Five
She’d ignored him for three days. Spence wasn’t great about being shut out of anything. He also didn’t trust Rylan, and that’s exactly who Abby was meeting with today. Right now.
The door stood open. Papers were strewn across the conference room table. Maps and documents with official government seals. A thick binder filled with information Spence knew would bore him.
Spence waited until the last minute to slip into the room she’d reserved for the meeting. Rylan stood by the window, looking down into the street. The only noise in the room came from the sound of the automatic room fan. That and the squeak of Abby’s chair as she moved it back and forth while studying the paper in front of her.
She glanced up as soon as the door clicked shut. “You’re sitting in on all of my meetings now?”
The refusal to back down... Spence found that so sexy. “I actually work here.”
She treated him to the perfect eye roll. It almost shouted you’re a jerk. “For now.”
Spence kept walking until he got to her side. Then he slid into the seat next to her with his arm resting on the table. “This idea you have that I’m ready to bolt? Get it out of your head. It’s not happening.”
She slowly lowered her pen. “It did before.”
Shot landed. Spence felt it vibrate through him. The truth really did suck sometimes.
“Derrick needs me here.” That was also true. He’d come back for his brother and his growing family. Spence had repeated that to himself during the entire journey to DC. Now he wondered if something else pulled him there. An invisible thread that bound him to Abby. A need to come home and resolve the seemingly unresolvable.
She tapped her pen end over end against the table. The clicking sound turned to a steady thump when she started to hit it harder. “And no one needed you before?”
“Didn’t feel like it.” He’d felt betrayed, yet not. Almost as if he’d expected Abby to disappoint him back then.
Man, that was not something he wanted to examine too closely. At least not there, in an office conference room.
Rylan picked that moment to turn around and face the room. “Is everything okay between you two?”
Abby lifted her hand without looking in Rylan’s direction. “You remember Rylan.”
“Hard to forget.” Rylan was the kind of guy who lingered. Maybe not dangerous but not honest, either. Spence knew the other man was stringing the approval process out. He was either receiving a payment from a competing company under the table, or he had a crush on Abby. Spence hated both options. “Do we have the final okay to proceed?”
Rylan stepped up to the table. “Soon.”
A pounding started at the base of the back of Spence’s neck. “What does that mean?”
Rylan’s mouth opened and closed a few times before he actually stumbled and got a few words out. “There is still some work to be done.”
Ah, work. Sure. “Then why are you here instead of off doing it?”
Rylan glanced at Abby but she just smiled at him. That told Spence that she was sick of the stalling, too.
“This is a status meeting,” Rylan finally said.
“Didn’t you two meet about a week ago?” Spence leaned back in his chair, enjoying the line of sweat that appeared on Rylan’s forehead. “I’m asking but, see, I know that answer because I was there.”
“I also needed to deliver some documents to Abby.” Rylan picked his briefcase off the floor and took out a white envelope. He handed it to her without breaking eye contact with Spence.
She took it and tucked it into her file. “Thank you.”
Since she wasn’t balking at his heavy-handed behavior, Spence figured he had the green light to continue. Rylan stood frozen with his hand on the back of one of the chairs. He didn’t make a move to sit down or do anything that looked like work.
“And now you can go.” Spence made the words sound like an order.
It worked because Rylan took off on a frenzy of activity. He loaded up his briefcase and reached for his suit jacket. He nearly tripped over his own feet getting to the door. “I’ll call you as soon as I have the answers you need.”
The door slammed behind him. Then Spence was alone with Abby. He hoped this round would go better than the last few. Except for the kiss. He’d be happy to repeat that.
Abby flicked the pen back and forth between her fingers. She seemed calm, maybe even a little amused.
Spence was smart enough to know quiet sometimes meant dangerous. He seriously considered ducking.
She waited a few more minutes, drawing out the tension and letting it build before she talked. That pen kept twirling in the air. “Is your plan to walk into every meeting I have and bully people?”
The tone. So judging. “Have you always been this dramatic?”
She eyed him up. “Yesterday you sat in on a meeting at the office and never said a word.”
He suddenly felt sorry for the people who worked under her. She knew how to use that voice, that look, to set the tone. No one had to guess her mood. “I’m confused. You want me to talk, then you don’t.”
“It made people uncomfortable.”
He knew the feeling. “You mean you?”
The invisible hold pulling between them broke. She looked away as she shook her head. “Your ego is amazing.”
“Thank you.” He stretched his arm out along the table. Almost touched her but was smart enough not to try. “About Rylan.”
She straightened up the stack of papers in front of her. “We need him to sign off on a variety of environmental issues. He’s dragging his feet, but it will happen. You know that.”
So professional. Every word was true. That’s how the process worked, but Spence was talking about something very different. He sensed she knew that. “And you know he’s interested in more than hazardous waste.”
“He’s still within a reasonable time frame for getting the work done.”
An interesting answer. One he decided to hit head-on. “Are you ignoring his crush in order to smooth the way for our approvals?”
“You didn’t actually accuse me of using my looks to get what I want, so I’ll let that pass.” She stood up.
“I’m not a total jerk, Abby. I’m concerned that he’s making you uncomfortable or that he’s harassing you. Neither is okay.” Not liking the way it felt to sit while she loomed over him, he stood up, too. Kept his distance, or as much as being around the corner from each other at the table would allow. “I don’t want him crossing a line.”
Her eyes narrowed. It looked like she was studying him, trying to figure out if he was lying or not. “Women in the workplace have to maneuver through a labyrinth of ridiculous male behavior to get things done. But I have hard limits. I don’t sleep around to get what I want.”
The words struck right at the heart of their issues, but that’s not where he was going, and digging into the past would only shut down the conversation. “I wasn’t suggesting that.”
“You did before.”
He could not go back over that ground one more time. Part of him wanted to forgive and forget and move on. He didn’t know if he could, but he was sure she was not up for the “forget” part. “Abby.”
She went back to the papers. Stacked and restacked the same group twice before looking up at him again. “I’m just making my position clear since you think this has been an issue for me in the past. Don’t want to be wrongly accused again.”
“You’ll tell me if you need me to—”
“That’s the thing, Spence.” She dropped the papers she was holding and they fell against the table with a whoosh. “You can’t swoop in and fix this.”
“First, I do not swoop.”
She snorted. “If you say so.”
“Second, I don’t want any woman in this office to deal with nonsense.” And he meant that. The last few generations of Jameson men had issues with women. He was determined to break the cycle and he knew Derrick and Carter wanted that, too.
“That last part is a responsible and appropriate thing for a boss to say, and maybe even a little sweet, but it’s also impossible. There will always be some level of nonsense.”
The words deflated him. “I’m sorry.”
“For?”
The list was so damn long and went far beyond the topic they were discussing. “Everything? I’m really not sure, but I hate this feeling. The wall between us. The anger. The broken trust.”
She blew out a long breath. “It’s in the past. We should let it go.”
He knew that made sense but it sounded wrong. They kept going at each other, but under all that anger, all the frustration and disappointment, something else lingered. Something he wasn’t ready to let go of. “What if I don’t want it to stay in the past? We could go over it now.”
The color left her face. “Sometimes you need to move on.”
“And sometimes you need to stick around and fix things.” He stepped in closer and took her hands in his.
“You’re saying...”
He wasn’t even sure. “Finish the sentence.”
His thumb rubbed over the backs of her hands. A light caress over her smooth skin. Then his hand slipped up. To her wrist, then a bit higher. Fingers on bare skin.
She jerked away, pulling back and putting space between them again. Her hands visibly shook as she grabbed for her files and her phone. “Thanks for the offer of help with Rylan, but I’ve got this.”
He thought about stopping her, but now wasn’t the time. When she walked out the door, leaving it hanging wide-open behind her, he wondered if the time would ever be right.
* * *
An hour later, Spence turned up in Derrick’s office. He’d gotten back to his desk after the run-in with Abby and another half hour walking around the building, trying to make sense of the conflicting messages bombarding his brain, and saw the note. A summons of sorts.
Derrick started talking the minute Spence crossed the threshold to his plush corner office. “We have a problem.”
“Our father plans on visiting, so we have more than one.” Spence still hadn’t figured out how he was going to handle seeing him. They hadn’t spoken since the infamous kiss that ruined everything. Eldrick had tried in his usual smart-ass bragging way. Spence had ignored him and his envelope.
Derrick looked up as he settled back in his chair. “For once I’m not talking about him. I’m talking about you.”
Spence stopped in midstep across the room. “Excuse me?”
“There’s been a lot of talk in the office. Gossip.”
There always was. That was the nature of an office. People locked into a confined space all day. They were bound to get bored and start talking about nonwork things. Spence was sure Derrick hated that reality, but it was a fact. “Since when do you care about that?”
“People have noticed the tension between you and Abby. It’s been weeks and it’s not getting better.”
Spence felt something twist inside him. He made it to the chair across from Derrick but didn’t sit in in. He stood, gripping the back with a white-knuckled grip.
“What people?” Because Spence couldn’t tolerate people whispering about Abby. No matter what had happened between them now or back then, she was great at her job. She deserved the office’s respect. It was not as if the past was anyone else’s business anyway.
“People who work in this building. People with eyes.”
“Come on.” Spence refused to believe it was that widespread. He hadn’t even been home a month and except for the glass-walled office kiss, he’d been careful.
“You really don’t have any idea, do you?” Derrick rocked back and forth in his chair. “Well, the people who work here need to think that management is at least somewhat competent.”
Fair enough. “Isn’t it your job to install that faith?”
“When I’m not here, it’s yours.” Derrick leaned forward with his elbows balanced on the edge of his desk. “Which brings me to my point.”
Spence knew they’d get there eventually. “Feel free to skip any part of this lecture.”
“You need to get yourself in line.” Derrick dropped that bomb then stopped talking.
Figured, his brother picked now as the perfect time to get cryptic. Spence had that sort of luck. “That’s it?”
“Yes.”
“Your pep talks suck, Derrick.”
Light streamed in the window. Before Ellie, Derrick kept the blinds closed. Not anymore. That realization made Spence smile when nothing else about this talk did.
“You have a thing for Abby. That’s not new. It’s not a great idea in an office environment either, but with consent, open communication and ground rules it’s workable.” Derrick exhaled. “That’s direct from Human Resources, by the way. I needed to be able to sleep, so I checked.”
“This is about you now?”
“The point is you’re avoiding how you feel about her.” When Spence started to respond, Derrick talked right over him. “Unfortunately, that’s not new, either. But the mess is making people twitchy, so fix it.”
Spence’s fingers tightened on the back of the chair. “Is this some new Human Resources program I don’t know about? A sort of tough love thing?”
“The engagement party is back on. Business associates will be there. People from the office will be there. And Abby will be there.” Derrick looked less happy the longer he talked.
Spence heard about the party from Ellie, so this wasn’t exactly news. “Okay.”
“Inside and outside of the office, you need to either deal with the fact you have feelings for Abby or bury them deep enough that they’re no longer an issue.”
Burying them. He’d give anything to be able to do that. “We’re trying.”
Derrick shrugged. “I have no idea what that means.”
That made two of them. “To get along. We’re trying.”
Derrick laughed then. “How’s that going for you?”
“It’s a work in progress.”
* * *
Abby sat at her desk. She’d finally stopped shaking. Spence did that to her. Got her churned up then broke her down. She didn’t know how much more she could take.
With her door closed for a bit of privacy, she leaned back in the leather chair. Spun it around until she faced the windows. She looked out over the traffic. Watched a car weave in and out, riding right up on the bumpers of the ones in front of it. Talk about anxiety. It was enough to make her happy she took the metro or walked to most places.
After a few minutes, she spun her chair again. Looking at the files and the light flashing on her desk phone signaling messages, she thought about those brownies she got for Ellie. Those sounded good right now. Always, actually.
Her gaze fell on the school project file and a memory tugged at her. It took a few seconds, and then she remembered the envelope from Rylan. She reached into the folder and grabbed it. Tore the closed tab. The whole time she hoped this was work-related and not some sort of weird date invitation.
She slipped her fingers inside and took out the white piece of paper. The stationery made her heart stop. Her involuntary gasp filled the room. Berger & Associates. She knew the name all too well. Jameson’s direct competition on most prestigious commercial build-out jobs.
They’d once made her a job offer. Very lucrative. All she had to do was sell her soul and spill all the proprietary information she knew about Jameson’s financial dealings. Things that would give Berger the edge in bidding on jobs. Never mind that telling those secrets would likely get her sued by Derrick and make her an outcast in the DC business community.
But the timing had been interesting. Berger swooped in right after the kiss with Eldrick happened. It was as if they’d sensed her rage and vulnerability and pounced. Still, she turned them down. Angry or not, she would always turn that kind of offer down.
They’d tried a few times since but never with much enthusiasm. A call here. A stray comment at this meeting over there. Now this.
She scanned the note. It was terse and unsigned. Basically just a date and time for a meeting and the name of a restaurant in Foggy Bottom. Then there was the last line: “You don’t have a choice. Make this happen.”
For the fifth time today, she got dizzy and the world flipped upside down on her. The game never ended...no matter how tired she was of playing it.