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By no means did Justin's expression change, but I saw the twinkle of amusement in his eye at her cheekiness.
And Lauren, rolling her eyes at the shooing motion he made, just winked at me then disappeared to her office.
I couldn't stop myself from watching her go. I wouldn't be a man if I hadn't found the sway of her hips, and the roll of her gait appealing. And knowing that said hips and said gait belonged to the woman I loved just made her all the more magnetizing.
A heavy sigh sounded to my right, and I cut Justin a look. Seeing that he was watching me watch Lauren depart, I grinned at him. But he didn't grin back at me.
Instead, dourly, he grumbled, "You're going to take her away from me, aren't you?"
I blinked. "Excuse me?"
"You heard what I said." He scratched his temple again, and despite myself, I wanted to slap his wrist as Lauren had. She'd made a doctor’s appointment sound like a visit from the devil, and for whatever reason, she didn't want either event to happen.
I managed to contain myself, barely, and instead asked, "Why would you say that?"
He grumbled, "Because you love her. I can see it when you watch her, and she doesn't realize it."
I frowned, because he didn't sound jealous, and that was the only reason I could figure he'd be watching me watch her. If anything, he sounded like he was put out. Or upset, maybe? Not at the fact I loved her, but the fact I'd be taking her away. Specifically, from him.
Truth was, that thought process I'd had earlier gelled well with Justin's current topic of c
onversation.
"I'm not sure what's happening," I told him honestly, deciding that truth was the best option here because, at the moment, neither Lauren or I had really discussed what would happen after my work here was done.
I didn’t feel like we were avoiding the topic, but neither were we embracing it and talking about the next step.
I had found my place Leviathan and Dronig. They'd been good to me. My success had been theirs, and they had nurtured me along the way. Really, from the beginning of my career to now.
Leaving them was something I'd never contemplated before this trip. Or at least I didn't think I had. I wasn't even thirty yet and I had the stomach lining of a fifty-year-old. Whenever I got sick, it wasn't just a regular cold… it felt like I was hit with the flu, almost instantaneously, because I was constantly working, had little downtime, and my reserves were always low.
I had no life outside of the office, and though I'd had relationships over the years, nothing had ever succeeded or gone far. Firstly, because a part of me had always known I'd left Lauren behind. And secondly, because I simply didn't have the time.
The higher up the ladder I went, the more it would eat into that until the scant hours I had in my swanky apartment at my swanky address in Manhattan would be reduced drastically. To the point where I'd be better off sleeping on my couch and living in my office permanently.
I'd always been worried about the future. About financial success and security. But now Lauren was back in my life, and as she’d done before, she made me question things. Things that had once been concrete in my psyche, were starting to grind down into dust.
She'd always had a habit of changing my priorities, without even knowing it. It seemed that hadn't changed.
Justin murmured, "I have a proposition for you, Cooper. It came to me last night when I realized that my right-hand woman was actually becoming your right hand. Would you let me discuss it with you?"
Though he was generally serious by nature, he was even more so at that moment. Curiosity in high gear, I murmured, "Of course."
Justin nodded, then held out a hand and directed me from the conservatory foyer through his workroom and toward his small office. Although, said office had actually expanded since my arrival. A few days into working with him, I'd arrived here to find the partitions had moved overnight.
When we made it to his office, I was surprised to see that the dimensions of his workspace had changed once more. In fact, it had doubled in size.
Frowning at the change when I knew from Lauren that Justin hated change, I stared around and wondered at the empty space in Justin’s office. Motioning to it with my hand, I asked, "What’s going on, Justin?"
For a billionaire mad genius, Justin's office was actually pretty dull. There were no cool gadgets and considering he was an inventor, it was even more boring than anyone could have expected.
A simple boxy desk in black ash which aged the room a thousand years, a desk chair, and two utilitarian seats for visitors pretty much summed up the room’s contents. The only thing that was fancy was the gear on the desk. I wasn't exactly a wizard with computers, but I recognised ultra-luxury high-tech equipment when faced with it. Justin's computer screamed tens of thousands of dollars.
Because it was so empty, the new blank space at the desk’s side seemed even worse. It was like the moment when you moved into a new apartment and hadn't unpacked everything except for the essentials because you were too busy to move in properly.
"I have a proposition for you," he said again, like he hadn’t said it moments before. I’d noticed that about him. He tended to drift off to only God knew where—his inspiration I could only assume—then reappear and be shrewder than James Leviathan.
It was like working with both predator and prey sometimes. Very complicated but at least it kept me on my toes.
