Sweet Deal (16 page)

She picked up three squares of sticky notes and stacked them one on top of another in a perfect neat pile. Straightened some files into an equally neat pile. Smoothed some dust particles off the corner of the desk. Replaced a paper clip in the holder.

Was it just because of Andrew and her worries that he was giving her too much responsibility? Or was it her past coming back to haunt her, making her doubt her abilities? Making her too sensitive to things she should be able to easily deal with.

She’d automatically jumped to the conclusion that Andrew was going to pull the project from her when he’d mentioned the problem. She shouldn’t have assumed that, but after the things her last boss had done, she was jumpy and paranoid. She rubbed her aching forehead and leaned her hand into it, elbow on her desk.

The fact that he hadn’t taken the project away from her, had stood up for her, caused her even more confusion. Yes, she should be happy her boss supported her. That’s what she’d expect from a boss. But there was still that niggle of worry about his attention to her and what his intentions were. Although this morning had been completely businesslike.

She’d give it a couple of hours and then go talk to Bram and Davis.

Chapter Thirteen

Jake’s Monday morning wasn’t going so well. It was getting more and more difficult to ignore the frustration he felt at the lack of vision his superiors had for the company and the boredom of doing the same work day in and day out. Yes, times were tough, yes, they had to be careful about decisions they made, but they were really in a good position to take on new challenges and, in fact, to take advantage of the markets the way they were. And Jake missed the excitement of being on the front lines of something new.

Maybe if he went for coffee at Java the Hut, he’d run into Shelby.

Maybe he was losing his mind.

She lifted him up, though, with her sense of humor and eternal optimism, how she didn’t let things keep her down for long, and strangely, after spending most of the weekend with her, not being with her left him feeling hollow. What the fuck was that?

He poked his head into Drew Rutherford’s office, one of his colleagues he’d gotten to be buddies with, who shared some of his frustrations. “Hey, Drew. Wanna get a coffee?”

“Hell yeah.” The other man looked up from his laptop. He appeared to be working on both the laptop and the computer on the desk. Jake grinned. Drew rubbed his face. “These budget projections are all screwed up.”

“Let’s go to Starbucks,” Jake suggested, now for some reason not wanting to take the chance of running into Shelby. He needed to put some distance between them. This idea that he might be—
fuck!
—missing her after the weekend scared the crap out of him. That wasn’t supposed to happen.

“No, too far,” Drew complained as they rode down in the elevator. “Let’s just go to Java the Hut.”

“Sure, okay.” Jake swallowed his sigh.

They ordered their coffees and decided to sit outside on the patio. Another perfect sunny day in Southern California.

“How was your weekend?” Drew asked.

Jake hesitated. “Actually it was pretty unbelievable.”

Drew grinned. “Hot chick?”

“Oh yeah.” And that’s all it was. A hot chick and a lot of time in bed.

“Sounds good. You have all the luck. I’m jealous, man.”

Drew was happily married and Jake knew he didn’t really mean that.

“What do you think about this idea of implementing a new database for Payroll?” Jake asked him, changing the subject away from anything to do with Shelby.

Sexy, funny, spunky Shelby Rose.

God. Get a grip man.

They talked about business. Drew was a finance guy and had a good head for numbers, which sometimes Jake wasn’t all that interested in. He’d forced himself to deal with that part of the business, but he knew his strengths were his vision, his big picture thinking, his creativity. That’s why Andrew and he’d been such a good team—Andrew with his logic and details.

He waited for the familiar wave of depression that rose inside him every time he thought of Andrew. But it didn’t come. Huh.

“You know, if you’re that unhappy, you should just make a change,” Drew said to him. Jake focused on him and frowned.

“Unhappy?”

“I can tell you’re frustrated. You need more of a challenge than you’re getting here, buddy.”

“This isn’t a good economy for looking for a job,” Jake said slowly, looking down at the paper cup of coffee in his hands.

“Why not? You don’t have to quit until you find something. Seriously. Don’t waste your life being miserable.”

“You like it here?”

“You know I have my issues too.”

“Ever thought of starting your own business?” Jake asked.

“Nah. I’m too chickenshit for that. That’s a big risk.”

“Yeah. It is.”

“Not so much for you.” Drew lifted his chin. “You’re a single guy. I’m married with two kids and a wife who likes to live beyond our means. I’m not about to take that chance when I’m nice and secure where I am, even though it’s not always perfect. What have you got to lose?”

Jake stared back at his friend. He still had all the money he’d put aside that was supposed to cover start-up expenses and support him for the first year while the business he and Andrew had planned together got going. So what if he didn’t have Andrew?

Bah. He couldn’t do it on his own.

Could he?

“Let’s head back,” Drew said. “I have to figure out those projections.”

As they were leaving the café, Jake looked up and saw Shelby walking down the street. Their eyes met and she smiled. Their steps brought them face to face. Drew continued on walking and talking, not realizing he’d left Jake behind standing on the sidewalk in front of Shelby, looking down at her, nearly touching her.

“Hi, little girl.”

“Hi.”

Their slow, shared smile sent a zap of heat through him.

“Are you just leaving?” she asked.

“Yeah.” Regret sifted through him. “Gotta get back.”

Drew stopped on the sidewalk fifteen feet away, realizing he was talking to nobody, and turned around with a frown. Jake lifted a hand to him with one finger raised. Drew’s gaze moved to Shelby and he grinned and shook his head.

Jake touched Shelby’s cheek. “I’ll call you later, okay?”

She nodded. “Sure. See you.”

And he watched her walk into Java the Hut, dressed in a taupe suit with the sleeves pushed up to her elbows, a coral-colored shirt beneath it. He turned to see Drew watching him and laughing.

“Who was that?” Drew demanded when Jake caught up to him.

How the hell did he answer that question? She wasn’t his girlfriend. She was…she was… “Just a girl,” he finally said, and his gut clenched as he said it.

“She’s hot.”

“Yeah.”

Drew shot him a sideways look as if he suspected Jake was being a dickhead. Which he was. Shit.

“Is that who you saw on the weekend?”

“Yeah.”

“Huh. Hey, maybe next weekend bring her for dinner. Marnie was just saying she hasn’t seen you for a while.”

It had been a while since he’d gotten together with Drew and his wife. Much as he liked Drew, hanging out in domestic bliss with him and his wife wasn’t an exciting way for him to spend a Saturday evening. But strangely, the idea of getting together with another couple and Shelby appealed to him.

“Maybe,” he said, confusion tangling inside him yet again. Why would he be thinking thoughts like that? He should be thinking of ways to be seen with Shelby where
Andrew
would see them so he could make sure he knew she was his.

Except she wasn’t. Shit.

He tried to clear his brain as they talked more business on the way back to the office. “Let me look at your projections,” Jake offered as they got off the elevator. “Maybe I can figure it out.”

“Sure.” So Jake followed him into his office. Drew threw himself down into the leather chair behind his desk. His fingers flew over the keys of the laptop and then he turned the computer around so the screen faced Jake. Jake pulled a chair up and started looking at the columns of numbers. It only took a few minutes for him to see something that made him pause. “Hey.” He pointed to the cell. “This has to be wrong.”

Drew frowned and turned the computer around, did some more clicking. Then his face cleared. “Hey. You’re right. Somehow I linked to the wrong spreadsheet. Jesus.” He grinned and looked up at Jake. “Thanks, man.”

“No problem.”

Drew paused. “You know, you always say you’re not good with the details and the analysis shit.”

Jake grimaced and forked his fingers into his hair.

“But you are,” Drew said. “You bail me out like this all the time.” He shook his head.

Jake stared at him. Yeah, actually, he did help Drew out sometimes like that. It wasn’t something that came naturally to him, but maybe over the years he’d learned to be more logical and analytical, more detail-oriented. He grinned as he returned to his own office. No one would ever call him organized and anal if they saw his messy condo.

At his desk, he tried to get his head around work, but he kept thinking about the conversation with Drew about not wasting his life there if he was unhappy.

Was that what he was doing?

He minimized the spreadsheet he was working on and hovered the cursor over the folder in his USB drive labeled “Consultant”. He stared at the screen for a few seconds then clicked to open the folder, found the spreadsheet titled Contacts and opened it. The long list of names, titles, companies and addresses came up on his screen. Slowly he scrolled down, eyes moving over the list, all the names familiar to him, all people he’d done business with and kept in touch with. All people he knew would still be interested in working with him. Yeah, there were some names there Andrew had contributed, but the majority of the list they’d put together of potential clients had come from Jake. He was the one who liked to network, the one who remembered people’s names and whether they were married and where they’d gone on vacation, whereas Andrew liked to sit in the office and crunch numbers.

He sighed and closed the document, rubbed his forehead. He needed to finish that report and not waste time daydreaming about what might have been.

Only instead, his mind turned to Shelby.

Chapter Fourteen

“So I went to Davis and I told him that I’d be looking at the intake process. Then while he was all smug and happy and ‘see, I told you’ about that, I brought up how he’d gone to Andrew behind my back.”

Having dinner with Myra and Riley later that week, Shelby dipped her chopsticks and picked up some chicken lo mein. Kiara was at home with Adam. Worry still gnawed inside Shelby about that.

“How did that go over?” Riley asked.

“It was okay. I asked him what his intention was by doing that. And he was all apologetic and just said he wasn’t trying to get me in trouble, yadda yadda. So I told him that if he has questions or concerns about the project, he should come to me, and I’m sure he wouldn’t appreciate someone going to his boss without telling him, and he agreed.”

“What about the other guy? Bram?”

“He was even more apologetic. He seemed really shocked that I was even bringing it up and he stuttered and stammered all over the place.”

“Some organizations just have that kind of culture,” Riley said, poking her kung pao chicken. “They might be surprised at someone who confronts them head on.”

“I wasn’t confronting him, exactly,” Shelby said. She picked up her wine and took a sip. “I was being assertive.”

“Yeah. That’s good. Good for you, Shelby. You’re really toughening up.”

Shelby pursed her lips. “I’m going to take that as a compliment.”

“You know it is! You always say you want to be tougher.”

Shelby nodded. It was true. Her dislike of conflict had too often gotten her into trouble, in her personal life and her professional life. “I was pretty tough,” she said with a small smile and a toss of her head.

“But you did it without pissing them off,” Riley added. “That takes skill.
That
is good conflict resolution.”

Shelby blinked at Riley. “I guess I’m learning,” she replied slowly.

“So enough about work crap,” Myra said. “Tell us more about Jake.”

Shelby laughed. She was surprised they hadn’t brought this up earlier. “It’s really nothing,” she said. “Neither of us is into relationships and I kind of need someone to keep Andrew at a distance and he’s willing to help out.”

Myra and Riley exchanged glances. “Really?”

“Plus the sex is hot,” she added with another grin.

“Okay. So you’re telling us this is just about sex.”

“Pretty much.”

“Uh, Shelby.” Riley leaned forward. “I hate to remind you of this, but…”

“I know, I know.” Shelby waved a hand, though a small knot had formed in her stomach. “It’s okay, don’t worry. I know what I’m doing.”

Once again her friends divided a look between them. Shelby’s smile faded. What were they thinking? That she was going to do something stupid like fall in love with yet another guy who they thought was going to take what he could get and then break her heart? The knot in her stomach started to hurt.