Chapter Sixteen
Three days later, Bea was still thinking about their closet sex.
And their shower sex.
And dammit, just sex.
Sex with Zane Price.
But she was thinking about all the other times she’d spent with him, too. The paintballing, the paddle boating, the bar games, the ice cream, the soccer game, and the hours they had spent working together at the store.
The problem was that she couldn’t reconcile the three categories of him she had experienced.
One side of him was a controlling ballbuster she sometimes got so frustrated with she wanted to smack him. Another side starred the playful, witty Zane who was able to make her laugh at the drop of a hat and acted like the happiest man alive. His third side was the sex god version. The one where he was all kinds of smoking hot and could make her feel things that left her quivering in desperation for him.
He had become a constant fixture in her head.
But today she had to focus on something other than him.
Thanks to the contract with Envision Tech, Paxton Designs had been getting bombarded with consultations, and she and Felicity were doing everything they could to keep up. Because of their hectic schedule, they’d decided to hold a group presentation for several of the potential clients, in order to pitch to them and answer questions all at once.
The presentation had to blow all of the clients away. So Paxton Designs had pulled out all the stops. They would be using new software today that allowed them to offer a virtual portfolio of their work to clients. It provided a 3D tour of all their various projects, giving the clients the best imagery of each location. Every house they’d decorated, every office space they’d refurbished, were all available for viewing in the virtual tour.
She and Felicity had been integrating the software at client meetings for weeks, introducing it little by little and familiarizing themselves with the program. But today was the first day they would be using all the applications for a big-scale presentation. It was an innovative program, meaning a costly one, but one they were sure would impress future clients. True, they could have paid off their father’s loan over nine months ago without that expense—something that had initially eaten at her—but it was a sound business investment, and that was how she had to look at it.
When she walked into the Paxton Designs office that morning, she saw the very last thing she wanted to see—Felicity in an utter panic, pacing the showroom floor, taking short, jerky steps. When she heard the door open she looked up at Bea with eyes the size of flying saucers.
“It’s not working!” Felicity shrieked, waving her arms wildly in the air.
Bea calmly walked to her sister with her arms outstretched. “Whoa, whoa. What’s not working?”
“The tour program!” Felicity screamed.
Bea froze. “What do you mean it’s not working?” she asked carefully. She could feel her breakfast start to rise up her throat. Scrambled eggs had not been a good idea.
“I mean the entire 3D tour part of the software isn’t working. The data and all the other information are in there, but the tour application won’t run. I’ve tried everything.”
Shit.
They were screwed without that virtual tour. It was the only way the clients could get a real feel for their work without visiting the sites themselves. Still photographs just didn’t do the work justice. Without the program, they ran the risk of missing out on some big business.
She followed Felicity back to the conference room. She saw the laptop on the table hooked up to a flat-screen television hanging on the wall, but the picture was just a giant Blue Screen of Death.
Not good.
“Did you try rebooting the program?”
Felicity huffed impatiently. “Yes. I tried that and did all of those other troubleshooting steps the help guide suggests, but nothing is working.”
“Did you call the IT guy?”
She started pacing again. “Yes, and nothing he suggested worked, either. He said he wasn’t sure what it could be without getting on the actual computer. But he can’t get here until tomorrow because he has a lot of jobs today. I have no clue what to do.”
Bea typed a few commands on the keyboard, but nothing happened. She checked the settings on the computer and did everything else she could think of—even checking to make sure everything was plugged in properly—but there was no change.
Since Felicity was already freaking out, Bea knew she had to be the calm sister. But it was difficult. She knew next to nothing about this kind of technology. Her mind was spinning like crazy, considering all the possible scenarios. But there was just no way to do the same type of presentation with so many clients without that program. The word disaster came to mind.
Through her swirling haze of panic, one face—one name—started flashing in her head in bright neon lights.
Zane.
The software wasn’t an Envision Tech product, but Zane knew computers. He used to be a software developer, so he might know how to fix it. Right?
She looked down at her watch. The clients would be there in an hour and a half. She had to at least try. She walked into the other room and dialed him.
“Well, I didn’t expect to hear from you this morning,” he purred through the line. “Missed me, did you?”
She wasted no time with pleasantries, though his voice did help soothe some of her nerves. “Zane, I need your help.” She quickly explained the situation and begged him to come take a look.
“I’m on my way,” was his response before he hung up. He hadn’t questioned anything, hadn’t even hesitated to come immediately.
That sent a lightning bolt of…something…straight into her heart.
Felicity’s hysterics weren’t helping, so Bea sent her to the grocery store to buy refreshments for the clients. With the office quiet, she could finally catch her breath and gather her thoughts.
That was, until Zane showed up.
Then she lost her breath all over again. Because he was carrying a huge bouquet of white lilies.
When did he have time to buy those?
He noticed her reaction to the flowers and beamed at her. “See. I told you that information would come in handy one day.”
To her surprise, he dropped the bouquet on a nearby table and came straight to her, took her face in his hands, and placed a deep, comforting kiss on her lips.
She was a goner.
He pulled away, grinning down at her like he hadn’t just tilted her world on its axis. “Show me what we’ve got.”
She didn’t even know if he could actually help. Just the fact that he was there playing her knight in shining armor made it seem like everything was somehow going to be okay. For the first time in her entire life, she actually wanted a savior to rescue her.
He sat down at the table and got to work, while she stood anxiously behind him. Her phone, which she’d left on the table next to the laptop, buzzed with a text. Zane automatically reached for it, and although she had the feeling he hadn’t meant to snoop, she knew he’d glimpsed the message flashing on the screen. She muttered a “thanks” when he wordlessly handed it over.
When she looked down at the screen, she understood why his jaw had noticeably clenched when he gave her the phone.
Billie: Ramon’s. Meet you there tomorrow at 7.
She cringed at how the message probably looked to Zane. Little did he know that Billie was one of her contacts who had managed to procure one of the items on her list for her secret project.
And little did Zane know that Billie was a woman.
The two women had been friends for years, so they’d decided to have dinner while Billie was in town. Not that Bea could tell Zane any of this. Was she even obligated to? She didn’t exactly know where their relationship stood.
Mentally shaking herself, she pushed that to the back of her mind and focused on the issue at hand.
She wasn’t sure how she made it through the next hour. But standing there watching him furiously work on the laptop, squinting at the screen, his dexterous fingers flying over the keys, that was the moment she knew.
She was falling for him.
Hard.
How far along she was in that descent, she couldn’t say. All she knew was that whatever she felt for Zane was real, and it was way more than just lust.
He’d said she didn’t trust others, didn’t ask for help. But when she needed it, she had gone to him for help. Because she trusted him, really trusted him. That wasn’t lost on her, and probably not on him, either. He had been there for her, willingly, without a second thought. As though there had been no other option for him.
She couldn’t help but wonder if he felt the same things she did. The urgent need to know began to eat at her, making her want to pull her hair out. She was desperate to hear what he was feeling about her.
To assure herself that she wasn’t the only crazy one in the room.