“You got it.” Logan headed for the telephone.
“Loge?”
Logan turned back to Derek in midstride, thinking again that his friend looked like total hell.
“Do you mind if I crash here for a while?”
Logan shook his head, a wry smile curving his lips. “This place has twenty-one goddamn rooms. You can stay forever, if you want.” God knew he would never be able to fill them all. At least with Derek here, things wouldn’t be quite so quiet.
And Logan wouldn’t feel quite so alone.
By lunchtime, Claire had the worst headache she’d ever had in her life. Between leg cramps and thoughts about Logan, she’d gotten a disturbingly small amount of sleep. Their argument had stressed her out enough, but then she’d gone over Logan’s words repeatedly and she had to acknowledge he was partially correct. She was trying to avoid the topic of Logan with Garrett, just as she was trying to avoid Logan and LM.
With a sigh, she tapped out an email to a member of her Creative Team and hit the send button. Still, at least she knew what she wanted. Mostly. She’d been miserable with Garrett for so long that she felt freer, happier now than she’d been for as long as she could remember. When it came to Logan Monroe, things weren’t nearly so black and white. Physically, she was more attracted to him than she’d ever even believed possible. Emotionally, she knew that distance between them would serve her best. Her shameless response to him last night was ample proof of that.
Make that lots and lots of distance.
Claire turned back to her laptop and pulled up a file containing her most recent and probably last account. The product was a sugar substitute and so far, the proposal she had from her Creative Team was “It’s like sugar, only better.” Not very promising.
Double sigh.
She had to transform it somehow before she left LM. Claire despised loose ends. She’d been the kind of kid who colored every white spot on the page of her coloring book before moving on to the next picture. It had driven Sophie nuts. But her sister had been a blossoming artist even then, and it hadn’t taken Sophie long to figure out that a totally blank sheet of paper was more her speed. Claire, on the other hand, needed lines to fill in and trace. Guidelines.
Abruptly, her office door clicked open and Jamie popped her head inside, a cheerful smile brightening her face. “Ready for lunch?” her bubbly voice matched her smile.
Claire frowned. “I’d love to but I’m really swamped right now.”
Jamie made a face at Claire, stepping completely into the office and closing the door behind her. “Claire Morton, you know you need to feed that baby. You’re too skinny, if you ask me. What you need is—”
“To get my work done.” Claire aimed a pointed glance at the cluttered mound that was her desk. “I packed a lunch, Jamie, so you don’t have to worry about me.”
Jamie didn’t leave her in peace like a nice, biddable personal assistant would do. Instead, she crossed the room with a determined air and stopped before Claire’s desk, clicking her cherry-red nails on the glass surface.
Claire attempted to ignore her. She mentally counted to ten, then concentrated on the slogan for the sugar substitute, repeating it in her head to drown out the sound of Jamie’s happily clacking nails.
Click. Click. Click.
Finally she gave in and looked up at Jamie with what she hoped was a foreboding glower. “You know I hate that noise.”
That earned her a smug grin. “I know, and if you don’t come with me to lunch, I’ll stand here doing it for, oh,” she consulted her watch, “the next hour, at least.”
Claire tried a last resort. “I could fire you, you know.”
Jamie tilted her head, considering Claire’s words for a brief moment. “You could, but you won’t. You could never fire me, since you like me too much. Besides, you’re leaving in two weeks anyway.”
Claire gave a resigned sigh and rose from her chair. “You don’t play fair.”
Jamie flashed her a wink and stopped tapping her nails on the desk. “You never get your way if you play fair.”
“True,” Claire allowed as she retrieved her purse. “Sad, but true.”
They headed to The Blue Room, a swanky restaurant that rented out the ground level of the building that housed LM. Claire’s tension began to drain away as she and Jamie entered the lobby outside the restaurant. It was difficult to be anything but relaxed when ensconced in the soothing décor of The Blue Room. The entire place was, as its name suggested, done up in shades of blue, from its sky-blue walls to the indigo table linens. Even the fountain in the center of the restaurant boasted a faded blue Romanesque statue and blue tiles.
Elise, the hostess, approached them with a smile. She was a Penn college student who always worked the lunch hour and had come to recognize most of the LM staff.
“Hi, Claire, Jamie.” Elise paused and sent a less-than-subtle wink in Jamie’s direction. “Right this way.”
Claire’s instincts screamed that something was afoot. And if her recent luck, or lack thereof, held true, it was something Claire wouldn’t like.
