His face falls, and too late, something occurs to me. Surely not, but?—
I gesture at the vase of asters and its buddies. “Did you do all this? And if so, when?”
Donovan shrugs. “It wasn’t a big deal. You needed a place to work. Facilities said it would be a couple weeks before you could requisition something, and I couldn’t exactly have you sitting on my…” His voice trails off, his face heating like it did at the Grille, and I have to bite my lip to keep from laughing. Weirdly, his gaze tracks to my mouth and lingers. Maybe I have spinach from my breakfast burrito stuck in my teeth? I try to surreptitiously ferret out the offender while Donovan shifts his weight, like he’s uncomfortable about something. And then I process the words that left his mouth.
“Hold on a hot minute. Did you buy me this desk? And everything on it?”
“I’ll get reimbursed,” Donovan says, his tone brusque. “Like I said, you needed to have your own workspace. Efficiency is important, and everything I read said designers need visual inspiration to be at their best. So, I faced the desk toward the window and got some of the same flowers you have in your front yard.”
I don’t know whether to be amused, touched, aggravated, or some combination thereof. “And the mug?”
“Hydration matters. And food,” he says, jerking his chin at the granola bar. “Can’t have you passing out. How will we meet our deadlines then?”
My lips twitch. “I see. And what about the toy? Is that to keep me entertained, so I don’t talk too much and annoy you?”
“Don’t be so egocentric.” He prods at an invisible scuff on the hardwood with the toe of his black Oxford. “That’s for Valentine.”
I narrow my eyes at him, hands on my hips. “Whatis your obsession with my cat?”
It’s his turn to heave a sigh. “I’m notobsessed.”
“Tell that to your sweatshirt.” I point at it, befouling the perfect symmetry of his desk, and I swear I can hear him start to decompensate as he strides over and scoops it up, tucking it into a messenger bag hung on a hook beside our office door.
“You can, um, hang your purse there, too, if you want. There are two hooks.”
“Oh, are there really? Thank goodness.”
He rolls his eyes so hard, it’s a wonder they don’t get stuck. “Just give me your laptop, Chaos. We’ve got a lot of work to do.”
“I’m not sure how I feel about that nickname,” I say, handing it over. “I might be tempted to return the favor.”
Settling behind his pristine desk, he opens my laptop and grimaces. “Do your worst,” he mutters, cleaning the screen with a tiny cloth he’s produced from somewhere. “I can’t wait.”
After he proclaims my laptop fit for service, we get stuck in a meeting with Ethan, who, of course, heard about our wreck yesterday through Sapphire Springs’ grapevine. As soon as we assure him that we have, indeed, survived in one piece, he launches into a spiel about how he has to deliver a presentation to our mysterious client tomorrow, and he needs us to startprepping materials for it immediately. We try to ask questions, but Ethan just emails us both links to a Dropbox file, hands me a folder filled with potential branding ideas and Donovan another one stuffed with God knows what, and hustles off down the hall to the lobby, yelling, “Sorry! I have a meeting!” over his shoulder.
Donovan stares after him, then looks at me, nonplussed. “A presentation. Tomorrow.”
“That’s what he said.” I thumb through the papers in the folder, looking from one subpar logo concept to another.
“Without even talking to the client.”
“Guess so.”
“What,” he says, gritting his teeth, “and I don’t say this lightly—the fuck.”
This is how we find ourselves alone at Smashbox nine hours later, when everyone else has gone home for the day. My eyes are bleary from staring at my screen, trying one color combination after another, and based on the muttered obscenities emanating from Donovan’s side of the room, I’m pretty sure he’s not doing much better. I’ve long-since devoured the granola bar and am subsisting on bad break room coffee. Donovan, whose eating habits are as obnoxious as the rest of him, is sipping hot tea. He’s scored an orange from somewhere, but he hasn’t touched it. All he’s done is poke at his keyboard and mutter.
“Won’t Jenny worry about where you are?” I say at last, to break the silence that’s sprung up between us.
He peers at me over the rim of his mug. “Jenny Abruzzo? What do you mean?”
“I mean,” I say, annoyed at having to spell out the obvious, “since you two are dating and all, won’t she be a little upset if you just, like, spend your whole night working at Smashbox with me?” Not that I’m any kind of competition, but still.
Donovan blinks at me owlishly, his dark lashes feathering over his cheekbones. “I’m not dating Jenny.”
Now it’s my turn to blink. “But, yesterday, when we ran into her, you told her you’d see her that night. And you have that sweatshirt with Valentine’s face on it.”
“Because I volunteer at the animal shelter.” He says the words slowly, as if to be sure I understand. “I clean up after-hours, and help them with their website. The sweatshirt was from a fundraiser, like I told you. I got my clothes dirty one day, helping out, and they gave it to me.” Setting his mug of tea down, he points at the stuffed mouse with the feathered tail, now edging perilously close to the edge of my desk. “I got a bunch of toys for the shelter’s cats, and I had a few left over. So I brought one for Valentine. God knows, she’s got her paws full, putting up with you, Chaos.”
