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“That’s not a good idea,” she said with a gentle smile as she shook her head. “We’re fine. You don’t need to make anything up to me or go out of your way to be nice. No hard feelings.”
“We’re fine but you don’t want to be friends anymore?” Women, I swear, went out of their way to make things as difficult as possible. “That doesn’t make sense.”
“No Miles, you don’t want to be friends. You’ve thought of me now because you’re back in town and it’s impossible to avoid seeing me. did you even think of me once while you were away?” she held up a hand to stop my answer. “Even if you did, you chose to do nothing about it, not a call or a text, and that’s fine. You don’t owe me any of that, but you should at least acknowledge that it isn’t friendly behavior.”
“Okay, I admit it seems that way, but-,”
“Next!”
Okay, I wasn’t going to get my point across now, while she was still hurt or angry or whatever she was at the moment. “This isn’t over. I’ll talk to you soon, Shannon.” I couldn’t help but smile at the glare she sent me, but it died when she gifted the men behind me with a dazzling smile.
I had time to make things right with Shannon, but for now I had a staff meeting to attend.
Liam greeted me at the door, probably because he could smell the pastries from a mile away. “Hey man, it’s about time you came back. I thought you were going to leave all the work for the rest of us.”
“Very funny.” The rest of the team waited inside what we called the break-room, because it’s where we ate lunch, held meetings and snuck in naps between training sessions. “All right you slackers, the boss is back and it’s time to work.”
“Golden boy returns.” Grant Lopez, the obstacle course engineer shouted over the other words of welcome and relieved me of the pastry boxes. “Since you brought food, let me be the first to say welcome back and we missed you.”
After a few more minutes of ribbing, we got down to business. “Well, tell us what you’ve done,” Liam said in the gravest tone I’d ever heard him use.
I stood at the head of the table with a proud smile on my face. “Out of sixteen meetings, we have nine reservations booked and paid up front with two more pending approval.” After a beat of silence, the room, which for the moment only consisted of five of us, erupted in loud whistles and applause.
Liam stood and clapped me on the back. “I will never doubt your business skills again, Miles.”
“Damn right you won’t.”
I knew what this meant for each of us in this room. A career outside of the military without learning something new. Stability. The comfort of being around people who understood you and not wearing a suit. I enjoyed their happiness, especially knowing that my hard work had caused it. But I couldn’t join in, not fully. Guilt weighed heavily on me because I couldn’t stop seeing the look of hurt and disappointment in Shannon’s green eyes. I’d hurt her feelings and that was the last damn thing I wanted to do.
Why didn’t I call or text? Hell, even a funny joke would have let her know I was thinking about her. But she was right, not calling wasn’t friendly behavior. I’d called Liam three, possibly four times while I was away. Shit. I couldn’t focus on that, not now. “We’ll need to get going on easier, civilian-friendly obstacle courses and challenges. They have to be difficult but difficult for civilians.
“Not just civilians,” Grant snorted. “Desk jockeys. I’m on it,” he said and pulled out his sketchpad, drawing broad strokes before he got lost in the business of re-designing the courses. “I’ll need to see the full schedule so I know how often we’ll have to change the courses back and forth.”
“Shit. I hadn’t thought of that.”
Grant didn’t even look up to answer. “That’s why you pay me the big bucks,” he grinned.
“There. Now the schedule is shared with all of you.”
“Perfect. Meeting adjourned.” Liam hated meetings more than any other part of the business and he didn’t let us linger for long before he broke it up. “You’re not happy to be back?”
I frowned. “I’m very happy to be back. Why?”
“You spaced out that entire meeting, even when you were the one doing the talking. What’s up?”
I didn’t want to get into it, but Liam would get it because he knew my story and my reluctance to get involved. “It’s Shannon.” I told him about our date and our night together, everything up to the run-in at the bakery. “Now she says that we’re not friends and she doesn’t want to be friends.”
