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“This isn’t about making the sale.”
Ella’s words brought a frown to Kimmie’s face. Exactly what was she getting at here? Of course, it was about the sale. Her career was the most important thing in her life right now.
“You’ve never been like this before,” Ella continued, probably noting the expression on her friend’s face. “Normally, you’d already be coming up with the next step. You didn’t just lose the sale. Youthinkyou lost Jesse.”
After delivering that missive, Ella stopped staring into the distance and looked at Kimmie. She was waiting for Kimmie to deny it. When she didn’t, Ella’s eyes narrowed.
“Wait a hot second,” Ella said. “You’re in love.”
A laugh burst out of Kimmie at those words. She’d known the guy for exactly one week at this point. Nobody fell in love in a week.
But it was enough time to see a very strong attraction that she wanted to act on.
“So what happened?” Ella stood and walked around her desk, climbing up on the edge of it to stare at Kimmie. It was a position Ella took often while they had their chats. “Did he end things or you?”
That question gave Kimmie pause. “I guess you could say he did,” Kimmie finally answered. “He told me he wasn’t going to move. So for the past week, he’s been wasting my time.”
A confused expression on her face, Ella said, “Maybe he wasn’t wasting your time at all. Didn’t he tell you from the start that he didn’t want to sell?”
Kimmie’s defenses automatically went up at that question. “He seemed open to it, but if he wasn’t, he should have said something.”
She tried to think back over the past week. She couldn’t remember pushing him to sell. She’d known all along he wasn’t one hundred percent on board. If she were honest with herself, he hadn’t even been ten percent on board. But she hadn’t wanted to see that.
“I thought I could find a place for him,” she said. “He’d fall in love with it, agree to sell, and everyone would be happy.”
She realized she’d used the words “fall in love” in that explanation. It would be easy for Ella to jump on that, but she didn’t. Instead, she flattened her palms on either side of the desk and stared Kimmie down.
“Did you ever think that maybe it had nothing to do with the condo at all for him?” Ella asked. “Maybe he simply wanted to spend more time with you.”
No. That wasn’t the case. She’d found herself fighting an attraction to him, but it wasn’t mutual. Sure, he might find her attractive, but he wasn’t using it as a reason to spend more time around her.
Ella’s voice cut into her thoughts. “Think about it. He showed up here that first day in that fancy car, taking you for breakfast or whatever it was. It wasn’t any breakfast, either. He could have just bought you a cup of coffee at the shop down the street.”
“I invited him to lunch, remember?”
It was pretty obvious Ella had forgotten that little detail. If she’d ever known it. Now that Kimmie thought of it, she wasn’t sure she’d ever told Ella that she was the one who had lured him to breakfast with the promise of some more listings.
“Wait a minute,” Ella said, her forehead furrowed in obvious confusion. “He just showed up here, like that.” She snapped her fingers. “You acted like it was a surprise.”
“He happened to be in the area,” Kimmie said.
But the tilt of Ella’s head echoed what Kimmie was thinking. He happened to be in the area. Their office was not “on the way” to anywhere anyone who lived downtown would want to go. He’d never provided an explanation as to why he’d been nearby.
Was it possible he’d been thinking about stopping by even before she texted him?
“That still doesn’t explain the fancy brunch,” Ella said. “And didn’t he show up here last night in a limo? What was that all about?”
“He wanted to…” Kimmie’s voice drifted off. She needed to think. Yes, he’d said he wanted her to see the rooftop, but some things were throwing her off here.
There was a moment last night when their gazes had locked in a stare. In that moment, it had been hard to deny that there was more going on here than business. But she’d shoved it aside, so caught up in her lost sale that she’d forgotten what had come before.
“He wanted to show off for you,” Ella said. “Guys don’t do that over a real estate transaction. I don’t even know why he would have done any of that for business reasons.”
Now that she thought about it, she wasn’t sure either. Hadn’t he said he wanted her to see how great Lyric Tower was? But was renting a limo necessary for that?
“It would really suck if you never knew for sure,” Ella said. “I think you have to find out. You don’t want to always wonder…”
At that, Ella pushed herself off the desk and headed around to sit in her chair. She picked up the phone and immediately launched into a phone call with one of her clients, like the conversation with Kimmie hadn’t even happened.
