“Yeah, yeah,” Flynn says. “Anyway, Ian says hi and good luck with everything.”
“Thanks,” I say. “That means a lot.”
“Even Brett was talking about you this morning, worrying if there was anything he could do.”
I grin. “Good to know. Tell him thank you, and tell Ian to stay out of trouble.”
“I will,” Flynn says. Then he hangs up.
I smile as I lean back in my chair, facing the window for another moment. I’m glad to have the friends I do in this world, even if I never could have imagined coming close to them in the fae world.
Then I spin around to wake my computer so I can get what I need to done and go to lunch.
My heart is already aching to see Eva again.
11
Eva
Tanner still confuses me.
After I enjoyed a frigid shower in the company gym, a few hours working on my benefits proposal, and a couple meetings, he came as promised to take me to lunch.
Now I’m sitting across from this devastating man who can’t stop upending my life in every way possible.
I was just floating through life, sleepwalking, and every time I see him, it forces me to wake up.
The restaurant he chose for us is pretty nice, only a couple blocks from work, with an upscale café vibe, perfect for casual co-worker conversation.
But I think we passed the possibility of ever being casual co-workers one screaming orgasm ago.
“How did things go in your meeting with Morgan?” He flips through the menu but watches me as he does.
“Fine. Just fine,” I say, trying to keep my tone calm. “He seems intent on stalling my benefits plan as much as he can, though I can’t tell why.”
“And how about the meeting in the printer room?” His smile is mischievous.
I glare at him because he knows exactly how that meeting went.
I see a saltshaker in front of me and imagine chucking it at his too-perfect face. But he’d probably just catch it and say something ridiculous like, “Oh, thank you for the salt, Eva.” Or something.
Just ignore how ridiculously hot he is and keep it cool.
“Well, I wouldn’t consider that a meeting since nothing got done and the printer is probably even more broken.” I try not to blush, but it’s impossible. I was so brazen.
“Oh, I think at least one thing was accomplished,” he says, grinning at me. “Something very important in my book.”
I think steam is about to come out of my ears, but thankfully, the waitress appears to take our orders.
Though, I wish she wouldn’t have looked over her shoulder at Tanner fifteen times before heading back to the kitchen.
“So what’s the plan here, Tanner?” I ask, drawing on the condensation on my water glass. “Kiss a VP in a bar to catch her off guard, apply to her company, seduce her in the printer room, and then what?”
He grins at me. “What do you think?”
I sigh, shaking my head in exasperation. “I think we’re playing with fire here.” I gulp back a bracingly cold swig of water to cool my head.
“I’m not playing,” he says confidently. “I think you know that.”
“We’re going to get in trouble. I just know it,” I say warily.
“I refuse to think we did anything worthy of getting in trouble,” he replies, leaning into the table slightly. “But that being said, all pressure is off the table, and I just wanted to take you to lunch and learn more about you without someone interrupting us every ten seconds.”
“They do come to me for help a lot,” I say, biting the inside of my cheek. I know I take on a disproportionate share of the work sometimes, but I’m the only upper management a lot of the employees trust.
“Right, so for now, just put aside that stress and enjoy lunch with me.”
“Okay,” I say quietly. I’ll put aside my stress and the fact that I just made out with the interim CEO and just try to enjoy being around Tanner for once.
“I want to know more about you. Tell me how you ended up at Qualtechnics.” His relaxed posture puts me at ease, so different from the intensity he gets when we’re… close.
“It’s hard to say how we end up where we are sometimes,” I say. “One decision led to another.”
“So you magically became a senior VP of a company as big as Qualtechnics?”
I snort at that, remembering the faces of hundreds of douchebags who stood in my way. “Hardly.”
“I would think so. Being a commander of anything requires expertise and boldness. And last I heard, it’s not like you have any relation to the owners.”
He props his chin in his hand, which looks so elegant next to his strong, masculine jaw. I can see one of those leather bands on his wrist again, and I’m curious for the millionth time what they mean.
“Nope, no nepotism here,” I say. “I actually interned for the company ten years ago. It was a lot smaller then. We were just a handful of employees working out of a rented office space on the other side of town. I was looking for something to believe in. We were all so passionate back then.”
“What happened?”
I shrug. “Other senior founders moved on, sold their stake to the new owners, so they became majority owners. As we’ve grown, people have left for other companies. But I stayed because this place has become like a family to me, and—”
“A dysfunctional family,” Tanner mutters.
“What?” I raise an eyebrow at him.
“I just don’t like how the upper management treats you,” he says.
I wave a hand. “I’m used to that. Every company has its flaws, but I truly care about this one. I see employees every day who can put food on the table because of the company.”
“A company you helped prosper into what it is today,” he says. “Very impressive.”
I flush, unused to someone actually seeing me, let alone praising me. “Well, not just me. It’s not like I own the place. I just got in early. And when I graduated college, I continued to work full time. I even got a graduate degree a couple years ago. They wouldn’t promote me until I did.”
“It sounds exhausting, jumping through hoops like that.”
I fold my arms because I like the distraction of work, and I never thought about it like that. “It was the good kind of exhausting. The kind where you feel like you’re accomplishing something.”
“What’s the other kind?” He cocks his head.
I sigh. “The other kind is what I grew up with and what I was glad to escape when I left home. Qualtechnics gave me something to focus on when everything else was in chaos. The ability to stand on my own two feet.”
“What was wrong at home?” He leans in, looking concerned.
Sometimes I could swear this guy really cares about me even though he barely knows me.
“I… It’s a long story,” I say, fighting back the images that come with thinking of my family.
The waitress interrupts, bringing our food to the table. Of course, she throws in an extra-desperate, “Are you sure there isn’t anything else I can get you?” aimed directly at Tanner who, thankfully, ignores it.