I slipped a chocolate croissant out of bag with a napkin.
Her gaze darted down to the buttery soft, flaky dough wrapped around a center of chocolate.
“I got this for you, Sam.” Without taking my eyes off the interloper, I handed the croissant to Sam.
“Thanks, Leo. I told you he was a sweetheart.” Sam walked between us and sat behind his desk, oblivious to the palpable tension filling the room.
Keeping my eyes on my new events buddy, I lifted my croissant and took a hearty bite. “God, this is fan-fucking-tastic. Don’t you think, Sam?” It was actually pretty damn good for a coffee shop pastry.
The woman’s gaze narrowed and her nostrils flared.
“It’s delicious. Oh, I feel terrible. Zara, did you want some?”
“Don’t worry, Sam. Z’s not big on accepting offers from others. I’m sure she’s fine.”
Her jaw clenched. “He’s right, Sam. I’m fine. I’ve already had my breakfast. We should get started on our presentation. I have other work to do today.”
“You two can take the corner office.”
“Thanks, Sam. We’ll get to work. Don’t worry, I’ve got this handled.” Food. Booze. Music. It was all people needed. “After you.” I held out my arm, stepping out of the doorway.
Zara yanked her portfolio up from its spot leaning against the chair and stormed out of the office.
I let her go and couldn’t stop myself from watching her walk away with unbridled fury.
She had nice legs. Long and shapely, powerful even, with the way she was trying to stomp her way through the concrete floor.
I cleared my throat. “Z, it’s this way.”
She stopped short, her shoulders so tense I expected a tendon to pop. Whirling around with fire in her eyes, she stared at me expectantly.
“In here.” I took another massive bite of my croissant.
“Don’t call me Z.” She swung her portfolio in my direction.
“Why not? We’re all friends here.” At this rate, I’d have her quitting the job in a few hours. Then I could figure out what the hell I was doing, get everything smoothed out, and put Sam and Simply Stark in a better position.
“Not even co-workers. You could’ve mentioned earlier that I was headed in the wrong direction.”
“I could have.” I shrugged and pushed open the office door, wearing my smuggest grin. The one that had my sorry ass running five laps around the football field during freshman year of college when I decided to show up to practice hung over. My college coach had wiped it off my face until I was drafted, but that didn’t mean I couldn’t whip it out for special occasions.
“Let’s get this over with.” Her biting smile leached hostility into the air.
I gave her an hour tops. With her put-together looks, towering heels, and perfectly primped hair, she wasn’t someone used to getting her hands dirty.
“Those napkins are the exact same color.” We’d flipped through three stacks of vendor samples to find the perfect shade of white for the table cloths. Was this what my life had come to? This was the guy I was now. Instead of committing eighty different plays to memory until I could run them in my sleep, I was fighting over fabric samples with a woman who hadn’t sat down in the five hours we’d been cooped up in this room.
She pored over the sample books. Her lips did this thing where she sucked in one half of her bottom lip and then the other half. They were full and constantly shiny. Soft and pink.
Her head snapped up. “They’re completely different.” She held up two identical squares of fabric. “Light rose and light raspberry. They’re completely different.”
I needed out of this room. Staring at her lips, getting sucked in when she was the most infuriating woman ever, was a sign we’d been at this too long. “They’re pink.”
She gritted her teeth and sunk her head, running her fingers across her forehead. “They’re not. You know what?” Her deep, heavy exhale ratcheted up my anger. At every step she treated me like I was a moron. “Let’s move onto something else. The tables.”
“Fine. There will be 150 people, so we need 15 tables. Done.”
She scowled. “This isn’t a simple, seventh-grade math problem. We need to decide how many cocktail tables we need, if ten person rounds are appropriate for what we have in mind…”
I picked up the glass paperweight and tossed it from hand to hand. “Have a few of each and people will figure out where they want to sit. We’re not solving world peace here.”
She slammed her hand down on the table. “Is this a joke to you?”
I palmed the weight and leaned over the table. “Of course not, but I’m not going to obsess over every miniscule piece of these events. Do you think anyone cares about the napkin colors? Will they be able to tell the difference between rose and raspberry? Are they going to storm out and kick us off the job if there are twelve round tables and no cocktail tables? No. People want to have fun, eat good food and drink, even better if it’s an open bar.”
“People also like being surrounded by nice things. They relax people, help them have fun. Do you think we should set up some milk crates and turn over garbage cans and everyone would be happy?”
“I didn’t say—”
“You may not care about this, but my boss does—and the client does. If you want, you can sit the hell down and I’ll handle it.” She leaned in closer, nudging the table straight into my balls.
She thought she could scare me off with boring ass linen decisions? Game on. I jammed my legs against the table. The feet squawked against the floor.
Zara stumbled back a half step.
“And take all the credit? I don’t think so.”
“Then choose a color.” The sounds escaped through her gritted teeth. She flung the sample book to my side of the table.
My jaw popped. “Raspberry.”
“Wonderful.” A calculating, furious narrowing of her gaze, and the list of decisions got longer and longer. She’d never met a decision she could get through the easy way.
“In what world do you think ax throwing would be the best event for a hotel group like Winthorpe?”
“Who wouldn’t want to throw axes? This was a huge hit last time I included it.” After we won our conference championship a couple years ago, the QB rented out the entire facility for the team party, for a chill night. BYOB plus axes had been a guaranteed night of fun in the off season. There had been people from all walks of life every time I visited one. Corporate suits. Husbands and wives. Bachelor parties. Bachelorette parties. It crossed all demographics.
“I could throw an axe right now, for sure.” Zara dropped her pencil and leaned back in her chair, squeezing the bridge of her nose.
“You two are still at it? I’m turning in.” Sam had his jacket draped over his arm and a briefcase in his other hand.
“It’s only—oh wow.” Zara gestured to the windows and froze.
The night sky was pitch black, the autumn sun long gone below the horizon, creating the perfect black mirror to reflect our shocked faces.
I snatched my phone up off the desk. “Shit!” Stacking the papers, we worked on with one hand, I typed out my reply to the twenty unanswered texts lighting up my screen. I wasn’t missing tonight. I’d missed out for the past year, I wasn’t going to be the one who skipped out on stuff until everyone stopped inviting me. Nope, I wasn’t going to be the one left behind. Snatching my jacket off the back of the chair, I threw it on.