They’d become a little bolder in their time together—still ensuring that the kids were out of the house when they were together during the day. And the locks were always firmly engaged. But they’d started seeing each other intimately throughout the day instead of only at night when everyone else was asleep.
“Rachel?” Cassie asked.
“Yes, sorry…again.” Rachel turned her focus to the notepad in front of her, pointedly not looking at Travis and his abdominal definition.
Cassie sighed. “You’re very distracted.”
“I am.” Rachel frowned, but it was the truth,so she might as well fess up. “The family summer trip has definitely diverted my attention a little, but that ends now.”
Travis scowled at her at that declaration. His scowl added to the heaviness she was already feeling in her shoulder blades.
She stood to pace as she wrapped things up.
Cassie seemed to take Rachel at her word,and the rest of the conversation turned to reconfirming future deadlines, which wasn’t necessary given that this was a one-time situation. Rachel tolerated the inquisition because Cassie was clearly perplexed about the situation.
She and Rachel had been working together for three years, and this was the first time Rachel hadn’t addressed an issue within the given time frame.
Although, if Rachel really thought about it—as she was right then—Cassie had consistently started asking for more and more on tighter timelines. Rachel had always delivered, so she hadn’t thought much of it.
Once she hung up the phone, Rachel fell back on the bed, dropping her cell to press the heels of her hands against her eyelids.
“Didn’t go well?” Travis asked, pulling on his tee.
Rachel nodded, hands still against her face. “I really screwed up.”
“How bad?” he asked.
“The old ad ran, but Cassie changed the coupon code. So now, she says, customers want both deals, and she’s really worried she’s going to lose money over the whole thing.”
“How much money are we talking?” Travis’s baritone was not soothing like usual.
This was a testament to how tense Rachel was, if the sound of his voice wasn’t doing the general calming thing like usual.
“I don’t know.” Rachel slumped farther into the mattress, letting the thick comforter, well, comfort. “Cassie wasn’t happy about it, though.”
Rachel was going to have to give her a discount on her monthly bill. That meant she was going to have to pull into her savings for the mortgage payment this month. And that meant that she’d have to replenish her savings.
“Do you want to talk about it?” Travis asked, sitting at the edge of her bed, running his hand along her leg.
“No.” She rolled over and tried the box breathing thing again.
“Rach.” Travis moved his palm from her leg to her back. “Even you get to mess up sometimes.”
She looked at him then. Really looked at him. Not his abs, not his body, not the way he made her insides flippity-flop with his mind-boggling sex appeal. No, she really drank him in.
He cared about her.
That thought made her throat go dry.
“I don’t get to mess up,” she said.
Then she told him. All of it.
“She’s in the States?” he asked.
Rachel nodded.
“And she was up at three in the morning sending you emails with changes for an ad that was supposed to run within hours?” he asked.
