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His legs stiff, his face still stretched with surprise, he lets out a breath of a laugh before nodding. “Tomorrow,” he agrees softly, drawing a hand to his cheek as if I slapped him silly with that kiss.
Once the door closes behind him, I hear the soft, unmistakable pitter-patter of Lance at my back. I turn to find him at the foot of the stairs devouring his meal at long last.
Boy, do I know the feeling.
20
Trevor is full of sexy secrets.
Keeping secrets isn’t such a bad thing.
Actually, it’s kind of fun.
“What exactly did she need you to do?” Elijah persisted.
He’s asking me in the break room. Two unnamed interns I’ve never quite gotten to know are sitting together at a table on the other side of the room, so I try to keep my voice low. “Just a little errand. Nothing much.”
“Rebekah sends you on an errand? And that’s nothing much?”
“Nope.” I take a big chomp of my PB&J.
He snatches the sandwich out of my hands, inspiring a flash of indignance from my eyes. “The hell?” I exclaim, muffled by the giant bite of bread and peanut butter in my mouth.
Elijah takes his own chomp—of my sandwich—then says a few muffled words of his own. “You are being really weird with me lately, and I’m not sure if I should like it because it makes you a tiny bit more interesting, or hate it because you’re not telling me something big. Something I know is super juicy big.”
From across the room, one of the guys butts in. “Did you say something super juicy big?”
Elijah looks over his shoulder. “None of your business, Caleb!”
“Anything juicy and big is my business,” he shoots back over his bag of red-hot Cheetos.
Elijah faces me, rolls his eyes, then leans in and mumbles, “There’s a joke about my big, juicy wang being his business that I’m having trouble putting into words, so if you laugh really loud, it’ll have the same effect. Please help your buddy out and laugh.”
After a second of steeling myself, I fake a laugh for him, loud and exclusively coming from my throat, not my belly. It sounds like a rhinoceros trying anal for the first time.
Elijah winces. “Nice try. ‘A’ for effort. You’re not off the hook about the real big and juicy thing.”
I snatch my sandwich back and stuff my face with it, rolling my eyes at Elijah and finishing up my lunch.
He’s not going to make it easy for me. But the joy of the matter is, no one is going to know anything as long as I continue to keep my lips sealed. It sounds so easy, really. The whole sexy situation is completely under my control.
I have nothing to worry about. In fact, it gives me a strange sense of power. All I have to do is sort of lie all the time.
Lie by omitting the truth.
And as I stroll about the office clutching folders to my chest, or humming to myself as the copier groans while it works, or going on a coffee run, I feel like the most interesting person in the whole building. Standing in that line waiting to order drinks for all the higher-ups, I bite my lip and feel like a super secret spy among mortals, sent on some mission to keep a prized treasure protected from unwanted eyes.
There’s power in the mystery I keep.
And power is sexy.
Even Brady gives me suspicious eyes when he passes by me on his way to the supply closet for some staples. I just keep my chin up, ignoring him and his annoyingly perfect hair, and continue toward the computer terminals to resume my task of separating positive and negative reactions to some client’s recent article. I even have fun while I work now, no matter how tedious the task.
And the supervisor Rebekah, for some completely separate and unknown reason, adores me. “Really great report on those reaction numbers,” she murmurs over my shoulder. “You’re the only one who didn’t manage to destroy the Excel formulae. Can I send a couple more your way to process before end of day?”
I give her a curt nod. “Thank you very much, and yes.”
“I can always count on you,” she whispers, then sashays away, her hips swaying as she goes.
Something must be going right for me. Even Rebekah the Ice Queen has melted in my presence.
I didn’t see him come in at all, so engrossed in my subversive and sneaky act of pretending that nothing subversive or sneaky is going on behind the scenes. But when five o’clock comes around, I happen to be caught in a daze, staring across the office as I decide whether a comment I just read can be classified as positive or negative, and my eyes catch Benjamin Gage’s office door open.
He wears a grey fitted dress shirt with black slacks. He strolls right out of his office with his briefcase at his side, and he moves with his usual brisk speed and curt demeanor.
