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It was a little late for that.
Presley propped her head on her hand. “Go, Pop.”
Ben leaned across the table and swiped a kiss over her forehead. “Safe travels tomorrow.”
Again, Vance saw that imperceptible tightening around her eyes. What was it about traveling to the island that got under her skin? The same had happened that morning.
“I’ll check in when I get there.”
“That’s my girl.”
As soon as Ben left the room, Presley dropped her head into her crossed arms.
He waited until he heard the outside door close and lock before he moved behind her. She tensed as he cupped her shoulders, using his thumbs to knead into the tight muscles. A moment later, she let out a groan that hit him low.
“What’s going on, Goldie?”
“It was just a really long day.”
“I think it’s more than that.”
“You don’t know me well enough to know that.” She shrugged his hands away and rose. She gathered the garbage from their meal and started cleaning up. He gathered the cups from their coffee raid. “I got it.”
He dropped his chin against his chest. She left the room without another word. He gathered her laptop and the notes he’d made as well as his phone and shut the light off.
The main area of the office was empty. A lone light was on near the window. At the far end of the room, the door was open. A small, separate office was currently being attacked.
He followed the noise to find Presley stacking paperwork and boxes against the wall. Each pass around the room, she put another file into the cabinet and slammed the door. He propped his shoulder against the doorjamb and watched her little temper tantrum.
There was probably something wrong with him that he was mildly turned on by the sight of her stalking back and forth across the eight-by-eight box of a room. Her long, tanned legs were distracting enough, but she’d added more Presley-bling to her body. Two super-fine gold chains wound around her ankle and sometime since leaving his place and this evening she’d painted her toes in a wine-colored shade.
In fact, she’d done the same to her fingernails.
She’d swapped out her white shorts for ragged cutoffs that made his mouth water. What was it about ripped to shit jeans and a woman’s curves that made a man insane?
“Do you know what pisses me off?”
“No. But I’m pretty sure you need to tell me before you break your filing cabinet.”
She slammed the drawer again and pivoted to face him. “I’ll tell you what pisses me off. I’ve been begging my father to update that computer system for almost two years. You walk in here with your fritas and your charm and your, ‘Mr. Warren, it’s nice to meet you,’ and he falls all over himself to make the changes.”
She twirled back to her desk, her messy little hairdo slipping slowly to the side as she stacked files with sharp taps on the desk. “I’ve worked about sixty hours a week for three months because of this stupid freaking system—sixty hoursat least. Do you know what I could have been doing with all that time?”
He pressed his lips together. He wasn’t sure if that was rhetorical or if she was actually asking. Just as he was about take a step into the room, she whirled around again and stalked toward him.
Vance stood up straight.
She jammed the files into his belly. “This.” Her hands shook with anger and adrenaline. “This is what I should have been doing all along. But now, I’m losing my booth because I have to go to the Philipsburg showroom and sell toe rings to fourteen-year-old spoiled brats from the cruise lines.”
He frowned. He was missing something in there. He looked down at the paperwork she had in her hands. Display cases and a scrawling font touted the twenty-eighth annualCaribbean Fine Jewelry Expoalong the top.
“Goldie, I think you missed telling me a vital piece of information between me writing you a new store inventory system and this.” He tapped the top of the pile and gently took it from her. He gathered her into his side and set the stack down on her desk. “Now.” He leaned on her desk and pulled her in front of him. He cupped her face, stroking his thumbs over the high points of color on her cheeks. “Tell me what’s going on.”
She curled her fingers around his wrists and dragged a deep breath through her nose and out through her mouth. “It’s fine. It’s nothing.”
“No, it’s not fine. You’re obviously upset, so tell me.”
Her eyebrows snapped together. “Why do you care?”
