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Though the sight of her had improved my mood, it had also worsened it.
The state of my head should not have precluded an erection. It should just not have been possible. However, my body had decided otherwise and I’d been suffering ever since.
Thankfully, she was quiet in the morning too. That hadn’t changed in all the years I’ve known her, and I wasn’t about to complain now.
As we’d done since the doctor had advised I stay with somebody close by, she’d been sleeping at my rental, and we’ve been driving into work together. The rental was a little bit further out than her house, but I got the feeling she wasn’t ready to invite me in there. A feeling that didn’t make my mood deteriorate that morning but it didn’t make me feel warm and cozy inside either.
I’d been back in her world for less than two weeks, and I knew it was ridiculous for her to trust me overnight. Rational Cooper was well aware of that. Cooper who suffered with a headache? Not so much.
Still, I couldn’t complain. She was with me, and that was all that mattered. I even found it cute how, on the longer journey to work, she fell asleep usually ten minutes into the ride.
As I pulled up beside the garage where Justin’s staff all parked their cars, I pressed my hand to her knee and squeezed gently. “Sweetheart. We’re here.”
She mumbled under her breath, and sleepily nosed her shoulder, nuzzling as though there was a pillow there and not her scarf. My lips twitched at the cute sight, and I let my fingers spread on her knee, trailing them down slightly to mid thigh. She squeezed her thighs together in response, and her own hand came out to grab mine. I almost expected her to slap my hand away. She surprised me by curling her fingers into mine, and with a low smile, murmured, “Are we there already, baby?”
The endearment shouldn’t have surprised me, but actually did. It wasn’t like a hit to the head, something I’d experienced already very recently so knew how debilitating that could be. It was more like my heart clutched in my chest.
Maybe that was pathetic of me to admit, and with another woman, such a reaction would never have occurred. This was Lauren. And though I felt the tendrils of her unease at times, that one word, when she was at her most relaxed, and technically her most vulnerable, was evidence that the trust between us was growing, and would only flourish more with time.
Such a realization was something I needed that morning. Though the pain was still there, my mood improved exponentially.
“Yeah, we’re at Justin’s, sweetheart. You slept deeply. Didn’t you get enough rest last night?”
She shook her head, but she was still smiling. “No, I decided to finish that book I was reading. It was really good. I slept about two hours.”
I whistled under my breath. “You’re going to regret that today,” I teased. “I mean, I know Justin is a great boss, but I doubt he’ll let you nap because you’ve got a book hangover.”
She snorted. “If anyone would understand a book hangover, it’s Justin. And the truth is, he’s actually a great boss. So long as the work’s done, that’s all that matters to him. I’ve only been coming in early because of you.”
I frowned at that. “Seriously? It’s not like we’ve been arriving early or anything.” Hell, because I was on vacation, I’d been getting into the office at 9:30. When I was back in New York, it wasn’t unusual to see me in the office at seven. And even then, I’d been known to pull all-nighters. My team staying the night with me, and pulling a two day shift without blinking.
That was the business though. Advertising was pretty high-pressure. The deadlines were tight and there was considerable risk, but the profits were astonishing. I wasn’t the kind of boss who made the guys on my team miserable. I worked them, but didn’t push them any harder than I’d push myself. And though the bonuses I earned were for me alone, they did trickle down to the key players who I decided had earned such a reward.
I considered myself a good boss, but in comparison to Justin, apparently not.
She nodded. “I sometimes get here at twelve.”
My mouth dropped open at that. “Do you have any standard hours?”
“Not really.” She shrugged her shoulders. "You have to understand, Justin himself doesn't work regular hours. And he knows that a free schedule, with less of a routine to it, is actually really good for inspiring higher quality work. Plus it makes staff happy, and there are many ways that Justin pisses off his workers without him being difficult about our schedules."
I didn't know why, but I found myself very interested in Justin Gandy's profile as a boss. Did I have something percolating at the back of my mind? Perhaps. But it wasn't fully formed. Not yet. I was just curious how a man as successful as Justin could work without any structure.
Or maybe that was the beast of genius?
As loopy and as mad as I often found him, Justin was undoubtedly brilliant. There was no denying that. His ideas might be surreal and outré to a lot of folk, but not to me. I actually put that down to Lauren's presence in my life. Even before we reconnected, and I highly doubted she was aware of this, but she had influenced me in many ways.
Advertising did require some creativity. Hell, who was I kidding? It required a lot of creativity. But more than that, it actually required the knack of spotting trends in the market, of learning to adapt to what huge groups of people needed to see to buy a particular product. It was kind of an artful psychology. But I knew because of my past with Lauren, how an artist's brain actually worked. That really helped when it came to new ideas.
I remembered, quite easily, how she'd gone through phases. Moments, actually more like bursts, of inspiration that had her studying the craziest shit. Like her hyperrealism phase where everything she'd painted had to look like a photograph. So crazily realistic, that in a bizarre way, reality was disappointing.
It was why, when I looked at Justin's work, I saw the artist in him. He was more than just an inventor of gadgets and neat tools and tricks to make a millennial's life easier. There was an art to it, and I did in fact appreciate that about him.
He had enough business sense to stop him being a nightmare to work with, but retained enough of an artist's genuine need to portray something, be it a concept or idea, to remain genuine.
"What makes him so difficult?"
"So, I might start at twelve, and finish at eight. But if he needs me at twelve o'clock at night, there's nothing to stop him from calling me. I've had to do donut runs at four AM, even though his staff is on site and will make that shit fresh for him, if he wants something from Dunkin' then he wants something from Dunkin’.
