I curl my fingertips into my palm, trying to shock myself back into my body—or back into this incredibly uncomfortable moment. Focusing on the pain, the way my nails are carving half moons into the skin, I fight a wave of panic. It’s not a dream. It can’t be a dream.
Or can it?
Maybe I passed out drunk on the pile of clothes on my bed still needing to be folded and never woke up. What else could possibly explain the man from last night beinghere? The cool sweat I feared when skipping my full face make-up breaks on my skin—the fever raging in my veins meeting the chill with an uncomfortable ache.
“Well, at least one member of my team isn’t a total loss,” he says, his words short and clipped.
Images flash like a fucked up montage of my worst nightmares come to life. The memo about the new to town CFO. Big presentation. Vomiting on the sidewalk in front of my boss’s boss. Kara calling him a dick.Me calling him an asshat.
Fuckity fuck, I’m fucked.
Oh, god, he sawmefreshly fucked.
This cannot be happening.
He rolls his broad shoulders, his shirt pulling against the firm muscle. He’s just as beautiful in broad daylight. Maybe even more so.Focus, you horndog. Now is not the time.
Words form and shrivel on my dry tongue as I take in the room again, hoping desperately my illness has tricked me into an abnormal, temporary blindness. Any second everyone will appear, and I’ll laugh off my tardiness. Any second this awkwardness will dissipate.
Except it doesn’t. The man stands and steps forward, extending his hand, a careful glance of recognition flickering on his features. He remembers. Ohgod, he remembers.
“We’ve not been properly introduced. Noah Graves.”
My hand is a dead, damp fish in his warm palm, my shock at being the only person to make it into work still sending my head spinning.
“Where is everyone?” My voice croaks out of my dry throat and my cheeks warm.
“Out sick,” he says with a quick quirk of his cheek. The image of my vomiting on the sidewalk flashes again, and I slip my hand from his as the cold sweat gathers into a thick streak along my hairline.
Kara was right. I should have stayed home.
I half turn and motion to the empty office behind me. “Should we postpone? I’m the only one here, and I don’t know if —”
He doesn’t let me finish; his tone is all business. “Are you prepared?”
“Yes. But what about everyone else?”
I’ve never cared about everyone else before, even bringing it up now is more an effort at escape than actual concern, but hedoesn’t know that. He folds his arms across his chest, the shirt pulling deliciously across it again and I swallow the sudden rush of saliva as his voice breaks my attention.
Everything is fevered and warped, like I’m underwater.
“I asked them to email summaries of their presentations. I can’t exactly fault them for getting sick on food that apparently I paid for.”
My stomach rolls, remembering the seven times I saw that food after eating it, and I chide myself for not checking my email before leaving the house.
Two fucking minutes and I could have avoided this.
The sweat on the back of my neck carves down my spine, pulling a layer of goosebumps. I straighten, my skin hollow and raw under the shift of my skirt against my tights. This is a nightmare.No. It’s worse. Never in all my anxious spirals could I imagine this specific brand of uncomfortable.
And yet, here I am—every nauseous and sweaty piece of me.
Either actually, or playing, ignorant to my discomfort, Noah pivots on his toes and stalks back to the head of the table, pulling his chair out with a flourish before sinking into it. I follow suit, my footsteps echoing on the carpet as I realize this is the first time I’ve been in this room with so few people. It’s both vast and intimate, in all the worst ways.
Unsure if I should take a seat or stand at the whiteboard, I wait, the silence stretching as the seconds tick by. The urge to clear the air overpowers the part of me hoping he’ll forget about our heated, vomit punctuated encounter last night.
“I’m sorry, I feel like I should?—”
“Tell me your name? Yes, that would be helpful.” He clicks his pen and adjusts a legal pad as if ready to take notes.
