Page 7 of Mark my Words

“Kris!”

My head swiveled toward the open door of Isobel’s office as Sam’s loud shout drew my attention. So rude. I untucked my legs from my chair and pulled out one of my wireless earbuds. “Hey.”

“Really?” Sam did not look impressed with me, yet again. He kept showing up in random places around the office and pinning me down with that look that I couldn’t quite classify. Was it resentment? Boredom? Disdain? I wasn’t sure, but I was a little jealous of the warm smiles he bestowed upon the other people working in our office.

“What?”

Sam sighed loudly, his full lips pursed as his eyes narrowed slightly. “I’ve been standing here trying to get your attention for several minutes.”

“Maybe you should’ve tried harder,” I replied, shrugging. He could have at least walked further into the room so he was in my line of sight. He had to have seen the white earbuds sticking out of my ears. Did he think they were only for decoration? These babies had the best noise-canceling properties my meager paycheck could buy.

“I also sent you an email this morning to schedule a time to sit down and review these. You read it. You just never responded.”

I rolled my eyes and pulled out the other earbud, tucking them into the case inside my messenger bag. Obviously, some people couldn’t take the hint when I was ignoring them.

“Don’t roll your eyes at me,” he warned in a deep voice, my stomach clenching at his tone. Very few people in the office would ever think of speaking to me like that. Of course, he saw the eye roll; he watched everything. “I know you don’t like me. I’m not the president of your fan club either, but we need to work on this together.”

This was getting incredibly annoying. My schedule was my own. The only person I rearranged things for was my boss, and the six-foot-tall, dark-haired, blue-eyed man currently standing in the doorway was not Isobel. Although at times, her balls may be bigger.

“I prefer to work alone. You make your notes; I make mine. We can let them go over both sets,” I told him dismissively, returning to where I had been working.

“No.” The way he said it wasn’t with the petulant defiance I would have expected but a firm expression of his disagreement with my methods.

“Excuse me?”

“I was given precise instructions from your boss and mine that we were to go over these together,” he responded with an exaggerated lift of one eyebrow.

Why did Isobel insist on torturing me like this? Was I not a model employee?

“Did you look them over?” I sighed. I was sure he probably had, and I had as well, but I wasn’t expecting to have to go through them line by line to compare notes.

“Yes.”

“Did you make notes?” I knew that I sounded condescending, but the way he looked at me was irritating. His deep blue eyes probing mine with that semi-bored expression were unnerving.

He sighed as he took my bag off the chair beside me, placing it on the floor.

“Excuse me,” I scoffed as I grabbed my bag from him, yanking it a little too hard. “You could’ve asked if you could sit.”

“Your bag doesn’t need its own chair,” he said dismissively, rolling his eyes.

“And gentlemen ask if they can join someone,” I pointed out. He had barged in here, interrupted my work, and expected me to jump because he commanded it. That was not how this was going to work. I didn’t buy into it when Adrian did it. Why would I with his mini-me?

He growled under his breath and gripped the back of the chair with both hands, staring me down. “Kristine. Am I allowed to sit in this chair that is your boss’ property, not yours, and go over these pages we were both assigned to edit?”

I had to admire the snark in his voice. I intimidated most people in this office with my oh-so-pleasant—note the sarcasm—outer demeanor, but he didn’t seem to be one of them.

“By all means...” I gestured to the now empty chair as I pulled my bag around behind my seat and closed the document where I’d been working.

“My tablet work alright, or do you want to use your laptop?”

His tablet was sufficient. It’s not like I had permission to make actual edits to the manuscript anyway. “Your copy will work. Since you’re the lead on this.”

Sam sighed and rolled his eyes again, taking a deep breath as he looked at me. “Would you get the chip off your shoulder already? It wasn’t a slight on your work quality. It’s simply the protocol to keep the document secure.”

I knew he was right—that didn’t mean I had to like it. Admitting Sam was on my level didn’t come easily to me. He was my professional equivalent in Adrian’s office, but I didn’t consider Adrian to be anywhere near the same caliber of an editor as Isobel.

“Let’s pull up the new section and read through it,” I rolled my finger in a circle in the air to indicate that he needed to get on with it. I had other things that needed my attention.

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