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I swallowed the bar and tossed the wrapper in the trash. “I said, yeah, sounds good.”
“Oh.” Her gaze dropped, chastened.
“I’m not some ogre.”
“You sure about that?”
“I understand why he made you lead,” I said, and her eyes flicked up to mine, sizzling with anger.
“Because I’m a woman?”
I shrugged. “Yeah.”
“That’s not the only reason.”
“The only reason that matters,” I countered, bending to the refrigerator to find her creamer.
She snatched it out of my grasp, her dark hair whipping back and forth with the movement. “My being a woman has nothing to do with what I’ve accomplished. You heard him. I’ve exceeded all of his expectations.”
I went in for the kill shot she’d set up herself. “That’s because everyone expects you to coast on your name. All you have to do is slightly above bare minimum for a pat on the back.”
I thought I earned some steam from her ears on that one, and I grinned, rocking back on my heels. Before she could return the barb, Seth strolled into the room, crowding the already small space by slipping into one of the chairs between us, his attention pinging back and forth.
“Weapons down, please.”
I ignored him and grabbed my own coffee mug, nudging Taylor out of the way to put another pod in the Keurig. She deliberately elbowed me as she stirred the creamer into her coffee.
“That’s disgusting. I don’t know how you drink that stuff,” I said, and she passed behind me with a sneer. Her hip—or what I assumed was a hip, but it was hard to tell since she was a human two-by-four—grazed mine as she placed the coconut cream back in the fridge.
“Because you have no taste. I’ve seen what you eat, food of a third grader.”
Seth chuckled at that, and we both turned to him for his two cents. “Maybe not in food, but in women, his tastes are refined.”
My neck heated, and Taylor’s jaw tightened. Or, at least, I think it did.
“Whatever happened on New Year’s?” Seth went on. “You never told me if you sealed the deal.”
I fingered the disposable utensils, wondering how much damage a plastic fork could do to an artery. He raised his eyebrows at my murderous expression.
“What?” he asked as if he truly didn’t understand what he had done, which was hand over ammunition to the woman vying for my title and office.
She scoffed, and I didn’t know if I should defend or explain myself.
“Nothing happened,” I said after a while, and out of the corner of my eye, I noticed her shoulders shrink down as if she was relieved. I was too.
Because she wasn’t radiating all that combustible tension.
And that crimp in her brow was gone.
“Dude,” Seth sighed. “You had her eating out of the palm of your hand.”
I took my mug from the Keurig and lifted it to my lips for a scalding sip, buying some time to figure out my answer, my tongue being the sacrifice. I didn’t know why I couldn’t close the deal, or if I even wanted to.
“I guess I wasn’t all that interested in the end,” I said eventually.
Seth shook his head like I was out of my mind, but I merely watched Taylor saunter out of the room in her heels and black skirt, her Satan’s Mistress voice lingering down the short hall when she said, “I’ll email you the details about the case when I have them. I expect a reply.”
I flipped the bird at her back.
