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The easy listening music Sloane always played in the office drove the beat of the Shinedown song from his head as he crossed the empty reception area. At Rena’s office, he peeked his head in and held the drink tray up in offering when she lifted her head to look at him.
“Thank you!” she squealed with happiness. Jed tugged a tall plastic cup from the tray and handed it to her. “Just what I needed!”
“You’re welcome.” He stopped on his way back out of her office and looked at her over his shoulder. “Is Sloane in her office?”
The answering smirk on Rena’s face made him second guess his decision to grab a pick-me-up for the three of them. Not true. More like fourth guess. Rena was fun, always smiling, easy to talk to. And she liked finger football. Sloane, on the other hand, always wore a scowl. He wanted to tell her to ease up a bit; she would end up with permanent scowl marks when she was older—at least his mom and sister used to say things like that.
Somehow, he didn’t think the warning would be well-received by his boss.
And now, as he headed further down the hall to her office, he wasn’t sure the frozen coffee would be well-received, either.
Or anything he gave her. Sloane was totally cool with Rena, but she didn’t seem too impressed with anything about him.
He found her at her desk, shoulders hunched, and eyes narrowed as she stared at her computer screen. Her fingers punched her keyboard violently, making Jed hesitate at the door.
Don’t be ridiculous. Just give her the frozen coffee and get back to work.
Rather than waltzing in uninvited, he tapped on her doorframe and waited for her to look up. When she did, she said nothing. Simply stared at him over the monitor. She was beautiful. Jed was happy to see her face relaxed—no scowl—for more than one reason. One, he didn’t like when she aimed that look his way, and two, this was a glimpse into what she might look like happy, having fun.
Jed wondered if he would ever get to see that side of her.
She hadn’t chased him out of here yet, but then again, he had just asked her to cover the phones for him and walked out of the office. Cover her phones, being that it was her business. She might take her frozen coffee, throw it in his face, and tell him not to let the door hit him on the backside on his way out.
“Well?” She tipped her head and arched her brows.
“Oh.” Shaking himself from his stupor, Jed approached her desk like a perp approaching a judge’s bench in a courtroom. He pulled her large plastic cup from the tray and handed it to her, watching her eye it suspiciously as she wrapped her long fingers around it. “Do you play the piano?”
“What?” She jerked her gaze up to meet his eyes.
Crap. Did he say that out loud?
“Nothing.” He shook his head.
“What is this?” she asked him, giving it that look again.
“Frozen coffee.”
She peeked at him and then looked again at the cup. “Okay.”
Rena had thanked him without question, but Sloane acted as if he might have put cyanide in the cup. He watched her close her lips around the straw, but he shouldn’t have. His mind left earth again and wondered what it would be like to kiss her. He imagined her burgundy lipstick leaving a kiss mark on the collar of his shirt.
“Hmm.” She blinked at the cup as she put it down. “Thank you.”
Jed’s pulse jumped like she’d offered him a raise or said yes to a dinner date, and all she’d done was offer him a polite thank you.
“You’re welcome.” He nodded as he turned to go back to work. At the door, he remembered he’d asked her to cover the phones. Should he ask about it? If there had been calls? But she was the boss, so would she have handled them? It wasn’t like anyone would have called to talk to him. Unless someone called to make an appointment to see Sloane or Rena. Should he ask?
“What?” Her normally bold voice barely carried over the office to him.
“Um.” He turned to her and shrugged, assuming she would hand him his butt in a sling if he asked about phone calls. After all, it had taken guts for him to shove the calls off on her and walk out without more of an explanation than what he’d given her.
“There were seven calls,” she told him, eyes back on her screen. Jed’s gaze was drawn to the bottom of her monitor, where he could see past it to her fingers tapping on her keyboard again. At least she wasn’t murdering it this time. “I left your messages on your desk.”
She spoke in a monotone, so he had no idea if she was annoyed by him dashing out for their treats or not.
“Thank you.”
“Yep.”
