Mr. Samuels, I’m sorry, but I met this great guy and he works at DPM. Bailey would be the perfect fit for the account.
Mr. Samuels, the DeMarco account needs to go to someone else. I’d rather date the office manager than handle the taxes for the company.
Mr. Samuels, how did you meet your husband? Because, funny story…
Option one, definitely.
Elissa put on her big girl britches and faced Mr. Samuels in his office at eight thirty Monday morning.
“Hi, Elissa. Ready for the big leagues?”
“Um, yes, about that?—”
The phone rang, and he held up a finger. “Can this wait?”
“Sure, I’ll check in a bit later.” Elissa slunk back to her office.
Later didn’t happen that day. Too many files, too many calls, too many doubts. It was fine. This was fine. She could tell Mr. Samuels tomorrow. Or the day after, if tomorrow went anything like today. In the meantime, she would distance herself from Ryan. Keep it to phone calls and texts. No dinners. No heated glances. No sex.
How was she to know “in the meantime” would turn into two weeks?
There was always so much to do. The twelve-hour days didn’t stop, and the last thing Elissa wanted was to bungle any of her accounts. She ate, slept, and breathed her work. Part of her knew she had to in order to keep up with the load. Part of her was doing it to avoid some hard truths.
Ryan called or texted nearly every day, and he was the only bright spot in her life right now. He was there, in a way no one other than Jules had ever been.
A funny meme. A dirty joke. A soft voice listening to her work woes and sharing his own. The best part of her day.
But whenever he tried to ask her to do something, go somewhere, or up the spice of their phone calls, she backed off. He invited her to go to a party his cousin was throwing. She said she was too tired. Not a lie, but she could’ve shown up for a bit.
He mentioned the Renaissance Festival. She had to work the weekend.
He suggested a movie. She had plans with her family.
Elissa refused to say the words, to demand time for this whole situation to settle. It was her fault. She should’ve told Karina that Friday after Ryan helped take Leo to the hospital. She should’ve told Mr. Samuels as soon as he assigned her Karina’s clients. But she didn’t, and now she was doing everything she could to compartmentalize, which meant keeping at least a little physical and emotional distance between them.
The weeks passed in a blur. She sat at her kitchen table, staring into nothingness. Her brain hurt. She was exhausted. And all she could think about was Ryan. She missed him so damn much.
Elissa cleared the table and went through the stack of mail that had been piling up. At the bottom was Ryan’s business plan. She’d been meaning to fill in the missing market research data, but she had no bandwidth to manage one more thing.
Wait, she may not have the bandwidth, but she had a friend who did this kind of thing for a living. She could email him, see what tips and tricks he might have.
She composed the message, giving as many details as she could, and scheduled the email for Tuesday. No need to send a non-urgent email on Monday.
The good news was the DeMarco Property Management taxes were prepared and the files had been digitized. Bailey was double-checking them before Mr. Samuels signed off, but the physical files were ready to be returned. She called DPM.
“DeMarco Properties. Ryan speaking. How may I help you?”
Calm washed over her, and a frisson of desire shimmied down her spine. She’d talked to him yesterday, and yet his voice still had this effect on her.
“Hi, it’s Elissa.”
She could hear the smile replace the cool professionalism in his voice.
“Hey! I wasn’t expecting you to call me here. What’s up?”
“This is business, unfortunately. I have two file boxes with your name on them.”
“My favorite kind of file boxes. When do you want to drop them off? And can I convince you to do it at the end of the day so I can take you out to dinner after?”
