“You didn’t see his face when Maria told him I’m the support staff during team travel.”
“Who? The coach?”
“Mm-hmm.” I flopped next to her. “He didn’t even give a default coworker smirk, just the nod of a corporal who’s seen it all.”
Sam sipped her pink smoothie with the satisfied look of someone revving up for a smug moment. “Maybe that’s how his face sits. Some people are born with a resting grump face.”
“Then he needs to borrow someone else’s. At the very least, when you meet a colleague, you smile. It’s in the employee handbook, probably.”
Sam wiggled her brows. “Maybe you threw him off.”
“Yep, with the DevPad I clutched as if I were hiding offshore accounts.”
“Exactly,” she said, gesturing to my face. “You have those Apache almond-shaped eyes, and you came swinging with electronic-clipboard confidence. All that probably threw him off.”
I groaned. “He’s clearly not thrilled to have me on the trip. I’m pretty sure I heard a faint sigh as he walked away.”
“You’re not there for him. You’re there for you, your career, and free hockey VIP passes.”
“Sure, but he’s my boss during travels.”
“Oh,nowhe’s your boss. You conveniently left that out.” She gave me a look. “I’ll be over here rooting for sexual tension and secretly packing your cute jeans.”
“Sam.”
“Someone’s gotta stir the pot and sprinkle some love dust. Might as well be me,” she continued, laughing and nearly knocking my neatly folded jammies to the floor. “And if he so much as looks at you with anything beyond professional indifference, that’s a hot kiss in the making. I’m putting it in my wedding toast.”
“Sam!” I warned again, even as her words landed like a dropped pin in my brain. Tiny inconvenient hype pulses followed.
The truth was, it’d beenforeversince anyone sent fizz through me that way. Talk about instant attraction. I hadn’t felt thatstomach-flip, heart-flutter feeling in years, not since before my engagement crashed. I wouldn’t admit it out loud (yet), but Coach Murphy’s unreadable eyes and ridiculous jawline had already moved in rent-free in my nervous system.
“Sounds like the boss on the road may be a tingle-inducing, palms-sweating type?” Sam asked.
“Don’t say tingle-inducing while I’m packing my socks.”
She smiled. “Okay, let’s try this. So, Coach Grumpy’s stuck in your head, isn’t he?”
“He’s not grumpy. He’s ...,” I trailed off, reaching for something tactful. “...economical with his facial expressions.”
Sam laughed. “How does that qualify him for the summer issue ofGentlemen’s Quarterly?”
I blinked at her.
She grinned. “I observe. You have a nervous vibe that says, ‘please don’t flirt with me while I’m orienting’ and also ‘I’m definitely not panicking over how attractive you are.’”
“All that anatomy and physiology have messed you up.”
“Maybe, but I know ‘heart palpitations from afar and hummingbird swarms when he’s near’ when I see it. Classic symptom.”
A laugh cracked out of me, finally cutting the tension in my chest.
“Wrong career, Sam. You should’ve gone into fiction. You’re wasted on human organs.”
She stood and tossed a top at me. “Pack something cute. You might end up beside him, and next thing you know, the functional adult elbows out the walking disaster.”
“Says a girl who’s buried fun under research and books,” I called after her as she slipped out of my room.
Yep, I was nervous, and no, I didn’t think Coach Murphy was planning to make this trip fun. But for once, my life wasn’t stuck, and that was a surprising thing.
