Page 54 of When the Walls Come Down
I shut my door quietly, so as not to draw attention, but I’d be damned if I could watch her working across the hall and get anything done myself—not if I had to see her in that fuck-hot getup she was wearing. Fitting in all the right places. Sure, it was work appropriate, but I had firsthand knowledge of what was underneath.
Torture. It was pure fucking torture.
Also, there wasn’t a damn thing I could do about it. We had an unspoken agreement to play fair. You know. Integrity and principles and blah, blah, fucking, blah.
For the most part, we were keeping up appearances too. That morning alone, we’d held a staff meeting together to bring everyone up to speed on all of Maggie’s brilliant ideas we’d had to impress Casey with. We took turns going over the new concepts, and I updated the team on the better terms I’d negotiated with a new printing company. Which, by the way, on any other day would have felt like a huge score for the Bay team. Nevertheless, everyone reacted with excitement, while I faked feeling any victory at all.
Outwardly, it had to seem like everything was business as usual.
Hell, maybe it was, but I couldn’t tell that to my chest, because every time I thought about Maggie, it tightened to the point of pain. I couldn’t tell it to my stupid head, either, because it pounded every time I forced myself not to call her phone or text something silly or flirty.
So, for me, business as usual was becoming a miserable business.
But I wasn’t going to give up. I couldn’t battle with Maggie on the new idea front, but what I had going for me were relationships with our vendors, and I was damn good at proving how much more business we could continue giving them when they’d sweeten the pot with better incentives to keep invoices coming our way. The better we did, the more we could spend, and that was always the best leverage.
Wednesday evening, I gave her a wave and a weak smile as I left the office and continued on with my old routine. Two Ships and then home to bed.
Thursday, one of the truck lines we used finally came around to a deal I’d been working on for months so that we could begin using their semi-trailers for advertising, which I knew would get us new visibility we hadn’t yet been able to reach. And with a new launch in the shoot, the more eyes on the product the better.
Additionally, I got a reprieve from the big guy upstairs and it rained like hell all day. It could also be noted that, with the inclement weather, I’d been blessed with a modestly dressed Maggie. A Southerner to her core, the unseasonably cool fifty-degree day had her donning long pants and equally long sleeves.
Too bad she wouldn’t wear a bag over her head, because her face was just as beautiful as ever.
By Friday, between having my nose to the grindstone and my ignorant heart in the wringer, I felt even older than the ancient thirty-three years Maggie enjoyed teasing me about.
Well, she had that one weekend.
Had it really only been seven days ago—that very night—that we’d met?
It seemed like it had been both a decade and a second ago. To think, the feelings I had for her had gotten so strong in such a short amount of time made me seem like one of those guys from those stupid Hallmark Christmas movies my mom coveted so much around the holidays.
Me. One of them? Oh God. No.
I was fucking Instalove Larry. The downtrodden, bah-humbug hardware store owner who never knew the meaning of Christmas—or true love—until the big-city-turned-local bed-and-breakfast owner danced her way into his life and his heart.
Fuck. Okay. I’d watched a few of them too.
But was that really me? I needed to take stock of myself.
Shuffling my feet into Two Ships for my nightly steak, I really just needed a break. A time-out from all the stress and worry and pressure, but it wasn’t in the cards. Sitting at the bar with a vodka cranberry was my friend.
Maggie Peach Light Gray Italian.
I’d intentionally left the office well after she had, hoping if by chance she stopped in she’d be long gone before I showed up. However, I was getting really good at not knowing a Goddamned thing.
She didn’t look up from the menu, but as I passed behind her, on my way to the far end, she said, “You don’t have to avoid me.”
Tell that to my heart.
“Oh, hey. Maggie. Didn’t see you there.” I bounced my fingers off my forehead, playing dumb—better than I was proud of. “Just finishing up dinner?”
Please say yes. Please say yes. Mercy. Mercy.
She looked up at me, her eyes blue as ever, and answered, “Funny enough, I just got here. Thought I might get some dinner and a drink or two.”
