Page 106 of How to Kiss a Hawthorne Brother
I’ve been on exactly zero dates since becoming a widow. And since I met Trevor right after high school and married himwhen I was too young and much too stupid, I can’t even rely on past dating experience to help me muddle through. I need Ryan Gosling’s character inCrazy, Stupid, Loveto come and teach me how to date. (Or maybe I just need Ryan Gosling?) Except the PG version where all he teaches me is how to have a conversation without using my Batman voice to break the ice.
I fidget my way through the rest of my shift, doing my best to keep my mindawayfrom my new and exciting, one-degree-away-from-a-celebrity, very attractive client. But no matter how much I tell my brain this is NO BIG DEAL, the rest of me seems to be operating with some secret insider knowledge, because I keep waffling between feeling flushed with heat and prickled with goose bumps, like a cool breeze just blew across my skin.
I don’t know what’s going on, but I know I don’t like it.
Chapter Three
Lila
My inbox pings witha notification the minute Perry Hawthorne signs his paperwork. I swear, it almost feels like something pings inside of me at the same time, waking up a flurry of nerves and excitement.
It’s possible anticipation has made my reaction larger than it should be. I’ve been waiting three days for Perry to make our working relationship official.
Marley already shifted my previous clients to other assistants, so I’ve just been killing time. Granted, two of those three days, Jack was home with a fever (real, not faked, though I did question at first) so I was grateful for the time off.
But Jack’s back in school today, so I’m ready to get back to work. And now I finally have a boss who needs me.
My fingers are only a tiny bit shaky as I key a “nice to virtually meet you” message into the chat box part of the integration software Marley uses, but why am I nervous? I shouldn’t be nervous. He’s just a client. Albeit a super-hot brother-of-a-movie-star client, but STILL. I’m not the fangirly type. I’m adorky mom who mostly works in yoga pants and stretchy denim and makes her kid laugh by imitating superheroes.
I hit send, then copy and paste instructions that will walk Perry through giving me access to his email and calendar and givehimaccess to my task list.
A solid hour passes before the chat box pings with a return message. Not like I’m counting or anything. (I’m totally counting. It’s been sixty-two minutes.)
Perry:I’d like to keep our interactions as brief as possible. I’ve put together a list below of some tasks I need completed ASAP, as well as parameters for how I’d like you to handle my email. Let me know if you have any questions.
My chest deflates the tiniest bit at the chilliness of his tone. But that’s stupid. Can direct messages really have a tone? Just because I read it one way doesn’t mean that’s how Perry would say it were he speaking to me in person. Then again, is there really a warmway to sayI’d like to keep our interactions as brief as possible?
I clear my throat and sit up a little straighter.
Lila:Understood.Brief interactions. Like phone calls with the mother-in-law.
I wait for Perry to respond with a laughing emoji or even just a thumbs up. Brief doesn’t have to beboring,does it? My hope surges when the dots at the bottom of the chat window flash for a moment or two, but then they disappear, and the green light indicating that Perry is online switches to an offline red.
I immediately second guess the joke, even if it was relatively harmless. Yes, Marley has told me to keep things professional, and I do. But I can be professional andnot a robotat the same time. It only feels right to remind my clients there’s a person behind my avatar.
But then, maybe the joke didn’t land because Perry has a wonderful mother-in-law whom he talks to every Sunday afternoon.
Or maybe Perry is the actual robot.
For the rest of the week and all of the next one, I work every hour of Jack’s school day, slowly plowing my way through Perry’s never-ending task list. It’s easy work, but only because Perry is so thorough (and unrelentingly impersonal) in his requirements. A few things are so simple, I wonder if it took him as long to type out the instructions as it does for me to complete the tasks.
I feel guilty about those things. Does he really need to pay me to track down a missing invoice he could have found with a simple file search? But then I’ll spend four hours chasing after the still-unsigned vendor contracts from the food trucks who want to be present at Stonebrook’s harvest festival, and I don’t feel guilty anymore.
Through it all, Perry is responsive to my questions and detailed in his replies.
He is also colder than a giant block of ice.
At first, I was intimidated. But now, it’s become a bit of a game for me. A special challenge to see if I can get him to crack.
Lila:I’ve gathered the quotes you requested for the apple bushel boxes. Sending them in an email attachment now. It took some hard *core* negotiating, but I got every supplier to drop their quotes by fifteen percent.
Perry:Good work. Thanks.
Lila:All food truck and food stall vendors have confirmed and paid their fee for the harvest festival. I’ve staggered their arrival times to avoid congestion. I really had to *peel* back the layersto make it work, but they’ll all be set up when gates open at eleven a.m.
Perry:Excellent.
Lila:I really apple-lied myself this afternoon, and now all the vendor bills from the Hamilton/Smith wedding are paid and filed appropriately.
