“Mr. Walker,” she says, low and soft. “The Adidas team.”
“Thanks, Lainey,” Sal grunts. “Please, come in. Take a seat. Coffee?”
“I’ll see to that, Mr. Walker,” Lainey offers, the click of her heels getting closer. My teeth scrape together when I see her out the corner of my eye come to a stop beside me. Why here? Why at this particular section of the fucking huge conference table? My skin heats, part anger, part craving—craving for something that I desperately don’t want to crave. I won’t look at her. I refuse to. My hand squeezes the handle of the coffee pot.
“Are you finished?” she asks. It takes her question to remind me that I have what she wants. I place the coffee pot down on the table, sitting back with my cup, ignoring her hand as it reaches out before me. “Thank you,” she says quietly.
I keep my focus on Sal as he does the introductions, starting with me. He motions toward me, pointing me out to the lady who’s taken a seat beside him. The marketing executive, I guess. “Claire, this is my partner, Tyler Christianson.” Sal looks at me hopefully, willing me to launch into the charm offensive. I try to muster the smile that knocks women out, try so fucking hard, but all I’m able to focus on is making a point of looking at the opposite side of the room to wherever Lainey happens to be while she makes her way around the table pouring coffees. I’m stock-still in my chair. Frozen. Unable to deliver the smile that’ll soften the marketing executive of Adidas. Unable to find my legs to stand and greet her.
I watch as Lainey takes a seat, and I listen to Sal stumble over a few words before he dives into his pitch. But I can’t relax. Not now. I shift one way in my chair, then the other, crossing one leg over the other. Focus on Sal. Focus on work. My eyes flick to Lainey, just as hers flick to me. And they hold for a few moments before she looks away, sinking deeper into her chair. I can see from here her mind is racing.
“Ty will dazzle you with the details,” Sal says, yanking my attention back across the conference table.
“What?”
My partner laughs nervously, nodding to the laptop before me. I look down and see the first slide of the PowerPoint—a man sweating his arse off as he stands on the finishing line staring at the thin air before him with a blur of people racing past. But for the life of me, I can’t remember any of the pitch, not even with the hint of the picture before me. Shit.
Sal only ever drags me in on his pitches if he’s desperate, so I can claw them back with my charm when the time calls for it. The time calls now. Yet all of my usual natural charm has vanished on me.
I glance up, finding the woman next to Sal waiting expectantly, and Sal giving me a panicked face. Then I scan the room, finding everyone looking at me, Lainey the most carefully. I shoot my stare away and clear my throat. “It’s . . .” I frown, searching my mind for the dazzling smile I need to kick things off. “It’s . . .” No good. I’m useless. “Excuse me.” I can’t do it. I can’t remain in here. The oxygen is draining fast. I’m struggling to breathe.
I rise from my chair and make for the door, slipping out. The sense of freedom that hits me feels like nothing else, and I rest my back on the door and breathe some stability into my unstable state. What the hell just happened in there? Meltdown, that’s what, Christianson. You saw her, and it all went to shit, you loser. One fuck and you thought you’d be over her? You lame arse.
“Okay there?” Gina’s voice comes from the side, and I see her at the end of the corridor, a pile of files in her grasp.
“Yeah.” I peel my back from the door and head toward her, bypassing the route to my office and taking the stairs. “I need some fresh air.”
“Jenna called,” she yells after me.
“Email her number to me.” My feet hit the concrete steps and take me down the thirteen flights quickly, and once I break free from our building, I drink in the needed fresh air, pacing up and down. Sal will nail it. He’ll be all right. Lord, I was good for nothing in there. What’s happened to my charisma? Where’s the guy who laughed in the face of Lainey fucking Summer and all her addictiveness? Where’s the fucking guy who took a different girl home last night and fucked her senseless, successfully removing Sal’s PA from his brain?
“Shit.” I look down at my watch. I’m stunned to see that I’ve been walking in circles for over half an hour. Getting my phone out, I pick up the email from Gina and call Jenna back. It rings off and goes to voicemail, so I leave a message. “It’s Ty. Call me when you have a minute. I have a proposition for you.” I disconnect the call and make my way back to my office.
As I exit the elevator, I don’t get the chance to feed Gina with an excuse for my bunk. Her worried look stops me. “What?” I ask.
Her mouth opens, but before she gets the chance to enlighten me, I hear a huge crash. I startle, looking down the corridor.
“Oh dear . . .” Gina breathes, just as Sal comes stomping around the corner. He looks livid, and when his deranged eyes locate me, I quickly conclude that it’s me who’s the cause, and I’m about to bear the brunt of a famous Sal Walker blowup. It’s been a while.
“What the fuck, Ty?” he yells from the other end of the hall, coming at me. “You’ve just lost us the contract.”
My instinct tells me to keep my mouth sealed and let him have his rant. It isn’t pretty when we both let loose, and it’ll be over a lot quicker if I don’t retaliate, minimizing the ugly that our employees see. Besides, what am I going to say?
He reaches me and shoves me in the shoulder, making my jaw go tight. Oh, he’s fucking mad all right. I absorb his shunt and focus on keeping calm. Just let him have his say. Let him get it out of his system. Moya will kill me if he goes home with a black eye. “Want to take this somewhere private?” I ask calmly, mindful that the peanut gallery is building, people poking their heads out of their offices to see what’s going down.
“No, I fucking don’t. Where the fuck did you go? Why the fuck weren’t you there to have my back when I needed you?” He shoves me again, and it takes everything out of me not to knock him out. He wanted me there to seduce the client with my eyes. That’s all. He’s being a dick.
“I felt queasy.” My jaw ticks. “I needed some air.”
Sal squares up to me, getting his face up in mine. It’s a stupid move, not only because he’s a whole foot shorter than me. “Fuck you, Tyler. You’ve gone from being a semi-prick to a full-blown professional cunt.”
What the fuck? I snap, grabbing Sal by the lapels of his jacket and slamming him into the wall. “What the fuck’s got into you?” I growl, infuriated that he’s done this, and so publicly. This is not how we do things around here.
“Stop it.” Gina appears, muscling her way between us. “Just stop it, you pair of kids.”
I let her pull me away, keeping my pissed-off stare on Sal as he straightens out his jacket. “He lost me the deal,” he snaps. “He lost me the fucking deal. He’s a prick who thinks with his fucking cock! I’m better off without him.”
Oh, you’ve gone too far, Walker. My blood boils over, weeks’ worth of stress ready to pour out of me. I fly at him again, seeing red. The whole team was there. He wasn’t confident going in and wanted to use me to seduce. This isn’t on me. “You fucker,” I roar, delivering a right hook to his jaw.