Page 5 of Rules in Love
“Miss Scarlett. I couldn’t help but overhear. Arthur is right. Get your work ready ASAP, and I’ll do my best to get the client in today.” He began to shuffle away but stopped. “By the way, in case you were unaware, ASAP means as soon as possible. And if you need any help with the technical side of things, have one of the men help you.”
Hmmm.His man-splaining and the office-wide pandemonium were unnerving, but this was my chance. I blocked it all out, sat slowly, breathed deeply, and began. Everything on those plans, every line, measurement, and angle was triple-checked. When comfortable in my readiness, I alerted the team. “I’m ready.”
I sighed in relief, reclined in my chair, and took a gulp of my disappointingly cold latte, half of which dribbled onto my dress as the world slowed to a halt.
Why did time—and the very significance of the universe—cease to matter? Because I saw him. Finn Austen glided through the room, cutting through the chaos like Moses parting the sea. Smiling gorgeously while greeting those of inferior beauty around him, he sat at his desk, leaned forward, and adjusted his plantation blinds, flooding his workstation with light. “So beautiful,” I sighed as sunshine bounced off the enviable dirty-blond curls God endowed him with. The ones I wanted to glide my fingers through, discovering each ringlet and naming them as you do with stars. The sexy bastard then rubbed his neck and twisted his head from side to side. I almost began to drool.
Dammit, Teddy was right.
My unblinking eyes watched him set to work, and I quickly became lost in the hypnotic movement of muscle beneath cotton. As I stared at him like a hungry kid would at a chocolate cake, he looked my way. His perfectly kissable lips rose on one corner, and he nodded, then mouthed, “Hi.”
To me. Me. The cake-kid.
Only unquestionable humiliation would come if I continued to face him, so I spun away and came nose to chest with a smug, headshaking Teddy.
“That…was embarrassing.” He plopped his ass on my desk and elbowed my ribs. “So, you know how there’s only two of you super-geniuses that have access to their work, and everyone is shitting themselves?”
“Yup. I’m aware.”
“Well, last night, you said you wanted to talk to Finn, and now the whole office is distracted. It’s fate, Scar. Go. Now. Talk. Ooh! Or even better, snog him.” He then gave me a peck on the lips, grabbed the arms of my chair, and tried to spin me around to face Finn.
Fear took hold. “I’m not leaving, and you can’t make me.” I grabbed the edge of my desk with one hand and clung to it for dear life. The other became a weapon, slapping the shit out of Teddy as he tried to pry me away from safety. After a few moments of returning fire, Teddy gave up, calling me freakishly strong, then maturely landed one last whack on my arm.
Much to my horror, he walked straight toward Finn, smirking at me over his shoulder every few steps, before pulling up a seat beside him and chatting away.
With my stomach dropping like a stone, I watched my worst nightmare unfold in the reflection of a mirrored photo frame—one that I may or may not have positioned in such a way as to allow me undetected and unlimited Finn observation. Yes, it was majorly creepy, and still showed the random woman’s picture it held when I bought it. But desperate times called for desperate measures. And clearly, I was desperate.
Almost immediately, they looked way too cozy for my liking. Teddy was tossing his head back in laughter, and after a minute or two of apparent hilarity, he pointed toward me, and Finn’s head turned to follow. My spying method meant any reaction could give up my pervy secret, and I was unprepared to do that. It was a lifeline—one I used way too much to let go of. So, I sat with bated breath, hoping they were talking about the Frank Gehry and Ludwig Mies Van der Rohe prints hanging above my desk and not me.
An email notification dragged my eyes from the fire.
Scarlett. Mrs. Crane of Hudson River House will be here by three. Mr. Wise says you need to have that presentation ready, and you better sell it. If you somehow manage not to fail, you’ve all but sealed a promotion to senior designer. What a surprise.
Victoria
Wise, Bernstein, & Wright.
What a surprise? What does she mean by that?
I had little time to ponder Victoria’s shade. After one last peek at Finn, I placed the photo frame face-down on the desk.?“Breathe, Scarlett. Breathe… And bloody concentrate.” I entered the zone, becoming an architectural machine, focused only on blueprints and my blindingly successful future.
Six and a half minutes later, Teddy slid back onto my desk, closed my laptop, and leaned in close. “Okay, a status update on the king of NYC. And no, I did not mention you. And no, he did not ask about you.”
“I wasn’t even going to ask that.” I was totally going to ask that.
“As suspected, Finn is criminally straight, unmarried, has no girlfriend—not one I could sniff out, anyway—and he lives with a sister and an aunt, who they’ve lived with since his parents died.”
“Oh my God. Really? Poor Finn.”
“I know. You have a lot in common, Scar. You’re both ridiculously good-looking ex-pat orphans, for starters.”
“Theodore,” I scolded.
“What? It’s true. He seems legit. You should lock him down. He won’t stay single for long. The good ones never do.”
Despite his many protests, I shooed Teddy away, allowing me the time and space to refocus on what should have been my priority: stressing out and waiting. Patience was a virtue I did not hold in spades, and the little held in my five-foot-seven frame was consumed in the space between waiting and arrival, hope and confirmation. Minutes felt like weeks, and I was more coffee and doughnuts than woman by the time Mrs. Crane waltzed into the room.
With an air of nobility and grace, she approached my desk. Fittingly, I stood to greet her, my hand outstretched, ready to shake her diamond-encrusted one. “Mrs. Crane. Thank—Oh.” She walked straight by me, and instead, made her way to Finn. I couldn’t fault her taste, but still.
