“I’m just saying that what you are doing with Monica will come back to bite you in more ways than one.”
“Well, I’m sunk on that score, then, because if I back out now she’ll take it personally.”
Out of the corner of his eye he saw Ray nod, then reach for a different book.
“I do like her, though,” Sean acceded quietly.
“Mary is dying to meet her. Unlike me, she did think you brought Krista onto the team for exactly the reasons you said.”
Sean shook his head. Then, since he was laying it all out there, he said, “I haven’t asked her out. I’m afraid she’ll say no.”
“Yes, you’ve alluded to that.” Ray paused for a minute. Pages flicked, drawing out the pause; the judgment. “I think you’re right. She’s smart, but most importantly, she’s wary. She doesn’t trust you, and I don’t blame her—especially with how you act around Monica. Which is interesting, because you’re more genuine with Krista than I’ve even seen you with Mary.”
Sean felt like punching the glass. That was the bitch of it, wasn’t it? It was the thing that was unraveling him. He could utterly and completely relax around Krista, which was as rare as it was disconcerting. For that reason, he couldn’t relax any other time, worried about what he might say when she came around. What might escape his usually composed and constructed persona.
“She makes me,” Sean admitted grudgingly, clenching his jaw. “She has exacting standards where that comes in, and she holds me to it. It was one of her conditions to working on the team. She almost ducked out a couple times—she turns away or runs whenever I try to throw her a line. Always has. It’s maddening.”
Ray laughed, “It’s good for you. It’s what you’ve always needed. But you’re right; she doesn’t trust that side of you.”
Sean sighed, “I know. She’s had a hard past, too, I think. She doesn’t need me dicking her around. Excuse the language.”
“You’ve had a hard past as well. But I agree, she doesn’t need you dicking her around. You tend to jump in with both feet, get tangled, and run. We can’t have that on this campaign. Any other time and I would say go for it. But not on this one. Get to know her, be friends, have fun—when we land this bad boy, go whole hog. Who knows; by then she might be on board.”
“Yeah, right. Thanks for the pep-talk, coach. Except, you needn’t have dissected my life because all that knowledge changes nothing. I have to stay away from Krista and stay close to Monica. Your fountain of knowledge doesn’t help.”
“No, but I like to show I’m paying attention.”
Sean huffed out a laugh as he turned back to the table. “John’s going to be tracking me down soon. We need to make shapes.”
“Look at what she did here …” Ray pointed to the table of contents. “You asked her for sales of sapphires in California. She lists that as item twelve. She then breaks it down to southern California and northern California, which makes sense. You should have had that. That was twelve-A.”
Sean looked over Ray’s shoulder.
“Then, twelve-B,” Ray slid his finger to the next bullet, “She breaks it down again by largely populated areas and poorly populated areas. Then, twelve-C, by household income. How does she even think of that information, let alone find it?”
“She’s smart.”
“Obviously, she’s smart, yes. But at the stage she is over extending your list, she is basically calling you a fool.”
“Is that what she’s doing? Calling me a fool?”
Ray and Sean both laughed as Sean grabbed a few of the books to lug downstairs. The conference room phone rang, making Sean pause, “That’ll be John.”
“Aren’t you going to answer it?” Ray asked, collecting the rest of the books.
“No. I’ll talk to him when I get downstairs.”
“I’m glad you’re a buffer between him and me.” Ray threw in as he followed Sean out. “I don’t think I could tolerate him always looking over my shoulder.”
“Some people probably wonder how you tolerate me looking over your shoulder.”
“Not the women-folk, surely. They’re jealous.”
Sean huffed as the elevator opened.
“No, I’m in a perfect spot,” Ray mused. “I am one step away from your overanxious boss, and one step above an overachieving bookworm. I’d hate to be directly under either of them.”
An image of Krista’s body moving over him flashed through Sean’s head.
“That’s four blushes. My, my—what is she doing to you?”
Sean shook his head and ignored Ray.
Chapter Sixteen
It was Friday again too soon and Krista found herself finished with the rest of Sean’s list. She also found herself with nothing to do for Happy Hour because Jasmine was going to Tahoe and Kate was going on a date with some dude she met at her local coffee house. She insisted he wasn’t g*y. He was a biker with too much facial hair and a giant tattoo of a bare-chested woman riding a dragon on his back.
Jasmine and Kate believed her. Then said maybe going for g*y was better. The conversation would be better, at any rate.
Krista grabbed her latest findings and headed down to Sean’s office. He sat hunched over his desk, studying a piece of paper with incredulous eyes. The surface in front of him looked like an office recycle bin, or like a paper dispenser had rumbled through and dropped a bunch of babies. It was almost as bad as the art department.
“Hey Cap’n,” she said as she paused at the door, doing a quick check that no one was under his desk giving him a blow job.
He looked up in surprise. When he saw who it was, a small smile parted his lips. “Krista,” he said as his face went back to a mask of stress, “How goes it?”
“Great. Can I come in?”
“Of course, yes. Please.” Sean jumped up as if on springs to come around the desk and see if she needed help carrying anything. Seeing she was fine, he returned to his seat, his eyes trained on her new stack of books.
“Not more,” he said in agony.
She let the pile plop on his desk. “What do you mean not more? You’re the one assigning this stuff to me!”
“I didn’t expect you to be so thorough. I showed your stuff to John, half to brag, I admit, and he flipped. Then he had about 800 ideas that I should immediately look up as it pertained to your facts. Then he gave me a last-minute presentation to do. Needless to say, I’ve been chained to my desk ever since. That’ll teach me.” Sean smiled radiantly. It was pretty obvious he liked being right.
She bet John hated being wrong.
“Well, I finished your list. Maybe I can help you with some of the work?”
“You finished my list? Already?”
“My social life took a crap this week so I had nothing better to do than work my ass off.”
“Do you kiss your mother with that mouth?” he asked with a chuckle, leaning back in his chair and rubbing his eyes.
“Only when she makes me. Anyway, should I take this away so you don’t have to look at it?”
“No, no, show me what ya got.” Sean stacked up some of his papers to make room for the new onslaught of work. “By the by, I hear you clean desks …”
Krista paused in her book delivery, turning beet red. “I can explain.”
Sean smiled, reaching across the desk for her cargo. “I’ve seen Marcus’s desk after you’ve passed through. Apparently he never notices until you leave.”
“Yeah, I kinda nudge his papers in the right direction. I haven’t made him get up so I can do a thorough job, yet, but it’s coming.”
“Most of the company has had a walk-through, admiring your latest handiwork. He thinks you are both the sweetest thing on the face of the planet, and also the most hilarious. He doesn’t quite understand how your mind works.”
“Yeah, I get that a lot.”
“Bad news is, he’s treating the sensation like art.”
Krista yanked at a stray thread in her sweater in embarrassment. “He treats my cleaning his desk like art? What sort of madness is that? Are they high all day long in that department, or what?”
Sean laughed, opening her first book, prompting her to explain work rather than art department people, who were largely inexplicable anyway.
“Okay, I’ve called that one Operation: Spy on the Others, because it’s obvious that’s what you were after. Good luck getting them to spy on me, though.”
“They already are. Spying on you, that is. The reports I get are mainly that you work too fast and make them look bad. Oh, and your singing voice is quite good, but your British accent is the pits. Also that you are an honorary member of the art department mechanical team, whatever that means.”
Sean’s eyes honed in to Krista’s face as she tried to hide behind her hair. “I talk to myself in a British accent when I’ve been without social chit-chat for too long.”
Sean started to laugh. “I was wondering. Anyway, I don’t need to spy on you. If I did, I would see the amount of work headed my way and stop your efforts.”
“No you wouldn’t. I’d still do it.”
Sean stilled for a moment, taking her in. His eyes roamed her face. “No mug?”
His eyes reached inside of her, making a piece of ice in her middle heat up, then drip, loosening a painful barrier she’d lived with for so long she’d forgotten it wasn’t supposed to be there.
“I was afraid it would try and kill itself again. Thought it was safer left in my office,” she said quietly, knowing he was trying to head toward personal waters, using her mug as a scapegoat. Strangely, this time, it was working. He was starting to have an effect. He poked at that block inside her chest, softly, unhurriedly, wanting to release it.
It was a startlingly new development that would surely have Kate whacking her with a baseball bat to get her back on course.
Sean laughed intimately, honing in on her. Willing her to let go; to drop all her office stodginess and come out and play. The warmth building in her sternum made her body tingle, reminding her of its twin, a feeling she hadn’t felt in a really long time. Since Johnny Earnshaw, actually. Which, consequently, had been her first love.
It was going to take more than a bat.
“Wise,” he said quietly, his face growing serious. Intense.
She hastily cleared her throat. The moment passed like a fragrant plume of smoke in a breeze. “Anyway.” She tore her eyes away and pointed them at the desk. “Here is what you asked for. The first is the art from our extensive system. All the images from that other meeting were there, but I didn’t include those. I did some digging and found some other stuff that looked good.
“After that are other, similar images from other ad companies across the span of time. It is pretty fun looking for all that stuff, so I put a lot in there. Too much probably, but copies are cheap and knowledge is not, so what the hell, right?”
“And you have more,” Sean said it in a flat tone, now looking through the books.
“Yeah, well, uh, I decided to find some pictures that went with Marcus’ ideas. Like I said, images are so easy to find and so readily downloaded and copied, so I just thought, ‘why not?’”
Without saying a word Sean grabbed hungrily for the other books. He turned and got the research she did previously on Marcus’s ideas. He found what must have been his favorite ideas and paired them with the new images. He let out a “hmmmm” as he tapped the page.
“This is good, Krista. Have you shown these to Marcus?”
“No. He’s mad at you for making him work, so I didn’t want to add fuel, so to speak.”
“Hmmm,” still looking at the open book, he picked up the phone. “Yes, Marcus? ...” Sean listened for a while, his brow furrowing in concentration. “Yeah, great man, that is awesome… No, no I don’t need to see it right yet… No, that’s fine. Listen…yeah, great. Perfect… Listen, I am sitting here with Krista--…no, for once she is making you look good. Come see what she’s got…Great.”
Sean hung up and went back to looking at the images. Krista was forgotten for the minute, until Marcus came in and leisurely sat next to her.
“Miss Marshall,” Marcus said in his relaxed way, “You are no longer allowed to work on any of Sean’s ideas. We can’t keep up. There is not enough Red Bull in the world to compete with a twenty-year-old.”
Sean looked up with a smile and offered Marcus her latest. He then picked up the phone again. “Ray, come in here…Please.”
Marcus was exclaiming in delight with his hand clutched on Krista’s shoulder. “Geek Girl, I am a genius! Sean, call Judy.”
Sean did not hesitate, and soon the entire team was stuffed into Sean’s office. Ray and Sean were talking about strategy while Marcus and Judy were talking about ideas and making notes. Krista, forgotten again, was squished against the wall in bored delight.
It was at this time that John walked in, his normal cartoon-style, hurried pace slowed with the bland look of the research girl idly standing against the wall. Krista imagined that was the reason for the perplexed expression. “Sean, it’s time to move you to the new office I think.”
It was like an arctic gale came out of nowhere. Everyone froze with wide eyes, like a kid caught drawing on the wall with permanent marker. The office resembled a game of Twister, with limbs intertwined and frozen, waiting for the next spin. All eyes found John in a pronounced widening.