Page 29 of Heart of Stone
My gaze finally found his and saw his eyes narrowed on me. “What do you need?”
I blinked, jerking back at the harshness I hadn’t heard from him in days. “Oh, well, I… I came by because I had an idea. I wasthinking that since we’re approaching nearly three weeks that you’ve been here, it might be time to start venturing out.”
Hardness was etched into his features, his face a mirror of how I saw him nearly every day for that first week he was here. “Venturing out?”
Confusion washed over me. What the heck happened to him? “Are you okay?”
“What do you mean,venturing out?”
I swallowed deeply at the rough tone. “Of the office. I just think that you’ve had some time to get the mundane stuff worked out and believe it might be time to let everyone else see you, meet you.”
His eyes narrowed. “I’m not interested in that.”
I rolled my eyes and sighed. “Oh, Reid, come on. You can’t stay couped up in here for the next five and a half months. You should get out and meet the people who work here, who visit here. It’d be great for morale.”
“I said…” He opened and closed his hands several times, as though he was releasing some pent-up frustration. “I’m not interested.”
My eyes darted around the room, settling on the filing cabinet behind him. “But don’t you think it’d make sense to get to know the people who are working for you? I mean, you don’t have to doeverythinglike your father does, but you could take some steps to actually be a part of what’s going on here. And you could have your own pictures on the desk or filing cabinet behind you. Just think about?—”
“Stop!”Reid bellowed in anger as he shot out of his chair. I cowered and took a step back. “Just stop, okay? Do you know how to do that? Do you know how to just shut up? Do youevershut up? All you do all day long is talk and talk and talk about things that nobody’s asked you about. And you pry all the time. You think you’re entitled to information that you aren’t. I swear,you purposely push my buttons like you get off on it somehow. Maybe you do. But let me make one thing very clear, Natalia. Weare notfriends. We never will be. All I want is for you to shut up and leave me alone to do my job while you do yours. I want you to speak to me only when it’s necessary as it pertains to the job. That’s it. Nothing more. Do you think you can do that?”
I pressed my lips together, biting down on the inside of my mouth to stave off the tears, to get the fear under control. My stomach was trembling as badly as my hands, and my racing heart felt like it was in my throat.
“What?” he huffed, taking a step around the desk toward me. “Not a word to say now? I asked you a question.”
Slowly, I stepped back, the tears welling in my eyes as I searched for any trace of the man from Sunday. He was nowhere to be found. Heart hammering, I took another step backward.
“Natalia?” he clipped. “Do you understand what I expect from here on out?”
Another step.
Two more.
I was just inside the door when I stopped. “I won’t bother you again.”
Without another word, I turned and raced out of there, my tears falling the moment I stepped outside.
TEN
Natalia
Humiliated.
I’d experienced a wide array of emotions in my life—so many that were not good—and yet, I couldn’t remember one time when I’d ever felt so very embarrassed for being myself.
Ever since I left work yesterday, ever since I’d been screamed at so harshly by Reid, I’d felt nothing but hollow. Dazed. Like I was walking around in a fog. Like I’d do anything never to be screamed at like that again.
“Do you ever shut up?”
I cringed just recalling those words.
It wasn’t lost on me that I talked a lot. I never looked at it as a bad thing. If anything, I thought it was a good trait. I could break the ice in any situation and set people at ease.
Perhaps I’d been wrong.
Apparently, all I did was talk and talk and talk about things nobody cared to hear about. Was that how people saw me? Had Reid really been the only one brave enough, cruel enough, to say it to my face?
Unsurprisingly, after I left yesterday evening, Reid never made the effort to seek me out so he could apologize. He probably didn’t think it was worth apologizing to someone for something like that, especially not when he believed he was telling the truth, no matter how insensitive his method might’ve been.
