Page 54 of Think Outside the Boss

She sighs. “I’ll be there in five.”

The tiny, reluctant yes soothes the flames in my stomach. I need to look her in the eyes when I ask her about yesterday. When I explain why I couldn’t be there. Grabbing my coat from the rack, I pop my head into the kitchen where Marianne is prepping tomorrow’s breakfast. “I’m heading out for a few hours, just down the street.”

“All right, sir.”

“If Joshua wakes up or needs anything, call me.”

“Will do.”

The deli is just as garishly lit by neon lighting as it had been a week ago. I must have walked by it a thousand times and never given it a passing thought, only two blocks from my apartment.

She’d said it was just down the street from her.

So it’s not enough that Freddie infiltrates the club I frequent. It’s not even enough that she starts working at my company. She also lives a ten-minute walk from my home, and now, it seems, she’s occupying space in my mind rent-free.

Which means I’m pretty much doomed.

I’m there first, so I lean against the building and scan the surrounding streets. It doesn’t take long before I see her. She has a beige coat wrapped tightly around her curvy figure, dark hair lifting in the wind. Red lips and sharp eyes that narrow as she sees me.

“You came,” I say.

“You insisted,” she says.

I push the door open to the near-empty deli. “After you.”

She orders nothing but a soda, smiling at the guy behind the counter. He smiles back, smitten.

The expression disappears when it’s my turn to order. “Coffee, if you have it. Black.”

“Coming right up.”

Freddie leads the way to the same table as before, right by the windows and the whirl of snowflakes in the air. I watch as she removes her black leather gloves, slim, long-fingered hands closing around her soda can. The sight brings other images to mind, memories I’d do better not to dwell on. Like her hand closing around me.

“Why did you call me?”

“I wanted to see you,” I say. It’s the truth.

Freddie glances out the window. “I didn’t see you yesterday.”

So she’d gone to the Gilded Room.

She’d gone, and she’d looked for me.

“I couldn’t make it.” Can she hear the burning regret in my voice?

“I figured as much, yeah.”

I lean back in the plastic chair, my hand on the one next to me. “But you attended?”

“After you went through so much trouble to get me my own invite, how could I turn it down?”

My lips curve. “It wasn’t too much trouble.”

Her gaze returns to the can in front of her, and the question springs out of me, ill-advised and unstoppable. “Did you meet someone?”

“I met several someones,” she murmurs.

Jealousy has a tight grip around my insides, squeezing until I feel nauseous. “Several someones, Strait-laced?”

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