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“Maybe you didn’t say that you expected him to shoot straight for the stars, but that’s the expectation put on people of his age. It’s expected that if they graduate from high school or turn eighteen, they suddenly have to be grown-ups.”
As badly as he wanted to argue with her and stress howcapableKevin was and argue that he wasn’t meeting his potential, he couldn’t. She’d never said he couldn’t do things. She’d said he was simply going to need to take a slower road.
Slow wasn’t bad. Slow still implied movement.
“How’d you get so smart?” he asked, in genuine awe of her.
She grinned. “Born that way. Remember, I had a brilliant mother.”
“I wish I could have met her.”
Her smile ebbed a bit and she stared down at her steel-toed boots. “Yeah. I do, too.”
He wanted to pull her into his arms right then and there and hold her until the sadness drained away, but Valerie’s boss hurtled out of the office holding out the phone. “Okay! Hear me out. We struck a deal.”
“You’re joking,” Valerie said, brows knit in obvious confusion.
“No way. She’s giving it to me up the ass with no lube, but I don’t see what choice I have. Dear Lord, just tell her yes.” He thrust the phone at Valerie, who took it gingerly.
“This is Valerie,” she said into the phone.
Tim watched her expressions flit from confusion to shock, to some unreadable thing that had her cutting a suspicious sideways look at Tim.
He couldn’t hear a damn word through the phone. Couldn’t tell if what her new boss was saying was good, bad, or somewhere in between, but he selfishly hoped that whatever she was offering was enough.
And thathewas enough.
There had to be a god somewhere who’d hear his pathetic prayer to help him root that woman.
“Let me call you back, Shel,” she said into the phone. “Okay. Bye.”
She hit the end button and handed the phone back to her boss.
“Uh…I’m going to go have lunch,” she told him.
“But what about…”
“I’m going to go have lunch. I’ll be back in an hour.”
He sighed.
“Make that two. I need to confer with someone.” She held out her hand to Tim, and he wrapped her arm around his elbow.
“Well, let’s confer,” he said, trying to keep his tone neutral.
That was hard as hell. After all, the future he wanted hinged on a conversation he hadn’t even heard.
