I shot him a smile and tapped my wrist. “Gotta go,” I mouthed. He looked like he was on the verge of a protest before I bolted, my cleaning cart rattling behind me.
I rushed my cart back to the cleaning room, waving at Cathy sitting at her desk through her open door, praying she didn’t want to chat today. Cathy had a laugh that could be heard two floors down and an office with lights that beamed brighter than the sun. I’d be a sitting duck. She made no move to get up, and I zoomed past her without incident and into the cleaning room, which was really just a big walk-in closet that smelled like bleach, and closed the door. A sigh escaped me at the relief it was to feel hidden. I had mentally battled a very sexy dragon, and exhaustion settled in my limbs. I leaned against the white wall, pulling the latex gloves off my hands, grateful I’d survived another day without having to speak to—
“Nora!”
I jumped, my gloves dropping to the floor because suddenly he was there.
He was there.
In the doorway. His eyes raked me up and down, a smile lighting his face at the same time pretending affront at my crimes. Five days of dodging shadows and hiding in closets had brought me to this moment. Time to get this over with.
Without asking my permission, my eyes swept over the man I’d been unable to forget. I wanted to scoff at my reaction to him. It really wasn’t fair what I was seeing. He checked all the boxes that a man should check. The five o’clock shadow on his face that was still the stuff of dreams. Check. The blue suit that fit him better than any glove I could imagine. Check. The smile that still powered the sun and felt so familiar to me I had to keep myself from touching it. Him. Check. Check.
An undeniable feeling of warm friendship settled over me. I strongly suspected we could talk for the next two hours, and we wouldn’t skip a beat in our conversation. Even now, he was not looking at me like a stranger. So, there I stood, breathless and in awe at how fast three years between us could disappear.
“Hey, Duke.”
He stared incredulously at me for a long moment. “Hey, Duke?”
I bit my lip, but the tiny laugh escaped. “Yeah. Hey, Duke.”
A silent battle waged between us then. He had the look of a man who either wanted to wring my neck or tackle me to the ground. One option definitely sounded more appealing than the other, but I would never admit which one.
“Hi.” Doing great on my small talk so far.
“Hi.” His reluctant smile felt like a win.
I cleared my throat, digging deep to find my focus. “So, you work at RDM? Or were you just there for a meeting?”
A long pause. His eyes studied mine. “I work there.”
“How come you didn’t get off on the fourteenth floor the other day in the elevator?”
“We had a meeting with a company upstairs.”
Great.
Out of all the office buildings in this city, I wound up cleaning his.
“Guess the marketing dream worked out for you, then.”
He shoved his hands into his pockets. “Guess so. How long have you been back in Utah?”
“A couple months.”
“Why are we no longer friends online?”
I lifted my chin. “Not sure.”
“Liar. I’ve been blocked. Not just unfriended.”
How does one tell another person that, platonically, I couldn’t stand any more pictures of him and his girlfriend in my feed?
Platonically.
He went on in my awkward absence. “After I saw you the other day in the elevator, I tried to find you, but it was like you never existed.”
“Maybe I deleted my accounts.” It wasn’t lying, just spouting off a hypothetical idea.
