Page 51 of Crave Me

CHAPTER 12

Evan

Wren inches beside me as the office phone rings. Already there are two lines placed on hold. “So, you canned Ashleigh, huh?” she says, angling her chin in the direction of the elevators.

I drag my hand through my hair as Ashleigh disappears, the stress of too many long hours hitting me at once. “Yes.”

“I’m sorry,” she says.

I fixate on all the flashing buttons along the screen demanding attention. “She needed to go,” I say, willing myself not to rip the phone off the desk and smash it against the wall.

“Oh, that’s for damn sure,” Wren says, walking toward the desk. “I’m only sorry for what it did to you.”

I frown, my brow easing as I realize she understands far beyond what I told her. She motions to the phone. “You want me to get that?”

I start to tell her she doesn’t have to when she picks up the receiver and taps the first line.

“Evan Jonah’s office. This is Wren. How can I help you?” Her gaze shifts across the desk. “Uh, huh,” she says. She picks up a pen, then scrambles through two drawers before she finds a pad of legal paper. “Right, okay. Well, let me ask you this, John,” she adds, scribbling fast. “Is this something that he has to go to the lab for, or can you come up to see him?”

She reaches for the laptop on the desk. “What’s the passcode?” she whispers.

“What?” I know what she’s asking, I’m simply dumbfounded by how easily she took over. I take the pen and pad she offers and jot it down.

She sits, typing fast, her eyes darting across the screen until she taps the icon that opens my schedule. “Okay. If you come up now, he can see you until his next appointment at four-thirty. Does that work?” She smiles into the phone. “All right, see you in a few.”

She disconnects. “What are you doing?” I ask like an idiot.

Her wink is her only reply. She hits the next button. “Evan Jonah’s office, this is Wren,” she says. “Hi, Alex. How can I help you?”

Again she returns to my schedule, but something she hears causes her to straighten. “Look, Alex, I’m not trying to tell you what to do, but if the boss says he wants to see you at nine in the morning, you need to be here at nine in the morning . . . No, no, that’s his only available spot tomorrow . . . What’s going on that you can’t be here? According to the notes you made this appointment a week ago . . . Oh, I see . . . Okay, hold on.” She puts him on hold, answers the others two lines ringing, asks each politely to wait, and then places them back on hold.

“How late are you staying tonight?” she asks. “Your last appointment is at six, but I saw that stack of crap you have on your desk.”

“Likely until midnight,” I answer slowly, noting how nothing seems to escape her.

“Can you meet Alex at seven? His wife is expecting their first baby and they had to schedule an ultrasound.” She holds out a hand. “It will keep you later, but I’ll block out the time you were supposed to meet with him so you can sleep in.” She gives me the once over. “You look like you could use some sleep—not that you’re not hotter than Brock O’Hurn munching jalapenos in hell, I’m just saying, the rest will be good for you.”

“All right,” I say, trying to absorb what I’m seeing and what she said.

She returns to the call. “Hey, Alex. It’s Wren. Evan can see you at seven. Does that work?” She waits for his answer then laughs. “No, problem. Oh, and good luck at the ultrasound tomorrow, you’ll have to let Evan know how it goes.”

She disconnects, doing a double-take when she still sees me standing there. “Go eat,” she says. “John says he just needs the okay to switch Mechanicus Orcus—”

“Ork Mechanicus?” I interrupt.

“Sure,” she says laughing. “Anyway, he wants to try to switch the body armor to a lighter steel.” She shakes her finger at me. “That, I didn’t have an answer for. That’s all you.” She pauses. “You know what to do, right?”

I smirk. “Yes. But we need the current weight to feed it into the system.”

“Good. You can tell him that when he gets here, because he thinks it will work better on surface cells or something like that.”

She looks up when John walks in. “Hey, you must be John. I spoke with you on the phone. I’m Wren,” she says, offering her hand. “Evan can see you, but he’ll have to talk to you while he eats.”

John releases her hand slowly, glancing from Wren to me. “That’s not a problem,” he replies.

He starts for my office, pausing when I don’t move. “Go,” she says, waving me on as she reaches for yet another call. “I’ve got this.”

“Who is that?” John asks as we I step into my office.

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