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Now, going over everything they gave her, she didn’t know if she agreed with herself either.
It bothered her that Robert would mislead her. She folded her arms, curling into herself as she thought about it. She wanted the promotion for herself—hello, self-respect—but to sell her soul to get it? She cringed at the very thought. It’d never occurred to her that she’d have to compromise herself (and those she loved) in order to get ahead. One of the things she liked about the firm had been that if they couldn’t in good faith back a project, they could opt out of working on it. But that was before it’d been bought by the firm in New York.
Maybe she was being too idealistic.
No, she wasn’t. You couldn’t convince the media to be excited about a project or product that you didn’t believe in. That was PR 101.
Gathering all the papers and shoving them back into their folder, she set it on the corner of her desk. She’d figure out what to do about this.
She needed to shake off the morning. She leaned back in her chair and closed her eyes. Coming in this morning and facing this reality had burst her bubble from the weekend. She didn’t want to think about this, or what it’d mean for everyone she knew in the neighborhood. She just wanted to stay in the Jamie-inspired bliss that she’d been in since Friday night.
Stretching her arms over her head, she hummed. She wasn’t sore really, but she could feel the lingering effects of their activity.
Activity. She snorted. It’d been nothing short of heaven.
She missed him. She opened her eyes, looking at the browser tab she’d opened with his picture on it. He’d woken her up very early—to give them time to say goodbye, he’d said—and loved on her slowly, until she begged for him. And then he’d made her breakfast and taken her home so she could get ready for work.
It’d been… very nice.
She bit her lip. It’d been more thanvery nice. The entire weekend had been so perfect that if she stopped to think about their relationship, she was afraid she’d just ball up and start crying.
When would she see him again?
She was probably being dramatic, but there was the weekend and then there was reality. Reality was she had work, so she wouldn’t be able to spend every second with Jamie the way she’d have wanted to. He’d told her to text him to let him know what her plans were for the evening, and to let him know if she wanted to go to the baseball game with him and the boys, but chances were she’d be at work.
She could feel their time ticking away, like they were ending before they’d even started.
Lottie would tell her she was borrowing trouble, thinking about a future that hadn’t come yet. “If you already have an end in sight, you aren’t allowing for magic to happen,” Lottie had told her over and over since she was a kid.
Easier said than done.
She looked at Jamie’s face, larger than life on the screen in front of her. She knew him now. She knew him in the morning when he woke up, with sheet prints on his face. She knew him when he was on the couch in the evening, seemingly relaxed except for the furrows between his eyebrows because he was worried about Didier, who he believed had something bothering him. She knew him, the way all the walls fell from his lovely blue eyes when she told him she loved him.
She knew him so well that now when she looked at this photo of him on the red carpet in his tux, she could see how withdrawn he was. Yeah, he looked hot, but he was missing that thing that made him Jamie.
Crazy, wasn’t it? When she thought about it, they’d known each other for barely a week, and he’d already changed everything.
“Hey.”
She hastily closed the browser and then spun in her chair, relieved to find Alice there. “Goodness.” She put her hand on her chest and blew out a relieved breath. “I need to put bells on your shoes. How is it I never hear you coming?”
Alice’s mouth twisted in an ironic smile. “I’d say it’s because you’re mooning over Jamie. Not that I blame you. If I had someone like him, I’d be in my own little world all the time too.”
“I’m not in my own little world.” Much.
“Uh-huh,” Alice said, obviously disbelieving.
“Is your calculator on the fritz?” she asked, sitting back. “Or are you just here to give me a hard time?”
“I came to see if you wanted to have lunch together.”
“The fountain?”
“Yes.”
Rachel pushed back from her desk. “Let’s go.”
Lunchtime at the fountain was just like every other day, except she’d had to buy a sandwich today. Alice sat next to her, and there were other people sitting around trying to catch a little sun before going back inside to their unnaturally lit offices.
