed through the box of tea provided by the hotel.
“Your voice going to hold out?” he asked. “You’re sounding a bit hoarse.”
“I’ll be fine. Especially since this room has an actual teakettle.” I pulled the device out from its hiding space behind the coffeemaker. “One that actually gets the water hot enough for tea.”
He made a gagging noise. “Still don’t know how you drink that shit.”
“Well, drinking this shit will mean the difference between me still being able to speak and having to pawn off all the human interaction on you.”
“Oh. In that case…” He made a go on gesture.
“That’s what I thought.”
I filled the teakettle and finally settled on peppermint tea. Tomorrow I’d see if the bar could provide me with some hot lemon water to drink while I was at the booth, but this would do for now.
While the water boiled, I stole a peek at Reuben. He’d shifted his attention back to the computer and was frowning at something on the screen. It wasn’t a look of concentration, though. Maybe at first glance, but anyone who knew him—aka, me—could see the frustration and confusion in his eyes.
After I’d made my tea, I cautiously asked, “What’s wrong?”
“Just some bullshit back at the plant.” He drummed his nails on his laptop, then shook his head. “I don’t know what anyone expects me to do about it, though.”
I sat on the edge of my bed, carefully cradling the steaming mug between my hands. “Anything I can help with?”
“No. It’s—” He paused. “Well, maybe.”
I lifted my eyebrows.
Sighing, Reuben leaned against the pillow between his lower back and the headboard. “So, I keep butting heads with one of my leads, and I can’t figure out why. Or how to fix it.”
Well, that explained his frustration and confusion. I slipped the teabag out of the cup, and as I tossed it into the trash between the beds, said, “Tell me what’s going on.”
He eyed me uncertainly.
I waved a hand. “Nothing leaves this room. I’m not asking for gossip—just enough details that I can help.”
Reuben chewed his lip. “Okay. So.” He put the laptop aside on the comforter and rubbed his hand over his face. “I’ve got Stan Weitzel in charge of developing the new 9X series torches, right? He’s overseeing the project, but like I always do, I’ll sometimes send an email out to the entire team. Asking for status updates, giving them a heads up about a change to specs, that kind of thing.”
I nodded, but didn’t speak.
“And Stan…” Reuben glared at his screen and made a frustrated gesture. “Every single time, he emails me back—copying everyone—and questions everything. Even stupid shit like where we’re going to put the part number label on the torch handle.” He turned to me, brow pinched. “What am I supposed to do with that?”
“Well.” I worked my jaw for a moment. “It sounds to me like you’re both upset that the other is undermining you.”
Reuben blinked.
“You put him in a position to be the lead,” I went on. “Maybe he feels like you emailing his crew is making him look less like he’s in charge, and that might make it harder for him to lead his people. And at the same time, he’s undermining you by questioning your judgment at every turn.” I whistled, shaking my head. “I guarantee all the people working for him are throwing up their hands and wondering when this dick-measuring contest will end so they can do their jobs.”
His eyes flicked to the screen, and his lips parted. “Shit. I… never thought of that. I just thought I was being efficient, you know? Getting the information to everyone who needed it. But when you put it like that…”
I held back a smile. Sometimes it was actually kind of endearing to watch the pieces come together in his head. I had no idea why he short-circuited when it came to understanding and processing emotions, but once someone showed him how everything went together, he got it. He didn’t fight it, and he didn’t get annoyed if I was blunt about it. For as much as he second-guessed his ability to work with people, his sheer earnestness about wanting to understand them went a lot further than he imagined.
After a moment, Reuben laughed quietly. “That all makes sense. Honestly, this is why I hate that my dad put me in a supervisor position. I’m an engineer, not a manager.”
“No, but you’re not bad at what you do either.”
“I’m good at managing projects, not people.”
Okay, that was fair. Reuben was amazing at all the technical stuff that blew my mind, but he didn’t read people well. Never had. He struggled to decipher and address his own feelings, never mind other people’s. It wasn’t that he was a cold, emotionless asshole or anything. In fact, he tried really hard to be mindful of how things affected other people, or how they responded to things. He knew when people were upset or unhappy—the struggle was with figuring out why. It was like somewhere between receiving the information and knowing what to do with it, something got lost in the translation.
“You know.” I set my mug on the table between the beds. “If something like this comes up again, I’m always around the plant. You’re welcome to bounce stuff off me and see if that helps.”
Reuben’s brows pulled together. “You wouldn’t mind?”
“Of course not.” I smiled. “I know you, and I know exactly why this kind of thing is hard for you. If I can help”—I shrugged—“let me know.”
“That’s…” He blinked. “That would be great. Thank you.”
“Any time.”
We held each other’s gazes, and my heart did a little flutter. This was a small step, but it still seemed like one step closer to things being back to normal.
After the way things had been for the last several weeks? I’d take it.
Chapter 7
Reuben
I had no idea how Marcus did this. For three solid days, he was Mr. Charisma at the trade show. Whether he was talking to a longtime supplier, a potential multimillion-dollar client, or a shy barista who mentioned in passing that she was just starting a marketing degree, he focused on people like no one else existed in the world.
His charm s
eemed effortless, but rooming with him gave me a new perspective on that. Every night, the instant we were in the elevator, the veil would drop and the exhaustion would show, and within fifteen minutes of getting back to our room, he’d have drunk some of that awful-smelling tea and be dead asleep. All the years I’d known him, I’d just thought being an extrovert was easy for him, but I’d never seen him in trade show mode. I’d never been around him when he’d had to be “on” for hours on end with person after person after person from the crack of dawn until nine or ten at night. Maybe it wasn’t as easy as it looked after all. No wonder he’d had to go into that “social hibernation” the day before the trade show had started.
Which, I had to admit, made me feel a hell of a lot better about struggling so hard for even a fraction of his outgoingness. As we got ready to head to the bar after things had wrapped up on Friday night, I still envied his ability to charm strangers and work crowds, but I had a much deeper respect for how taxing that ability really was. Even now, as he was fussing with his tie in the full-length mirror in our room, the cracks showed. His eyes were a little dimmer, his shoulders sagging slightly; I knew as soon as we left the room, he’d flip the switch and come back to life, but the fatigue was unmistakable now.
I pulled on my suit jacket. “You ready?”
“Just about.” He adjusted his tie one last time, then looked himself up and down. When he faced me, all the tiredness was gone. It was almost like his reflection hadn’t really been his; like the mirror had shown a different man entirely. One who was ready to collapse instead of the poised, energetic man smiling back at me right now.
So was he faking it? Or had I been seeing things?
Of course I knew he was human. I’d seen him clinging to his tea, heard how raw his voice could be at the end of a long day. Still, he seemed even more drained than he’d been letting on.
Oblivious to me, Marcus tugged at his sleeve. “You should think about coming to more of these things.”
“Come again?”
Marcus met my eyes. “You haven’t noticed people pretty much falling all over themselves to hear you talk about products?” He shifted his attention back to his cufflink. “If you can get away from the plant a few times a year, having you at more shows would be really good for the company.”
“Oh. Um.” I shook my head. “I don’t know. I don’t think this is really my scene.”
His warm smile made my skin tingle. “You’re better at it than you think.”
“Doesn’t mean I enjoy it.”
Inclining his head, he asked, “Do you?”
“I…” I thought about it. “Well, it’s not as bad as I thought it would be. It’s just intimidating. Having all those people coming at me all day long. That, and I doubt Dad can let me out of the plant for more than a day or two at a stretch. Every time I so much as step out for lunch, the whole place seems to fall into chaos.”
Marcus sniffed. “Maybe if your father would finally let you hire some more people into management positions.” He gave his sleeve a sharp pull, as if it were the source of his irritation. “You’re good at what you do, and it’s stupid to distract you with everything else.”
I wasn’t sure what warmed me more—the hint of that protectiveness he’d always had for me, or the casual acknowledgment that I was good at my job. My own response made me feel kind of ridiculous, though. I knew I was good at what I did, and Marcus had a vested interest in the company being able to utilize me properly instead of wasting my time on something an actual manager would be better suited for. I was being stupid.
“Well, maybe I can reorganize the department when we get back.” I rose from where I’d been sitting on the bed. “Should we head downstairs before the line at the bar gets too long?”
Marcus gave his reflection another critical down-up, then nodded. “Yep. Let’s go.” He picked up his room key, I took mine, and we headed out of the room.
As soon as we walked into the jam-packed bar, I knew I was in over my head. At the trade show, I’d held my own. Discussing products and troubleshooting was fine.
The bar, however, was a whole different world, and I was way out of my element. I couldn’t even handle the bar scene when I was out with friends. What was I supposed to say? What was I supposed to do? How the fuck did anyone hear each other over the cacophony of voices roaring over the top of blasting music? How many times were you supposed to ask people to repeat themselves before you just nodded and pretended you’d actually heard them? How did people do this?
Unsurprisingly, Marcus navigated the whole scene like one of those Olympic athletes who does his figure-skating routine or handles a snowboard course and makes it look so fucking easy. He was the guy you watched on TV and thought, well shit, that looks easy, I can totally do it. And then when you made your first attempt at curling or skiing, you fell flat on your ass and broke something because, no, it really wasn’t that easy.
Marcus knew exactly when and how to slide in or out of a conversation. He seemed to have this intuition about how close to stand to someone, or if they were okay with him touching their arm or shoulder. If he’d met someone before, he always remembered some detail about them, and if they’d never met, he always seemed to know just what questions to ask to get them to open up. No matter what they talked about—family, friends, shop talk, small talk—he listened like it was the most fascinating thing he’d ever heard. Sometimes I wondered if he’d actually caught everything they’d said—it was so loud, I sure couldn’t—but if he was just nodding along, he was the most convincing bullshitter I’d ever seen.
I stuck close to him. He was the only person here I knew, and at least if he was the center of a conversation, that meant people were focused on him, not me. I was more than happy to hide in his shadow.
Especially because hanging back in his shadow meant getting a front row seat to him. I could see why people were so easily charmed by him. The smile alone had always made me weak in the knees. Back when we’d first been introduced—me an engineer trying to claw my way up through my dad’s company, him a newly hired marketing genius—his smile had rendered me speechless. The way he’d looked right into my eyes had hypnotized me. To this day, he could still stop me dead in my tracks just by looking at me. Small wonder I hadn’t said no back then when he’d boldly asked if I wanted to get drinks. Or that drinks had turned into closing down the bar before going back to his place for sex that woke up his neighbors. To this day, I still had no idea how he’d even known I was queer.
Tonight, as he’d done all week, he laid on that charm with everyone in the room. He said all the right things to get men and women alike falling all over themselves to talk to him.
It was interesting to sit back and observe him in his natural habitat. A lot of things about our clientele and our company’s reputation were beginning to make sense. This was a male-dominated industry, and I’d heard stories for years about how hard it was for women to be respected and taken seriously. Watching Marcus at work, it was no mystery why the company had never had any trouble wooing women into becoming clients. While men from other companies flirted shamelessly, Marcus didn’t. At all. He smiled and he schmoozed, but he never crossed the line into anything remotely suggestive. He kept a respectful distance instead of getting into their personal space, and he listened to them and asked questions and didn’t treat them like they were stupid—a novel approach, from what I’d seen in this business.
Somehow, he managed to be as smooth as a salesman without being sleazy like a salesman selling used cars. It was charming and endearing, not to mention fascinating to watch.
Tonight, though, as I stayed with him while he floated from conversation to conversation, a few cracks started to show. One minute he was all smiles and handshakes. The next—when he’d pause for a drink, or excuse himself to the bar, or just didn’t think anyone was looking—he seemed to struggle to hold himself upright. Then another person would walk up and start talking to him, and he’d instantly be back to Marketing Marc
us as if he hadn’t wavered at all.
It was hard to say if I was just more in tune to him than usual, so I was noticing things more, or if he really was letting the mask slip more and more as the night went on. Either way, it worried me. This was a long trade show, and it wasn’t over yet. Everyone had their limits. Was Marcus getting close to his? And what happened if he hit that breaking point?
Maybe he needed the same thing I did right now—back up to the room and no more people. He probably needed some of that godawful tea, too.
I stepped closer so he could hear me over the noise. “Hey, if you want to call it a night, we can.”
“What?” He smiled. “Aren’t you having a good time?”
I shrugged. “I am, but you were looking pretty tired earlier. Are you sure you’re doing all right?”
“I’m fine. What about you?”
“I’m fucking exhausted,” I said with a tired laugh. “And I think you are too.” I paused, hoping I wasn’t stepping out of line, and spoke just loud enough to be heard. “Maybe turning in early would be a good idea. So you don’t burn yourself out.”
His smile faltered a little, and he searched my eyes, his own expression suddenly unreadable.
I tried not to squirm under the scrutiny. “What?”
“Nothing.” He shook his head, dropping his gaze to the mostly empty glass in his hand. “But I think you’re right. Maybe calling it a night is a good idea.” He threw back the rest of his drink and gestured around the room. “Let me say goodnight to the important people, and we’ll get out of here.”
I fully expected those goodbyes to take three hours, but he was surprisingly quick about it. Within fifteen minutes, we were on our way out of the thick, deafening crowd.