Page 36 of All for Love

“Fine. What about orange?”

“We’ve been over this,” she said, and I saw the exasperation tightening her eyes. “Orange means that there are still some things we need to iron out, and before you ask, red means it’s a total mess and we have to can it all.”

“Can it?”

“Yes, can it.”

“What happened to tweaking?”

“I’m not a tweaker.” A hint of a smile appeared on her lips as she stared back at me. “Seriously, Kody, I’m keeping the integrity of absolutely all your materials. There aren’t a lot of red tabs, but as an example, one of the reds that needs to be canned is the fact that all the paperwork generated by all the call centers gets dumped into one storage facility.”

“Call centers don’t generate that much paperwork. We did that as a cost-saving measure. Storage costs money, you know?”

“You own this building, and I’m only talking about the call centers in this particular building right now.”

“Sure, but office space is office space and we’re using ours optimally.”

“That’s the thing, though. You’re not. When was the last time you were even in one of your call centers?”

“Uhhh…”

“That’s what I thought.” She scooted forward on the chair, her posture still open and not defensive in the least, which was something to get used to for me. “I’m not making any radical suggestions. Just look it over and you’ll see what I’m proposing.”

“What are you proposing?”

Those green eyes turned up at the corners. “Using the same storage facility but separating the departments with partitions and instituting a better filing system.”

“Oh.”

She smiled. “Exactly. It’s simple, cheap, and effective.”

“Right. Okay,” I conceded. “I’m taking away that red tab then. You can go ahead and run with that.”

“Thank you, but do not touch my tabs. I will remove them once the work has been done. How else do you propose we keep track of everything that we still need to discuss, get done, and finalize?”

I shrugged. “Make a list on your phone?”

Her eyes widened and her jaw dropped as she shook her head slowly from side to side. “Are you insane? A list on your phone is for groceries or the names of kids attending a birthday party. I have spreadsheets and charts.”

“And your red post-its.”

She grinned. “And my red post-its. Are we done? It’s almost the end of the day and I really want to finish up with Rosie before she’s off the clock.”

“Sure. We’re done.” I glanced at the time on my computer. “Where the hell did the day go?”

“I don’t know.” She got up, then flashed me a surprisingly mischievous smile. “Perhaps it passed you by while you were staring at me.”

I groaned. “I was not staring at you. I was staring absently into space because the homework you gave me is boring as shit.”

“No, it’s not.” She suddenly broke off eye contact to look around, and when she turned her head back to mine, she seemed a lot more hesitant. “Do you want to go grab a drink with me after work to decompress?”

My gut instinct was to leap at the offer, but I couldn’t. Considering things were only just starting to normalize between us and Kaden, I didn’t want to poke the bear. “It’s for the best if we don’t do that, Mercedes.”

She nodded. “Of course, I understand.”

Whether or not that was true, she was still clearly disappointed as she gave me a watered-down smile and a friendly little wave before she spun on her heels and rushed out of my office. It probably wouldn’t help to tell her this, but I was disappointed too.

A few weeks ago, I’d rather have taken a baseball bat to the balls before I voluntarily had a drink with her, but now, I didn’t know. She still wasn’t my favorite person who had ever existed, but she wasn’t so bad.

The fact that I wanted to take her up on it was why I hadn’t done it, though. Getting drunk, or even tipsy, with her right now wasn’t a good idea. Drinking together would almost certainly lead to more, and we couldn’t risk that.

Not after it’d made her cry just two days ago. I hadn’t been the one responsible for the tears, to be fair, but I had put her in the position that led to it. I wasn’t going there again. I was an asshole, but contrary to what Kaden seemed to think in this case, I wasn’t a heartless one.

Or at least, not nearly as heartless as I’d have liked to be.