Page 82 of Love on Deck

I still wasn’t used to kissing Jack on the regular. It was a treat that had been denied me, and I felt a little salty toward his brother for calling.

“Oh. Now? Okay. Yeah, sure.” He looked at me before hanging up the phone. “Tucker’s ready when we are.”

“Ready for what?”

“To take us home.”

“Oh.” Oh. Why was I disappointed? I needed to get back to my laptop and lists and the PowerPoint I was developing to show Hal the reasons I deserved this promotion. The main feature was the MediCorp conference, of course, but I felt like there were enough other things to add to fill a presentation. It wasn’t desperate. It was me trying to make up for my utter lack of facetime around the office in the last week and a half.

I called it strategy.

Jack must have picked up on that weird underlying disappointment though. “We can always come back sometime,” he said, his voice heavily laced with hesitation. “You didn’t get your tour of the house.” Jack took my hand and started pulling me down the lane back toward Main Street.

“Sure.” Noncommittal. Cautious. The opposite of enthusiastic. “Maybe after the MediCorp conference is over and my promotion is in the bag, then I’ll have the free space to think again.”

He stopped, his hand dropping mine like a hot iron.

“What is it?”

Jack couldn’t meet my gaze, which started a whole slew of anxiety in my stomach. He cleared his throat. “About that conference...”

Silence nestled around us, fraught with tension. “What, Jack?”

“It’s not—” He cleared his throat. “They aren’t willing to move it. It won’t be coming to the Hunnam Group.”

The world beyond our little conversation grew deathly quiet. “What do you mean?”

“I mean,” he said, his voice warming while he took a tentative step closer. “My boss messaged me last night and—”

“Last night and you’re only telling me now?”

“I didn’t want you to stress unnecessarily.”

I scoffed. He’d known for hours. If I’d known that long, I could have at least started making a plan. A backup plan. Anything to try to save my promotion.

Jack looked helpless. “It’s out of my hands, Lauren. I’m sorry, but I can’t give you the conference.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

JACK

It was still undecided whether Lauren was ever going to speak to me again. The woman had massive skill where the silent treatment was concerned, despite the fact that she’d spent an entire hour in the middle seat of Tucker’s truck, her leg pressed up against mine.

She’d been nothing but smiles and gratitude when we were saying goodbye to my parents, and at the beginning of the drive she’d answered Tucker’s first few questions with perfect manners. But the man wasn’t known for his chattiness and the conversation had quickly died.

I knew I’d messed up. Promising the conference had been stupid when I didn’t actually have the final word. Clearly my opinion wasn’t as heavily weighted with Brad as I thought it was, since he’d disregarded it out of hand.

It stung.

Now Lauren was ticked—rightfully so—and I had nothing to say that would absolve me. I’d screwed up. Plain and simple.

“You coming back for the Easter parade?” Tucker asked.

“I’ll be back sooner than that for my car,” I said, a little hurt that he thought the next time he’d see me would be a month from now. Though if you looked at recent history, we’d gone a lot longer than that between visits more often than not.

Being home in Arcadia Creek and surrounded by so many people who were happy to see me, who made me feel wanted there, had been the boon I didn’t know I’d needed. I was eager for my own bed after over a week away, but I wasn’t looking forward to my empty, quiet apartment anymore.

We were in Arcadia longer than we’d meant to be there, but it still hadn’t felt like long enough. Waking up before dawn to feed the cows and move pipe with the sunrise had filled my soul. Eating Mom’s pancakes after working the muscle in my arms organically, without the help of machines and weights, had given me a sense of nostalgia that left me wanting more. But above all that, showing Lauren my dream project... that had been the highlight for me. Only, I never got far enough to explain the whole dream project part to her.

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