“It won’t happen,” she assured him again, more firmly this time, while she called him a lot of unsavory names in her head.
The man liked to put on airs as though he were gearing up for a run at the White House instead of the mayor’s office. The only thing that reflected poorly on his office was him, but it all happened behind closed office doors, so the city just saw the smiling and successful businessman with the picture-perfect family.
Because she didn’t want to delve any deeper into her personal life for Stan, she stood. For a few seconds, he looked like he wanted to say more, but then he gave her the smile he seemed to think was charming but was actually smarmy. “I’m glad to hear it. And it’s good that you’ve found yourself a beau. I’m happy for you, Kristen.”
She managed to leave his office and close the door behind her before the derisive snort escaped. Abeau?What the hell was that about?
Annie managed to get out of the water cooler conversation she was having in time to meet Kristen at her office door. “Everything okay? You look pissed.”
“It’s fine. I’m just trying to recover from my journey back to 1955.”
“He saw the blog post, didn’t he?”
“Yousaw the blog post?” Annie had no interest in sports that Kristen knew of.
Annie blushed. “I think everybody’s seen it. I was going to text you yesterday, but my mom called with one of her crises and it got late. I was really hoping Stan wouldn’t hear about it, though.”
“I was, too, but he probably has Google alerts set up for each of us.”
Annie laughed out loud. “I’d say you’re probably right, except he can barely check his own email without calling the IT guy for help. I have to run, but we’re having lunch together today because I want to hear more about this Cross guy.”
Kristen didn’t have long before she’d have to go back into Stan’s office for their regular morning meeting, so she excused herself and closed her door against the office chatter—a lot of which was probably about her.
She sat at her desk and went through her usual post-Stan ritual, which included some deep breathing, muttered obscenities, and visualizing herself in the future, working for a better, more powerful, less ignorant and much less conservative boss.
At least he seemed mollified by the fact Will was herbeau.She had a nasty feeling that meeting would have gone in a totally unpleasant direction if he knew the true story—her one-night stand with the hot guy she picked up at a bar had ended with her brother punching him in the face.
She made it through the rest of the day without any further mention of the incident other than giving Annie the more fun details of the story over salads—skirting over the details about how it all got started, and focusing instead on how great a guy Will was—and Stan seemed to be his usual self, returning to normal levels of being insufferable.
This is good, she told herself as she made her way home. Will’s bruise would fade. She was cautiously optimistic her promotion was still on track. And she was having the best sex of her life in the meantime. Considering the potential for disaster that had existed, things were going pretty damn well.
Her apartment felt a little empty without Will in it, though, and she couldn’t stop herself from thinking about him as she sorted her mail—dumping most of it in the recycling tub—and changed into leggings and a sweatshirt. She was feeling antsy, so she picked up her phone and sent Will a text message.
I feel like going for a drive. Wanna go with?
If you can wait an hour. Finishing up and need to shower. Meet at practice facility?
She’d rather not be anywhere near the place, but she also didn’t want to wait any longer than she had to before she got to see him.Give me the address and I’ll be there in an hour.
He sent it, and she saved it to her navigation so she could pull it up when it was time. Then, with a little time to kill, she pulled up the schedule Erik sent her every week and decided now might be a good time to catch him.
He answered on the third ring. “Hey, Kris. How are things?”
“Strange and somewhat hard to believe. How are things with you?”
“About the same.” She could tell by the sound quality and ambient noise that he was driving, and she put him on speakerphone so she could clean her bathroom while she talked to him. “Things are weird, for sure. I’m taking a lot of shit about this from the team, as you can imagine.”
“Maybe choose more discreet friends to vent to in the future.”
“No shit, and again, I’m sorry about that. But hopefully it’ll all blow over soon, especially for you. In the locker room, somebody’s always giving somebody shit for something, and it’s just my turn until something more interesting happens.” He chuckled. “It’s a pretty high bar, though.”
“We Burkes don’t do anything halfway.”
“No, we don’t. How’s Cross handling it?”
“He’s good. Everybody blew up his phone yesterday, of course, but he stuck with the story, refused to say anything more, and I think people are getting bored already.”
“Have you seen him since…you know?”
