Page 24 of One Night Billionaire

However, he had tried to reach out after hours and everything had been short one-word answers, sometimes hours later. She had promised to communicate with him which he had believed of her and now questioned.

Anna was, once again, pulling back and it was pissing him off. He pulled up his calendar and set a meeting with her for later today. Just her. It was wrong of him to trap her like that, but he was over being lied to by her anymore.

Now, he just needed to wait for her reply and then at the end of the day get to see her.

He passed the hours constantly checking his emails, waiting for her reply to his invitation, and working on other tasks that he needed to get done. There was always something to do for him.

Most of his other projects weren’t quite as important as the one he’d hired Anna for, so he didn’t look at them as closely. Today, he had the time and needed the distraction. He was fully caught up on every aspect of two other projects his company had going on and was pleased that they hadn’t suffered as many hiccups as this one.

Ten minutes before he was to meet with Anna, she finally accepted the invitation. Instead of the relief, he thought he would feel at her acceptance, dread settled like a lead ball in the pit of his stomach. Her delayed response spoke volumes.

“Need anything before I head out?” Pete poked his head into Brian’s office.

“I’m good,” Brian answered.

“Take it easy on her. I like this one and I don’t want to lose her because you two can’t decide if you want to bump uglies or not,” Pete said.

Brian wasn’t surprised often, but that had shocked him. “Shut the door.”

Pete did but didn’t move much further into the room. “It’s obvious to anyone that knows you both. I work closely with both of you daily. Not sure what happened, but don’t bite her head off.”

“I’m not going to bite her head off,” Brian defended himself, weakly.

“She’s cut up about something and I assume it’s got something to do with you. It’s not affecting her work but she’s not as friendly as she used to be.”

“And? I’ve been reaching out since this weekend when she promised she’d communicate with me instead of doing this shit, for the third fucking time, and here we are,” Brian held his temper just shy of boiling over.

“All I’m saying is she might have a reason, one she wasn’t ready to share,” Pete said.

Brian pinned him with a glare. “What do you know?”

“She hasn’t told me anything,” Pete said, too casually.

“Not what I asked. What do you know?”

He shrugged. “Happy hump day. I’m off to get some dinner.” With that, Pete let himself out of the office and left the door open.

Anna would be on time, with less than five minutes to go, he focused back on his computer while he waited. It wasn’t like he could concentrate on anything other than her, but he was going to try.

Light knocking came from the doorway and Brian looked up to see Anna. “Come in and close the door, please.”

She did and then took a seat on the very edge of the chair across from him. “Is there something wrong with the project?”

“No. You know damn well that this isn’t about the project which is going better than I could have hoped. What is going on? You promised to communicate, Anna.” Well, so much for any preamble, apparently his mouth was ready to jump right into it.

“I have something going on. I just need another few days, Brian,” she said.

“What the hell does that even mean? Are you sick?” Confusion didn’t cover what he felt right now.

“No. I’m not sick. I’m just busy with the project and something personal that I’m not ready to discuss yet.”

“So, you’re shutting me out completely, again?” Brian asked.

“I’m not saying no to us, Brian. I’m just asking for a little bit of time to sort things out.”

“But you aren’t going to tell me what those things are?” he asked.

Anna shook her head. “I’m confident that I’ll have it sorted by this weekend.”

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