Because what I see makes my heart stutter. Me, eyes locked on Beck, beaming under his fresh praise. Beck, the look in his warm, amber gaze soft and adoring.
Adoring me.
It’s the sweetest thing I’ve seen in… in… maybe in my whole damn life, and it sure as hell isn’t going in my presentation.
But it is going in a frame. Real heckin’ soon.
“That’s a great picture,” Beck says, his gaze back on the call now. “But it’s not for Hattie’s professor and fellow students.” He rises from the table, phone in hand, and takes a minute lining up my laptop and the angle of his phone propped against an empty coffee mug so that the view captures all of us in frame—even Griffin and Kennedy on the screen.
He sets the timer and jogs back before throwing an arm around me. “Everybody say, return on investment!”
Everyone else says it. Then I bellow, “NET PROFITS!”
The picture captures all the men cracking up and me, making an extra derpy face as I pronounce the F in profits.
Oh, well.
My stomach chooses this moment to growl unashamedly, and with no preamble at all, I am done working.
“I’m hungry,” I blurt. Then sniff and sniff again. “And something smells really good. Is that gumbo?”
A scan of the stovetop shows nothing as promising as a stock pot. In fact, all four burners are empty. My heart sinks along with my stomach.
But then Beck saves the day.
“I defrosted some gumbo in the microwave. And rice is going in the pressure cooker.”
My mouth waters. “W-when did you do that?” I have zero recollection of him moving across the kitchen or hearing the microwave beep and hum.
Beck smirks. “While you were taking Grif and Kennedy through your profit projection slides.”
I blink. “Oh...” I glance around the kitchen. The windows are dark. “What time is it?”
“Seven-thirty.”
“It’s seven-thirty?!”
Other than a few trips to the bathroom and running upstairs for the one actual textbook I own, I’ve been in this kitchen since nine-thirty this morning.
Working on this project.
Non-stop.
My stomach gives another ferocious growl.
Lunch was like seven hours ago.
I’ve been locked in. In flow. In the zone.
All. Freakin’. Day.
And it was fun.
Heck, it was just as much fun as spending the afternoon at Viv Couture.
Further proof that I’ve been doing school all wrong for the last five years.
Because now? I’m excited.
