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Eyeing me, Mr. Crawford asked, “Didn’t anyone come to check on you, Ms. Novak?”
I cracked my neck, not caring that I was coming off like a total loser. Falling asleep in a conference chair was no goddamn joke. I was already feeling the soreness in my back, and the very thought of having to sit in this chair for another eight-to-ten hours today was enough to make me pretend that I was sick and just go the hell home.
“Uhm…” My face scrunched up as I tried to recall last night. “Cole came and checked on me before he left,” I told him. “The others had all been done for the day, but when I told him that Bryant had asked me to go over some of his stuff, so that he could go watch the game…he offered to stay and help.”
“Why didn’t he?” Mr. Crawford asked, and he sounded a bit pissed, though I had no idea why. Of course, it could be because I’d fallen asleep in his conference room.
I let out a deep sigh, then pulled it back in when I remembered that I had morning breath. “He looked really tired,” I answered. “He’s got a sick kid at home, so I told him to just go on.”
Mr. Crawford inclined his head a bit. “What about the cleaning crew? Didn’t they notice you in here?”
I shrugged. “If they did, they were kind enough to let me sleep.”
“Landry, this is unacceptable,” Bryant snapped, still trying to save face. “Jacobi Auditing doesn’t-”
“Mr. Stanton, do you think that you could give me and Ms. Novak a moment, please?” Mr. Crawford asked, though it didn’t sound like a request.
“I can assure you, Mr. Crawford, I am more than capable of handling Landry’s-”
“I wasn’t asking,” Mr. Crawford bit out, cutting off Bryant’s ramblings and possibly pissing him off further.
Not sure if my resumé was updated or not, I said, “He’s my boss, Mr. Crawford. It’d be inappropriate to-”
“Offend the client, correct?” he asked, one dark brow arched like he was challenging me to a duel or something equally deadly.
I plastered my trusty professional smile on my face. “Correct,” I replied between my clenched teeth, not sure what it was about men that made them such assholes.
Okay.
That wasn’t fair.
I knew nothing about Rush Crawford to classify him as an asshole, but I was getting really tired of men trying to boss me around. Now, if we were naked and Mr. Crawford wasn’t a client, then he could boss me around all he wanted. However, we weren’t naked, and he was a client. Plus, the man looked like angels sang when he made a woman orgasm, so he could do a lot better than whatever it was that I looked like right now.
Knowing better than to argue, Bryant said, “I’ll will go check to see if the others have arrived yet, and then we can continue our discussion later, Landry.”
I saluted him like a brat. “Got it, boss.”
As soon as Bryant left, Rush Crawford surprised the hell out of me by asking, “Would you like me to step in and send you home for some rest?”
I blinked up at his gorgeous face. “What?”
“I think that you should go home and get some rest,” he said, no longer stating it like a question.
“I’m good,” I replied warily.
“You slept in a conference room chair all night,” he drawled out slowly, almost like he was addressing an imbecile. “You’re probably anything but fine, Ms. Novak.”
“I’ve slept in worse,” I huffed. “Besides, I don’t need to give Bryant any more ammunition to fire me.” I cracked my neck again. “If he fires me, he’s going to have toproveincompetence.”
“I am not going to let him fire you, Ms. Novak,” he stated simply.
“Huh,” I snorted. “From your lips to God’s ears.”
Before he could say anything more, Tina was walking into the conference room, a coffee cup holder in her hands.
I almost wept with joy.
“One coffee black because you’re a weirdo,” she announced as she set a beautiful, heavenly, wonderous cup of caffeine down on the table next to me.
