Page 68 of A Break in Communications

Romance? She’d said romance. Had she said literally anything else and some trickster god had interfered to make it sound like she’d said romance?

No, I think she’d said romance.

“We’d make a poor one,” I said, pulling the blankets tighter around us. “Terrible work-life balance between the both of us. I think one of us is supposed to be an artist or something in a small town, teach the other the true meaning of Christmas…”

“We’ve always followed our own rules,” she said with a small smile, turning off the phone screen and resting it across where our legs were pressed together under the blankets as it started playing.

“Touché, darling.”

I was hallucinating, because her hand found mine under the blanket, and she slipped two fingers around my index finger, intertwining lightly with mine and holding me softly. “You know it’d be an issue if I were your darling,” she said lightly, softly, dreamily. “One of us is going to get promoted over the other… and when I say one of us, I mean me.”

My stomach tightened for a million reasons. “I guess that’s frowned upon,” I said airily. “They’d have to send you to a different department once I took over the office, and we’d never get anything done without you in the department…”

“They’re already sampling me out for the office,” she murmured. “Dobbs said you backed out. That was when I stormed off to shake some sense back into you.”

“I know,” I said. “He told me they’d probably try you out for it in the meantime. I figured I’d let you get a little advantage. Figured you’d need it.”

“You’re so annoying,” she laughed, and my heart exploded, because she turned, and, as easily as anything, she kissed me—pressed her lips against the corner of mine, squeezing my hand under the blankets, and then she just went back to resting her head against mine, as if she hadn’t just shaken my entire world like a snowglobe thrown at a brick wall. Went back to listening to the book. I wasn’t hearing a word from the book. Shame—I’d heard the books were good.

“Only just now figuring that out?” I said, finally, a hundred years later after I’d pulled myself together.

“I… shouldn’t have done that,” she said, her voice soft. “Please pretend that didn’t happen.”

I swallowed, my heart pounding, just listening to the book with her, trying to make out one word from the next. It was an eternity before I said, “It’s okay. You can call me annoying. I kind of am.”

“Hm.” She nestled closer to me, impossibly closer, and I just—I didn’t know what to—how to live, how to breathe, how to think. I loved her so much I could die. I’d have been transferred to another department, another company, another country, another planet if it meant I got a chance with her. I’d swim the ocean for her, count every star in the night sky to find one that glistened a thousandth as much as she did, learn every word in every language to try in vain to find one combination that could express how beautiful she was and how my heart ached for her.

For right now, though, I’d just listen to her nerdy old books with her and eat cookies. That would have to do.

Chapter 19

Anna

Turned out, Rickety Rick actually just got more annoying when I had the executive office to myself. Hadn’t realized he’d been asking Dobbs for a step-by-step how-to guide to do his job every damn day. My “figure it out yourself, Richard, you’re a smart man” set a bad tone with him, but… he’d be retiring before long anyway. Either he'd be disillusioned with Dobbs gone, or nature would gently coax him to retire as it always, inevitably, did.

All things considered—the executive trial spot didn’t change as much as I thought it would. Maybe it just didn’t have the time to settle in. I’d already been the department’s go-to person when something was wrong, either me or Lucy to solve any given problem, and if anything, having my own office just made people more intimidated to approach me, so I ended up supervising people’s direct work less than I had before. Poor Lucy was probably bearing the brunt of the extra work from people who were suddenly too scared to ask for help.

But with Lucy back in the office on the regular, I was able to focus again. She strolled into my office like she owned the place, and I knew there was no point trying to call her out on it, so I let her. Got better work done with her there, anyway, and we had everything sorted out for the press release a full day ahead of schedule, even with working around everything else. Managed to work out a temporary solution for her grandmother’s insuranceand got the medications covered for now—having two top-performing communications directors on their case was enough to make anyone roll over at least a little, since nobody knew the art of the passive-aggressive reminder email like we did—and Lucy and I took turns checking in with her grandmother, at least until my family caught wind of it.

I’d been mortified that first time I’d walked into the room to find my mother there with Lucy’s grandmother—wasn’t even sure how she’d gotten into the hospital, let alone the room, but apparently they got on like a house on fire, because of course they did. Mostly talking about how Lucy and I were going to get married and live happily ever after and have the best wedding ever, although I’d felt strangely in line with Charlotte for once when I found out Mom had started going on about how maybe Lucy and I would raise a family and Charlotte had shut her down with,the woman’s smart enough not to do any of that nonsense, children are little scourges on this world and you know it.Mom had relayed it to me like it was a scandal, and I’d just shrugged and saidhey, I’ve told you I don’t want kids.

I’d just had to convince Mom on a story about the secret family chili recipe to cover Lucy’s and my tracks.

Apparently Charlotte was a big hit with my family, for some reason. Before long, everyone was vying to take turns looking after the woman, which confused me to no end, but it freed up me and Lucy to work on the press release, so we weren’t complaining. Everything coming up roses, I guess. Including the roses in my office, because Lucy had complained about how I hadn’t put any heart into my office decorations and brought some flowers in to brighten it up.

It wasn’t lost on me, the obvious subtext of Lucy bringing me flowers. I just… wasn’t ready to accept it. Even though the night at Lucy’s house, we’d nestled close together in a soft little dream, and even listening to one of my favorite books, I couldn’tfocus on a thing other than the feeling of Lucy close to my side, and how I just wanted her there forever, just…

Dobbs had made it clear—we were looking for a promotion over the other. But this was unsustainable, and not just because of the fact that both Sean Dobbs and for some godforsaken reason my mother both knew the key player at our upcoming event, and one way or another, word was bound to cross that threshold between home, where Lucy and I were basically already married, and at work, where we’d been a fling that had finished cleanly.

It was also unsustainable because of the way my chest tightened every time the door opened, hoping it was Lucy coming in. Because of the way my throat felt tight every time itwasLucy coming in, and how my mind replayed that stolen kiss in her house the other night a million times, thinking of a world where I could have kept going, kissed her again…

At what point in this processhadI fallen in love with Lucy Masters, anyway? I knew she’d grated on me at the start, and that I’d been so annoyed trying to get her out of my way. And I knew that by now, I was so deeply, desperately in love with the woman that I couldn’t work unless I had her there with me, couldn’t get her out of my mind every waking moment, couldn’t stop looking at her in the pictures I had in the office—pictures from company events that Sean had left in the office and I hadn’t gotten rid of because it was the only acceptable way to keep pictures of Lucy in the office.

So desperately in love with her that I only really liked Guatemalan coffee by now.

But I couldn’t pinpoint the moment things had changed, other than that every time I thought about it, I’d started placing it further and further back. And I was too afraid to follow that line of thought.

So I focused on my work, threw myself fully into it, just for something to focus on other than Lucy’s annoying smug smile and how it made my heart melt every time she did, which went well enough, except for when I shut my laptop, looking up at where, of course, Lucy was in my office, well past five. She’d started staying late again, of course. Something aboutcatching up to me, beating me no matter what.Whatever she wanted to call it.

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