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“Oh, I, uh—” Vanessa looks between Luke and me like a deer in the headlights. It’s probably the first time I’ve seen the brash, confident twenty-something look awkward. After a few seconds of silent floundering, she finally shrugs. “Um, I don’t think Mr. Donovan wears panties, sir.”
Luke splutter-laughs so loud, he claps a hand over his mouth. A red, splotchy blush climbs Vanessa’s cheeks.
Not for the first time this morning, I close my eyes and pray for patience.
“Please ignore Luke. In fact, I implore you to ignore Luke,” I tell Vanessa without looking at her.
“Yes, Mr. Donovan.”
I sigh. “You can go now.”
“Thanks, Nessa!” Luke chimes in, giving her a cheery grin. Like this was a perfectly normal meeting to have with your bosses. “Get a coffee downstairs and use the company card, my treat.”
“Thanks, Mr. D,” Vanessa says gleefully. That’s how it is around here. I’m the buttoned-up, formal Mr. Donovan. Luke is coffee-buying, joke-making Mr. D.
Vanessa shoots me a final furtive, flirty look before shutting the door behind her.
I pinch the bridge of my nose—HR is clearly not Stay Inside the Lines’ strong suit. No matter how many times I’ve pulled my supergrump act with Vanessa, no matter how many times I’ve confirmed with her that the HR rulebook explicitly states that romantic relationships at the SITL workplace arestrongly discouraged, she still flirts with me likethat’sher job.
I sink into my ergonomic chair and massage my temples for a few seconds. “Might wanna lay off the pantie talk in front of the HR specialist, Anchorman.”
Luke sits on my desk. Picks up a stack of post-its. “Ness knows I’m bugging you, not her.”
But I’m the one she keeps giving those scary bedroom eyes to.
Instead of saying that aloud, I pluck the post-its out of Luke’s hands and put them back where they belong.
He picks up my stapler instead. Moves it from hand to hand as he studies me. “How’s Legs?”
“Had a dozen outfit changes this morning, then went to school covered in head-to-toe glitter. With a bag of Chick-fil-A in her backpack.”
“‘Course she did.” Luke grins. “I asked Mindy to take her to get her nails done after school. They should be done around the same time we wrap up here.”
“She’ll love that.”
“Speaking of my fiancée, you got a date to my wedding yet?”
I shake my head and interlace my fingers, crack my knuckles one by one. “What on earth gave you the impression that I’m taking a date to your wedding?”
Luke smiles slyly. “The look on your face when you walked into the office this morning.”
Ah. Typical Luke. Segue the conversation into unchartered waters, then pounce like a hungry great white.
I shrug as casually as I can manage. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
I’m usually good at hiding what I’m feeling—so good that I don’t even know what I’m feeling myself sometimes. “Unflappable” is basically my middle name.
But when I saw Annie standing next to Vanessa, I was flapped. Very flapped. So flapped, in fact, that I panicked and pretended we’d never met.
Another reaction for the books, there.
I need to wrap my head around the fact that Annie works here now. Worksfor me, to be exact. This is a professional environment, and I have to behave professionally. So, just like they don’t talk about Bruno inEncanto(yes, Legs forced me to watch that movie. Twice. And no, I didn’t hate it), we won’t talk about what happened. Ever.
Problem solved.
Luke looks positively gleeful. “You’re hiding something.”
I don’t reply.
