AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“I’ll be back with a drink for you right away,” he said, seeming happy with the commission. There, at least I’d get something out of having to sit with Ray Forrester besides a tension headache.
I enjoyed a few minutes of checking my phone in peace. I messaged Trixie and Michelle, saying that Forrester was here and was more aggravating than the bad food. It made me feel better, connected to them somehow. Normally I liked getting away to the city for a conference, but this one had just made me homesick for my own bed and my usual routine. I could be getting work done, having a pedicure down at Candy’s with Michelle, reading a good book or watching a movie. Anything that involved comfortable loungewear and no sleazy men trying to flirt with me. I shuddered. Tomorrow I’d be out of here, that was what I had to focus on. Then I could get back to avoiding Noah and pretending that mess never happened. I’d concentrate on the community center, start working on the PR for the opening and getting arrangements lined out for that event.
I was making notes in my phone about who to contact—Trixie for flowers, Rachel for food, the party rental place in Overton for whatever Trix didn’t have equipment-wise. Then Ray Forrester reappeared and set a fizzing glass down in front of me. I gave him a smile.
“Thank you,” I said and picked it up gratefully.
I took a big drink and nearly spat it out at the burning, bitter taste. “What is IN that?” I asked with a gulp, pushing it away.
“Just a little gin. I thought it’ll help you lighten up.”
“I wanted ginger ale because I was sick to my stomach from the crappy egg salad I ate for lunch,” I said. “So gin isn’t exactly going to help with that.” I sighed.
“Oh. Well, I had the ham. It wasn’t bad. Bottoms up it’ll make you forget your troubles,” he said.
I took a drink of water and literally swished it in my mouth to rinse out the taste of the gin. My stomach gurgled ominously. I tried to smile. The woman to my right looked at me like I was going to explode.
“I’m fine,” I said. “Lunch didn’t agree with me.”
“Well, dinner should be out shortly,” she said. “I’m Martha Conners. I work in civil engineering.”
“Good to meet you, Martha. I’m Nicole Renner, city planner. I work in a little town called Rockford Falls. It’s so beautiful there.”
I was really warming to the idea of talking to Martha the engineer and avoiding Ray for the rest of the evening, but he butted in.
“I’m Ray Forrester, Nicki’s date. I’m a contractor in her hometown.”
I smiled tightly. “Actually, I’m from Atlanta originally,” I said, not correcting him about being on a date even though clearly, we were the furthest thing from it. I was as much on a date with Martha or the other three people at the round table to which we were assigned.
“Really?” she asked. “I did an internship in Buckhead after college.”
“It’s such a pretty area,” I said. “I grew up right around there.”
“Excuse me, I don’t mean to insult you, ma’am, but Nicki here’s on a date with me. So if you don’t mind—” Ray trailed off, clearly indicating that he didn’t want Martha talking to me. I frowned.
“I apologize,” I said to her. “I am not dating—”
She rolled her eyes, “I kind of got that impression. He thinks otherwise though.”
She turned away from me and started talking to the man to her right and I wanted to wail. I wanted a cool glass of plain ginger ale and a nice conversation about Buckhead with Martha, or better yet, to be at home in my own bed watching Netflix without all these people and this annoying background music. I couldn’t help but frown at Ray.
“We are not on a date,” I said in a low voice. “And I don’t appreciate you telling people that we are. We don’t even have a working relationship.”
“Well, we don’t since you gave the bid to Noah Jeffries,” he snorted. “How’s the community center goin’, by the way?”
“It’s fine,” I said tightly.
“You all had some problems there at the start. What do you think happened?”
“Oh, I think it was just some teenagers. You know how kids get into trouble. They probably didn’t mean any real harm,” I said carefully, trying to seem light about it.
“You sure about that? It was an awful lot of expensive tools gone missing from what I heard.”
“I’m not sure what the exact amount was off the top of my head,” I said, trying to deflect him from his line of questioning.
“Teenagers, you say? Do you really think a bunch of kids would be smart enough to get into the locked-up tools? Or set some fires?”
