Page 52 of Dating the Boss
“Hear that?” Regina straightened up and put a hand to her ear. “A bullshit meter is going off.”
I rolled my eyes, then glanced around the crowded restaurant. I didn’t see anyone I knew, but I didn’t feel comfortable talking about Reed in public. Especially when I didn’t even understand what I truly felt for him.
“What’s Meg up to today?” I asked, sitting back against the booth.
“I see what you did there.” Regina’s eyes narrowed suspiciously. “She’s working right now. I’m gonna take her lunch when I leave here.”
Regina might’ve been annoying and pried too much into my personal life, but she got me thinking about things I had shoved to the back of my mind for the past week. After I got home from lunch with her, I changed into sweats and a hoodie and went for a jog around the block, both for exercise and an attempt to clear my head.
Flashes from last weekend entered my thoughts.
Reed sighing as I kissed his neck. How warm he was in my arms. Reed giggling when I picked him up and hauled him over my shoulder, his body so light and small but far from delicate. He was feisty and loving.
Beautiful.
I stumbled a little on some gravel before righting myself and continuing down the road. My heart was in my throat. When I returned home, my head was no clearer than when I’d left. In fact, it was even more of a mess.
“What am I going to do?” I muttered, scrubbing my hands over my face.
I wasn’t a man who based decisions on emotions. I’d heard the things people from the office said about me, like how I was a block of ice who didn’t care about people’s feelings. Assistants over the years had quit, or I’d fired them.
Then Reed had come along. And the ice around me was beginning to thaw, bit by bit.
“It’s just like that bird, you know?”Reed had said as we’d stood in the woods, staring up at the sky as snow blanketed the ground around us.“Everyone always leaves me.”
I didn’t want to be like everyone else. I didn’t want to leave him.
Call it infatuation or call it love. Call it whatever. But one thing was crystal clear as I got into bed that night: Reed had touched my heart. Whether I intended to do anything about that or not was the million-dollar question.
***
“Go with this one,” I told Jennifer, pointing to one of the mockup designs for a client’s website. “The text is cleaner and easier to read.”
As the marketing manager, Jennifer came to me for approval on campaign designs, and she passed my decisions on to the creative team. A significant amount of my time was devoted to project management. I very rarely created anything myself; I mainly oversaw their work and guided them in the right direction, aka the best direction for our company.
“I’ll let them know,” Jennifer said as she gathered the pages into a folder and held them to her chest. “Are we good to finalize the plans, then?”
“Yes.”
She nodded before turning on her heels and leaving my office.
I leaned back in my chair, clicking the pen in my hand. Once. Twice. Just like every other Wednesday, I’d been swamped with work ever since I’d walked through the door that morning. Yet, I was distracted and unable to concentrate on what I needed to.
A light tap on my office door made me look up. And the reason for my distraction stood in the doorway, too gorgeous for his own good.
“I just wanted to remind you about your meeting at eleven with the marketing analyst,” Reed said, then stepped forward to give me a stack of papers. “And this is last week’s sales report. We’re down a little but not much.” Reed’s voice lacked the warmth from when we’d been at the manor. He was all business now. Professional.
I missed his carefree attitude and laughter.
I skimmed the page and suppressed a sigh. “The Lovelace campaign isn’t producing the results we anticipated. Our return on investment is lower than I’d like it to be.”
“Is there anything you want me to do?” he asked, still in that lifeless tone. God, it cut deep.
There was a lot I wanted him to do—kiss me, let me hold him, hell, just to smile again.
“No, that will be all,” I answered instead.
Taking it as a sign of dismissal, Reed walked away from my desk and approached the door. Like so many other times over the past week and a half, my gut knotted at seeing him leave. I wanted to call out to him, to tell him I was sorry for being so cold. Just as I was racking my brain for something to say, he stopped walking.
