Page 5 of Never With You
I refuse to let him get to me. I have a job to do.
“I talked to Charlotte, and she said we’re all set for?—”
“Who’s Charlotte?” Nate’s brows drop at the same time his hands do.
“Are you serious?” I roll my eyes in annoyance. “Charlotte is the head of the hospitality team at the hotel in New Zealand, remember?”
“Why would I remember that when I have you?” A devious grin draws out on his lips. It’s annoying how handsome he can make a cutting smile look. I prefer all the Satans in my life to be ugly.
Bored with my lack of response, Nate leans forward and sorts through the scattered papers on the table in front of him.
My eyes sweep over the mess. “The chaos that is your life gives me hives.” Where I’m organized and tidy, Nate is a tornado of mayhem. His pile of disorganization reminds me of my childhood home and makes my skin crawl.
“I’ve always said we’re chaos coordinators, not travel coordinators.”
“Is that how you justify your incompetence?”
A cheeky smile appears. “I assure you, there’s nothing incompetent about me.”
My mouth opens to reply with a quip, but nothing worthy comes to mind.
“Found it.” Nate holds up a tiny piece of paper fit for a Lego man. “I forgot to tell you that while all the women are at their work conference during the day, the husbands want to go”—his eyes drop to the scrap, reading his notes—“rucking, so you’ll need to figure that out.”
“Rucking?”
“Yeah, you know, walking and hiking with weighted backpacks like they do in the military.” The nonchalance behind his words makes me want to punch him in the face. “You’ll need to find a trail near the hotel and, of course, the weighted vests.”
“For fifty-four men?”
“Fifty-five, including me.”
I stare back, contemplating strangling him.
“What? Rucking sounds fun. Obviously, I’m going to go with them.”
“No.”
“I can go rucking if I want to.”
“No, I won’t do it. The trip is in four days, and this request is ridiculous.”
“Whatever the client wants, it’s our job to figure it out.”
Nate saysour jobas if he’s the one that will spend hours making phone calls to a different time zone, searching for weighted backpacks that probably don’t exist in that part of the world, and then spend another few hours brainstorming what can be used instead. Not to mention getting enough for fifty-four—no, fifty-five—men. I shake my head, refusing to add something this big to the tripthislast minute. There are reasons we finalize the project timeline thirty days out from departure.
My chin lifts to hold my ground. “The client is Sassy Scrapbooking. This is an incentive trip for their employees, not the husbands. Rucking is out of the question.”
“So you want me to go back to the owner’s husband and tell him his request can’t be met because you’re a killer of fun? I thought our job was to cater to the clients.” Nate looks at me expectantly, arrogantly. I hate that look. It means I’m going to lose this battle, and we both know it.
“Fine.” My lungs deflate as I write downruckingon my to-do list. “I’ll figure it out. I always do.”
Three months ago, Nate’s last-minute client request nearly did me in. The CEO’s wife was worried the presidential suite at the hotel in Morocco wouldn’t be nice enough for her, so we had to rent decor and refurnish the entire suite the day of her arrival. Rucking is easy compared to that. But if I’m honest, accomplishing the impossible gives me a huge adrenaline rush, so I’m not complaining. I just know ninety-nine percent of these last-minute problems could be avoided if Nate Farnsworth weren’t in the equation.
His mere existence makes my life harder.
He’s the work rival that complicates everything day in and day out, and he does it for sport.
I hand him a stapled packet of papers. “Here’s the most recent copy of the event checklist.”
