I shake him a little more gently this time.
“Wesley.” I crouch down beside him, sliding the coffee cup onto his desk. “Youneedto wake up. This is an emergency.”
His whole body goes rigid, then relaxes. Slowly, Wesley lifts his head from the pillow he’s made of his arms and turns to me. His face seems naked without his glasses.
But still handsome.Shut up about his face. You are this man’s boss.
His hair stands straight up in the front, messy and tousled, like he’s been reading too many YA novels.
Wesley smiles at me. A full, dimple-pressing, teeth-showing, eye-crinkling smile. One that looks happy to see me. I’ve never seen him smile at me like this before.
I open my mouth but every word I’d planned on saying is gone, kicked out of my brain. It’s impossible not to think about his stupid face when he smiles at me like that.
“Good morning, Ms. Blunt.” His voice rumbles, deeper than usual. He sits up, rubs his eyes, then stands and stretches. “Are you feeling better?”
Right. Migraine. Sleep. Presentation. I’m screwed.
I pull myself up using the edge of the desk, the panic rising with me.
I rub at my forehead even though the pain is blessedly gone. “How I feel isn’t the issue. I...made a mistake yesterday.
“I was sicker than I gave myself credit for and the medication put me down just as hard as the headache did.”
I take a deep breath, preparing myself to admit to this failure. “I didn’t get to finish the presentation.”
An eager smile crosses his face and surprise makes me blink fast. But I shouldn’t be surprised. Of course he’d want to see me fail.
“I have...” I check my watch again. “Three hours until the clients and our executive team start filling up that boardroom and I’m not sure that will be enough time but...I need your help.”
“Okay. Don’t be mad,” he says.
“If someone tells me not to be mad, I’m immediately going to be a little mad,” I inform him.
His eyes widen and he sits down in his chair. “Okay. Well, don’t be a lot mad but...” He starts opening files on his desktop, slides, mock-ups. His nose almost touches the screen, he’s leaning so absurdly close, and he squints to the point that I can barely see his eyes.
I nudge his glasses across the desk to him.
He grins with one side of his mouth. On anyone else I would say he was intentionally trying to charm me. But again, I think this is just Wesley’s face. The one he gives when his guard is down.
Sliding the glasses on his face pulls him together. Nothing else has changed, his hair is still a mess, and now I notice his wrinkled clothes—his tie is nowhere to be seen—but his glasses are like a tube of red lipstick for me. Armor.
“So, yesterday you said that you didn’t want my help and I get that.” He smiles up at me. “You like to quality control the product.”
My mouth hangs open. That’sexactlywhat I like to do. How, in between all the errands I sent him on, did he have time to notice that?
“But Arjan mentioned that he hadn’t got any design notes from you last night and I thought maybe you still weren’t feeling well.”
He stands, inviting me to take his seat.
“If there’s anything you don’t like, we can change it. In fact, if you hate it all we can just start again. But...” He holds his hands out. “I did the presentation for you. Just in case.”
My body moves in slow motion as I sit in the chair. My blinks happen too slowly, too, like there’s sand behind my lids.
I click through the slides and they...don’t suck. They’re good, in fact. Good enough that I could take this presentation to the meeting right now and not completely embarrass myself.
“This...is some hot copy, Wesley.” I look up at him. “I can work with this.”
He seems to grow a little taller as he stands there. A slow smile spreads across his face. “So you’re not mad?”
