I exhale slowly, feeling like a hummingbird. My heart is beating so fast, I wonder if he can hear it.
“Her slide deck mainly focuses on Q1 and Q2,” I continue, pointing to the relevant section. “But she’s also included estimated predictions for Q3. They’re in a separate email, which was sent a few days prior. The long white tabs are numbered along the edge, and I felt that would make it easier to refer back to the summary metrics without rifling through the other paperwork.”
Crawford’s hand hovers over the file, flipping to the pages and then back again.
“Huh,” he flips to the fourth tab and back again. “It’s color-coded.”
“And in date order,” I add. “It just felt as if, for this particular meeting, you’d need to know when things were shared. There was some discrepancy about that in the correspondence.”
“You read the emails, too?” he asks, looking up at me.
I go very still, biting my lip. “Uh. Some of them, yeah. Sorry, am I not supposed to?”
Crawford leans back in his chair, and for the first time, he looks at me with an expression that has nothing to do with lust.
He has one eyebrow quirked up and a little smile on his face. As his eyes meet mine, there’s something there that looks a little like admiration.
“Okay. Thank you for clarifying. You can go.”
“Do you want me to change it?”
“No. It makes sense now.”
I hover, expecting him to say more. We haven’t had sex this morning, and it’s amazing how quickly my body has become attuned to it. I feel a throb between my legs as I’m standing there, desperate for him to come and touch me.
Instead, he turns back to the folder and doesn’t say anything more.
I hesitate, knowing I should leave, but I want him to look at me. His eyes come to rest on a word on the page in front of him, like he’s about to ask me what the hell I’m still doing there.
I turn and bolt out of the room, embarrassed at my body’s reaction to him. I sit down at my desk, staring at my computer screen, not sure how to feel.
It’s been a week. Maybe this is him telling me my time is up. Has he gotten bored already?
Hope warned me about this, and so did Bethany. But somehow the disappointment stings a lot harder than I expected.
Is it more than disappointment?
I open my emails, trying to banish the ridiculous thought. I can’t afford to start gettingoffendedwhen he isn’t in the mood. I’m not his wife. I’m just an escort, hired to fuck him.
For the next hour, I have my head down printing off endless reams of emails and collating them together into packs. I don’t make any other changes, as I'm too nervous that he’ll think I’m getting overconfident, but I’m privately pleased that my new system helped in a small way.
When I return from my third printing run, I find Kaitlin at my desk looking less put-together than she usually does.
“Hey,” she says immediately. “I’m glad I caught you.”
I glance at the clock on the wall opposite my desk and frown. It’s just after 4 p.m.
“What’s wrong?” I ask. Her fingers are twisting in front of her nervously, and she glances at Crawford’s office door as she lowers her voice.
“Beatrice is gonna kill me.”
I place the papers I’ve printed on my desk and nod to the seat beside me. “What happened?”
Kaitlin gratefully lowers into the chair. “I’m such an idiot, Amelia. Maurice, that’s my boyfriend, texted me about anappointment he’d arranged for our son. You remember how the doctor kept cancelling them?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, the appointment is in an hour. I completely forgot.”
