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I set down a styrofoam container with a fillet of seared salmon with candied walnut topping and a brown sugar reduction drizzled over top. There was buttery steamed broccoli and a soft roll of multigrain bread to go on the side.
I waited with my food in my hand, watching for her reaction. She slowly opened the container, studied its contents, then raised her big blue eyes to mine. “Why are you so confident this is what I want? I’ve never had this before.”
“You eat on a schedule like a fun-sucking vampire. Salads with some kind of fruit and nut mix on Mondays. A wrap on Tuesday, then a salad, then a wrap, then a salad. You eat salmon in your wraps, because you’ve clearly got a few screws loose, and everything you eat smells sweet. But on your salad days, you get grumpy after a few hours, and I suspect it’s because you’re getting hungry. You’ve got your salmon, but not in a wrap because I couldn’t find any self-respecting chef to prepare that for you. You’ve got the sweet, nutty touch, because I know a girl who appreciates nuts when I see one. And then there’s the broccoli and bread on the side. The fiber in the broccoli will help fill you up and the carbs from the bread will give you the energy for as many glares as you could possibly dream of giving out today.”
I finished off my explanation with a chef’s kiss and then a wink.
Elizabeth muttered a nearly inaudible “thank you” under her breath and started unwrapping the plastic fork.
I snuck a look past my partition after a few minutes and caught her using her finger to wipe up and lick some of the sauce from her salmon. I scooted back to my desk while grinning like a madman. This sort of thing shouldn’t have been so much fun, but damn it, I was loving every moment.
An email popped up on my screen from “Bob Smith.” Ugh. That was the fake account Adrian set up to communicate with me while I was here. We had to talk mostly in code, but as long as we bullshitted and made it sound somewhat work related, nobody would suspect “Barry Boulders” was up to anything.
Barry. How is that project coming? I’ve seen you complete this sort of work in days before. When can I expect a status report? Should I make a personal visit to be sure things are going well?
Yours,
Bob Smith
Adrian really had no idea how subtle operations like this worked, did he? I needed to build trust, forge connections, and slowly enamor myself with the locals. Sure, it was possible that I’d completely forgotten to be thinking about my actual purpose at Glass Design for the past few days, but that didn’t mean I wasn’t doing my job. I happened to be talented enough to work even when I didn’t realize I was working.
The growing issue I sensed was that my best source of information was going to be Elizabeth. If I wanted to know what Mrs. Glass might have on my team, I doubted I would be able to get it directly from the crazily dressed boss. And now that I’d seen my way around the office, I was increasingly certain the only person who might know anything like I needed was Elizabeth.
But if I’d learned one thing from doing this sort of work, it was that the source of information usually had a bad time. They got fired, blacklisted, or just generally screwed in some unpleasant way. I damn well knew I wasn’t going to put Elizabeth through that, but what happened if it came down to costing Elizabeth her job or jail time for me and my friends?
I jumped in surprise when Elizabeth’s face poked around the partition. I hadn’t even heard her get up from her desk.
“Thank you,” she said. “That was actually delicious.”
All my worries were forgotten. I stood up, straightening my tie and smiling. “You’re very welcome.”
“I’m not sure if you saw, but Mrs. Glass wants us both in the conference room. So… See you there?”
“I’ll walk with you.”
I expected her to correct me or maybe just sprint for the door, but she waited while I gathered my things and then let me walk beside her to the conference room on the top floor.
The meeting was highly boring, it turned out, but I got to sit beside Elizabeth. When my mind started to wander, I just looked down at how close her smooth thighs were to mine. I tried to replay the sounds of her slipping out of her clothes in the break room last week. Yes, I was running on the equivalent of sexual fumes, here. I had the memory of the kiss, but I felt oddly protective of that one—like it was in a class all of its own. It wasn’t “sexual.” It was… special. And I didn’t want to cheapen it by thinking of it any other way.
