Page 106 of The Import Slot
She gives me a meek smile before her head snaps back to her screen, tapping away. But I can feel her watching me again shortly after.
I shake it off, and I’m relieved when Vicky walks in with a cuppa for me, Alex trailing behind her. She places it down on my desk with a smile.
Vicky tells me she’s been doing some promotions with the suit fitters this morning. When the guys went for their suit fittings last week, they had a photoshoot and she’s been working on the images.
Twenty minutes later, she slides over to my desk, popping a flash drive into my laptop. I click on the file explorer, and we cycle through the pictures.
The guys scrub up well, and when I get to Ryan’s shot, my heart flutters, I can feel my core tense, and my stomach fills with butterflies. He is gorgeous. His hair with a slightly faded trim, slightly longer on top, but it’s just delicious. Enough for me to grab onto when he’s between my legs. I can feel my cheeks flushing, so I keep cycling through the photos.
“Wow, even Bettsy can pull off a tux,” I say to Vicky.
“Go back to that one of Liam,” Vicky says, and I look at her.
“Do you mean Ryan?”
“Yeah, right, Ryan, sorry.”
I click back a few, and she looks again.
“I think it’s the beard. Ryan has usually trimmed it a bit more. You’d think he was prepping for the Playoffs,” she says.
I noticed it was getting longer and similar to Liam’s style.
We discuss some other shots, picking out the best of the group takes, and Vicky creates a Twitter and Facebook post to drum up trade. Not that there are many tickets left.
I can feel Bella’s eyes on me again, and Vicky notices, too, because she calls her out.
“You want to look too, Bella? Your eyes haven’t left this corner since I got back.”
Bella shakes her head. “Ryan.”
“Yeah, what about him?” Vicky asks, and as if on cue, Ryan and Scott McCoy step onto the ice, throwing a bucket of pucks onto the smooth surface.
“The forum is going wild with gossip. Apparently, he got close with a girl on the night out the team had recently. Someone says they need to move to Toronto now to ‘conquer the other twin’.” She uses her fingers to do air quotes.
My heart sinks, but not because I’m sitting here in Ryan’s jersey with a possibility that he’s been cheating. No, but because Vicky’s reaction is exactly what I expect of someone who’s just been told that somebody else has their eyes on her man. Even though he’s not actually her man.
“Show me,” Vicky commands, making her way over to Bella’s desk.
It takes a few moments of clicking and typing before Bella’s screen, which reflects onto the window, changes to a dark tone, indicating that the page has loaded.
I watch Vicky’s face change, and then she does something crazy; she bangs on the glass overlooking the ice with both fists, screaming Ryan’s name.
It’s no surprise that he doesn’t notice. She looks over at me, and I shrug.
“How can you just sit there?” she shrieks at me, arms in the air.
“What? It’s just gossip, Vic—”
Before I can finish speaking, she’s out the door, her heels clicking on the floor as she goes.
“Aren’t you going after her?” Bella asks me.
“No,” I say. My concentration is on the ice though, and it takes a good few minutes before Vicky’s blonde locks come into view.
Everyone in the office has piled over to the window to watch the show. Alex comically slurps his tea. Kirsty, from HR, has her gaze fixed on the scene below. Even Sylvia, the cleaning lady, has come in and pretends to clean the glass with a cloth she’s pulled out of her apron pocket.
“What’s going on?” someone whispers, as if we need to keep quiet in case they hear us.
