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A tug on his shirt got his attention. Beside him stood a young boy, nervously rocking on his heels, his attention solely on the bear.
“I like your bear.”
“Uh, thanks.” Harrison picked it up. When life hands you an obscenely large Valentine’s gift… “You can have it if you want.”
Two wide eyes shot up to meet his. “Really?”
Harrison nodded, and the boy took it and ran off with barely a glance.
Hayley’s questioning look sent him staring down at his coffee.
“What? I’m too old for toys.”
“I don’t know. Something tells me there’s a heart under all that cynicism.”
He shrugged. “That’s indigestion.”
Her pale neck lengthened when she tilted her head back and laughed. It was a great sound. Considering he spent most of his time pissing people off, making Hayley laugh always stirred up his gut something fierce. What could he say? She had a great laugh.
She had a great everything.
* * *
“Show me what you have so far.”
Hayley slid her laptop over to him, leaning in close. Heat cascaded from her and seeped into his shoulder, making it difficult to concentrate.
The plot wasn’t bad, if a little predictable. Rivals with differing work styles forced to work together… a little on the nose. But yesterday he’d been thinking about cubicle farms, so who was he to judge? “It’s…”
“You’re about to be horrible, aren’t you?”
“I was actually going to say it’s brilliant.”
“Really,” she said dryly.
Clearly, it would take a lot more to fool her. He sighed. “Okay, I’ll be honest. It’s not revolutionary. Not terrible; just a little… predictable.”
“Here we go.” She moved around the table, taking her laptop and all of Harrison’s attention. “I suppose you’re used to something flashier, like cerulean.”
“Obsidian is more my color.”
She broke out in a laugh, then rolled up the sleeves of her shirt and turned to him. “So tell me, oh wise one. How can we improve it?”
We.Nope, couldn’t think about that. “Your protag has some potential, and I don’t hate the idea of them being opposites. Instead of rivals, why not make them work together? She’s a designer, right? And her goal is to sell the uh, the whatever it is, to the big conglomerate wholesaler?” Pro tip for mass market movies — the details hardly mattered. Whatever the MacGuffin was could be dealt with in rewrites.
Hayley nodded.
“So maybe he’s a marketing consultant. He’s brought in because while she knows the technical side, he knows exactly how to sell it.”
“Working together for a common goal is a great start.” Sometimes when she smiled, it would curl up deeper on one side of her face. He could lose hours to that little dip in her cheek.
“Exactly. They can still disagree, but this way, I don’t have to believe two people who dislike each other would do a total one-eighty in a matter of days.”
“You’re certainly well versed in romance tropes for someone who hates them so much.”
“I need to know what to avoid.”
Her laughter was lyrical. “Sure, let’s pretend that’s true.”
