Page 54 of Game Misconduct

She laughed. “Yes, Parker, I know who you are.”

“Oh, right. Okay.”

“What can I do for you?”

I could hear typing in the background and was reminded I was interrupting her so I needed to get on with it.

“Would you happen to know if Vivi has any free time this morning? Before noon?” Hopefully sooner than that if I wanted to talk to her for longer than a minute before leaving for the airport.

“Let me check.” There were some clicking sounds, then she hummed. “Her meeting goes until ten-thirty, then she usually meets with Jonathan right after to go over any notes or follow-up items.” She paused again. “Then a meeting at eleven, but it should only go until eleven-thirty. I think you’d be safe to come then. She’ll be free until an afternoon meeting.”

I let out my breath. This was going to work. “Thanks, Kerry. I’ll be by later.”

“No problem. You can ask for me at the receptionist’s desk, and I’ll walk you over to her so you can surprise her if you want.”

I hadn’t thought that far ahead. “That would be great.”

“She really likes the Santa Fe salad from the market cafe on the corner near our building. I happen to know she forgot to bring lunch today.”

I smiled. “And is that a salad you also enjoy?”

“Oh yes, as a matter of fact,” she replied.

“Perfect, thanks again.”

I ended the call with more confidence than I probably had a right to have, but I had a plan. Steps to take. Now, all that was left was figuring out exactly what I was going to say.

It would likely depend on the situation. Would we be alone? Was Kerry going to stay around? How much time would Vivi actually have to talk to me? I needed to come up with options so I didn’t stand there staring at her with a to-go box in my hands.

I fell back on the couch and covered my eyes with my arm. Why did getting on the ice in front of tens of thousands, if not hundreds, of people while an opposing team actively tried to take me down not bother me at all, but telling the girl I liked how I felt seemed impossible?

Nineteen

Vivian

I was rolling out my shoulders in a weak attempt to loosen my muscles and help relieve my stress headache. There was nothing like the days that started the instant you stepped off the elevator and didn’t let you come up for air until you left at night.

This wasn’t at all how my day was supposed to go. I was prepped and ready for the board meeting this morning. I had every base covered, and it went off marvelously. Jonathan was in a great mood and decided to reward everyone’s efforts by telling me to order in breakfast. With zero notice.

I scrambled to make that happen while taking notes on the meeting for him to review after, as well as coordinating with the people in my next meeting since the board was taking their sweet time catching up with one another rather than getting through the agenda points.

It was great. They were happy because the company was exceeding goals and came in under budget and on time on the last major product. They wanted to celebrate, and it fell on me to make it happen.

There were only a dozen or so issues with that. Mostly, mine. We’d gone over our time, not that anyone was going to complain about that when food was involved. My eleven o’clock meeting was supposed to begin in less than five minutes but there was no end to this on the horizon, so I had to message everyone in that meeting to make sure the team knew to go on without me and delegated the note-taking and task management to someone else.

At least I had Kerry available to run things behind the scenes. She went to pick up the breakfast order and brought it into the conference room for our guests, then ducked out and double-checked that my other meeting was in fact taking place as it should.

She messaged me updates on what was going on outside the ever-shrinking four walls of this room.

Only four people had asked about Jonathan and tried to get time with him so far. She was writing names and messages down for me, as well as taking the calls that redirected from my phone.

Once upon a time, she and I used to both attend these larger meetings, but the hours of damage control it cost us after led to us presenting the idea to our bosses of alternating meeting attendance. As much as that helped, it would have been nice to be able to skip these entirely. I didn’t have much interest in listening to rich men talking about how much richer they were getting.

Jonathan was almost halfway through his presentation, I knew because I created it, and I was fully panicking. I didn’t have the time to be in here. I shuffled things around for the morning but I had responsibilities screaming my name from my desk, but standing up and leaving wasn’t an option. I’d have to do my best to multitask from my tablet.

Kerry sent me a message asking how much longer I expected this to take, and I replied with infinitely. There was no end in sight. At this point, I’d be putting in a lunch order too.

My head was killing me, but my water bottle and any medicine I had with me were at my desk. Maybe I could excuse myself and sneak away for just a minute. It wasn’t like I needed to hear this information. I had it nearly memorized.