I held on for a split second too long and she gave me a gentle shove in the stomach.
“Just playing along, Gingersnap.” I slipped my fingers through hers and we walked over to Kathleen.
Zara squeezed right on my knuckle and I swallowed my wince.
“Thank you so much for giving us this opportunity. We look forward to creating many memorable experiences for everyone.”
“I’m very interested to see how you two pull this off, and I hope it’ll be the beginning of more than one happy relationship throughout the process. I’ve divided up the events and you’ll have the first one, which will be this Friday. I know it’s tight and it doesn’t have to be the full event, but it would be wonderful if you two could be our first.”
“Of course, we’d be honored.” I lifted my hand, draped it over Zara’s shoulder, and cupped it. “Wouldn’t we?”
Her teeth were clenched hard enough to bite through nails. I was going to enjoy this. Oh so much.
Zara tried to dislodge my hand, but I held fast. “It would be our pleasure. If you give us the details, we can get to work right away.”
“I’ll touch base with Oren & Co. and then lay everything out for you.”
We followed her back into the conference room after the other companies had left. Two events two weeks apart while Oren & Co. would handle the gala in between. Kathleen had hinted no-so-subtly we could end up as the go-to planners for the five Winthorpe hotels in the tristate area, if we proved ourselves through the smaller events.
These events alone would put Stark back on the map and pull Sam out of any financial worries. It was a retainer account, so he’d have a steady cash flow no matter what, which would allow him to bring in the right people to keep the business going.
My phone vibrated on the table as we got the final details from Kathleen.
Jameson: 911. When are you getting here? Teresa’s getting restless.
Me: I’ll be there ASAP. Wrapping things up now.
Jameson: Hurry!
On my way. Zara threw out another volley of questions to Kathleen. Everyone else had already left. She was the kid who asked the teacher about homework as everyone was already halfway out the door.
“Gingersnap, I have that meeting I told you about, but I’ll see you later.” I laid it on thick like molasses and enjoyed every eye-dagger she sent my way.
“Really? Right now?”
“We’ve got all the details. Thank you for this opportunity, Kathleen.” I shook her hand and left without waiting for Zara.
But the click of her heels across the parking lot told me I wouldn’t be lucky enough to get out of here without a fight. Bring it on, Gingersnap.
11
Zara
It had taken me a full ten seconds to stop gaping at Leo and go after him. I said bye to Kathleen and rushed after him. Every time I called out his name, he waved to me over his shoulder with his car keys clutched in his hand.
I opened the passenger side door of his car, leaning in. “Where are you going?”
Leo jammed the key into the ignition and the engine roared to life. “I told you.”
“A meeting? That’s bullshit and you know it.”
“I have somewhere to be.”
“We need to talk about this. She thinks we’re engaged.” I’d never hyperventilated in my life, but there I was, gasping while standing in the middle of a wide-open parking lot.
“So when you pull something out of your ass it’s fine, but when I do it, I’m trying to destroy things. You said it yourself. We were losing them. You saw an opening and went for it…and so did I.”
“That’s not fine. If she finds out she’s going to lose it.”
He shrugged. “You should’ve thought about that before you started dropping ‘huns.’ When’s the wedding date, Gingersnap?”
“We don’t have much time. We’re not through discussing this.”
“You can have me all day tomorrow, but I have somewhere to be now.” He shifted the car into reverse and backed up a foot, bumping me with the open door. “I’m leaving.”
“You’re not rolling out of here without talking about this.” I flung myself into the car and buckled my seatbelt.
“Get out of my car.”
“No. Let’s go.” I patted the dashboard. “I’d like to see where you need to go that’s more important than coming up with our plan of attack for the event in eight days.”
“I’m already late. I’d hoped to present first, so we wouldn’t be late, but someone decided to take her time and go jewelry shopping on the way here.”
“I’m not getting out of this car. We can go over everything in your car, meet at my office or yours. I don’t care, but we have eight days. In planner time, it might as well be tomorrow.”
His jaw ticked and he glanced down at his watch. “Fine.”
“Great.” I reached for the seatbelt to unbuckle it, when he slammed on the gas, reversing out of the parking lot. Bracing my hands on the roof of his car, I banged against the passenger side door. “What the hell are you doing?”
“You said we could have our meeting in my car. You didn’t say anything about the car being stationary. I said I had somewhere to be.”
We whipped past city blocks following signs for the bridge into Jersey. Oh god, he was going to murder me and bury me in the Pine Barrens.
He looked over at me with his smackable smirk. “Didn’t you have some things to discuss that couldn’t wait until tomorrow?”
Pressed up against the door at my side, I glanced out the window. Did I need to jump for it?
“For once you’re speechless. It’s a Christmas miracle.” He kept his gaze trained on the road, other than glances at the clock on the dashboard.
Reaching into the wheel well at my feet, I grabbed my tablet out of my purse and made a few notes. “We’ll have to confirm everything we put into the presentation. Catering will be hard for three hundred people on such short notice.”
“It’s only one-fifty at a time. They can’t exactly shut down the hotel for our afternoon of team building. It’s two shifts, so we’ll have to do everything four or five hours apart. It gives us a lunch and a dinner option.”
I paused with my stylus above my screen and ran over what he’d said. We could call in a last-minute order for lunch and dinner much easier for one hundred and fifty people. “You’re right.”
“Turns out I’m not a total fuck up.”
“I never said that.”
“You didn’t have to.” His grip tightened on the steering wheel.
Resting my hand against the window, the afternoon sun caught the solitaire cascading the inside of the car in a rainbow kaleidoscope of color. My finger was a charming three shades too dark due to lack of blood flow.
He nodded at it. “When we get there, I can help you get that off your finger.”
“With a bone saw?”
He laughed, turning to me before laughing even harder.
I reached out to steady the steering wheel as his deep laugh cut through some of the simmering tension.
“Good one,” he muttered, but I still wasn’t one hundred percent sure the thought hadn’t crossed his mind—it would get me out of his hair, and he could have the account to himself.