“Five thirty,” he agreed. Her phone dinged. “There. You have my number now, and I swear this place has the best Sonoran dogs in Tucson.”
“That’s a tall order. What if I’m not impressed?”
“You will be. I guarantee it.”
“I’m gonna hold you to it.”
He took a few steps away from her car, hands stuck firmly in his pockets as though trying not to touch her. She got in the driver’s seat.
“Goodbye, Elissa.”
She liked the sound of her name from his lips. Too much. She shut the car door.
“I’ll see you Thursday, Ryan.”
Ryan’s gaze lingered on her for a moment as she started the engine before he returned to the office. Elissa watched him the entire way. Once the front door closed, she leaned her forehead onto her steering wheel.
“What am I doing?”
There was no answer either from herself or any divine presence that wanted to make itself known. To be fair, she never knew what she was doing in these situations. A mutual friend had introduced her to Victor in college. It had been years since she’d had to negotiate a date.
Yet she’d worn the sexiest office-appropriate outfit in her closet. With her only black bra. She’d known she’d be here today, known she’d see Ryan, and had dressed appropriately.
She drove straight to JMS Accounting, unloaded the boxes, and wheeled them to the secure storage room. It was emptier than it had been her first year working here. More and more of their clients were switching to digital only, but DeMarco Property Management still insisted on a paper trail. She doubted it would last much longer. Alex DeMarco seemed ready to transition to the easier digital paperwork. But if they’d already done it, she wouldn’t have found Ryan. Thank heaven for technophobes.
Elissa went to her office, checked her voicemail and email, and kept herself reasonably busy the rest of the afternoon. In the back of her mind, though, a niggling thought kept trying to come to the forefront. She was ethically obligated to avoid conflicts of interest. Would dating a new office manager who had nothing to do with the documents in her possession, other than pulling them for her, be a conflict? She was the junior member of this team, mostly organizing the files, prepping documents, and arranging meetings. He was not the company bookkeeper. It was a gray area, and Elissa was a rule follower. She hated gray areas.
But this gray area had Ryan in it. And she liked Ryan. A lot. Even given their less-than-stellar start.
See where the next date goes, then talk to Karina. That’s what mentors are for.
She couldn’t ignore her conscience when it made this much sense. The date could flop even worse than with Mr. Beige-Flag, and this point would be moot. No need to bring it up until she established how a date went when they were one hundred percent honest with each other.
A few minutes after five, she shut down her computer and drove to her parents’ house. Leo was in the kitchen, rummaging through the cupboards. He turned to her with a granola bar in one hand and a bag of chips in the other.
“Give me a few minutes and I’ll throw the casserole Mom left in the oven,” she said.
“Can I still have these?”
“Go for it. I’m not your mother.”
He laughed as he took his snacks to his room like the teen goblin boy he was.
She preheated the oven and texted Jules.
E: I have a date.
J: What????? With a boy?????
E: No, with an alien. Yes, with a boy.
J: Who??? Please tell me not the dweeb from last week
E: Not the dweeb from last week.
J: Thank fucking god so who?
E: The other Ryan.
