Butterflies in Honey (Growing Pains #3)(32)

“Oh. Okay,” she said, deflated. She was prepared for war on that one. At the last minute she threw up a finger, “But if I don’t feel like taking notes, I won’t!”

“Deal.”

“Fine. Now get out. You’ve sucked me into the rumor mill and everyone keeps staring into my office.”

“I sucked you in? I think that if you replay that slap, you might come up with a different conclusion.”

“Yeah, sorry about that. I didn’t intend to get violent.”

Sean got up and shrugged good-naturedly. “I’ve had worse.”

“I’ve already apologized for that,” she said without thinking.

Sean’s body went rigid and he turned to her. They had a silent beat reliving their mutual past with Jim before he let out a breath. “Well, I’ll just have to watch your bad moods—“

He stopped mid-sentence, his eyes snagging on her desk. Incredulity and surprise warred on his face. When his eyes hit hers again, they were stuffed full to dripping with love.

Confused at the sudden transformation, Krista looked where his eyes had stopped. Her lucky mug grinned back.

“Oh. Yeah.” She shrugged. “What can I say—it was lucky. I didn’t want to part with it.”

Sean looked at her like he knew the subtext—I didn’t want to part with you. His look of tenderness nearly had her tear ducts going active.

“Stop staring,” Krista said to pass the moment, “it’s making me nervous.”

Sean cleared his throat. “Sorry. I thought it would have jumped off your desk by now.” He meant the comment to be light, but his voice was thick with feeling. He obviously knew what her lucky mug meant to her, as she figured. And he knew her keeping it meant her holding onto the memory of him. Of their time together. It was exasperating.

“Nah, no incident. But then, it hasn’t been in your office in years. Who’s to say what’ll happen in our weekly meetings?”

“Well,” Sean said, trying not to stare fixedly at Krista, and failing. “I’ll try to be careful.”

“Okay, go away now. You’re freaking me out.”

He smiled slightly. Then he turned to leave.

It was the Monday before the big convention. Marcus was beside himself excited to have his sole function be his favorite hobby—gossip. He had dragged Krista out shopping and made her spend a month’s salary on clothes. He wanted her looking her best, but didn’t trust her fashion choices. Then he just went wild. It was partly Krista’s fault. Marcus had great style; so after a while, she just said yes to everything but the most slutty of his choices.

Krista was on her way to the fifth floor conference room for a last meeting before the conference. Sean wanted to see where everyone was and give them time to work on his notes before they all took, what was basically, a working holiday. Krista wasn’t worried, of course. In the last month, she had gotten through Sean’s list, taken over Phil’s spot, changed a bunch of procedures, become further entrenched with her reputation as a bitch, was more hated by the other managers if that were possible (she still had no idea why), and got Kate up to speed. She hadn’t had much time for a social life, but realized with dread she didn’t really want one. She didn’t want to think about anything personal. She wasn’t ready to try and get through the pain. When she was working, her mind was elsewhere.

She walked into the spacious conference and took a seat in an older, uncomfortable brown chair. Sean had yet to update the company facilities and it showed. The pictures looked like something someone picked up at a garage sale, the chairs must have been twenty years old, and the table had long since lost its shine. Still, they were conference rooms—they did what they set out to do.

It turned out that Krista was the only young person in the upper management circle in her region. She was the only woman in any of the regions, actually—that had been a shock. There was a woman manager in France, and another in Australia, but that was about it. Theoretically, that was awful, but Krista never really thought or dwelled on it. Or anything, actually. She just worked. She pushed aside everything else, went as numb as possible, and worked. End of story.

She put all her materials out, ignored the other guys sitting there—they were asses for the most part—and waited for the meeting to start. She didn’t bother saying ‘hello,’ since they’d just ignore her anyway, so she stared out the window and thought about what she would wear on the plane on Thursday—the convention was half of Thursday, Friday, Saturday, then back on Sunday. Through the fog, she heard someone say her name.

Three of the other four managers were sitting down at the table, all looking at her.

“What’s up?” she asked.

“We were wondering what you thought of the baseball game?” It was Bob. He was nearly three hundred pounds, balding, sweaty, and liked to let his beady eyes stray to her chest. Krista didn’t care about his existence enough to hate the guy, but she definitely wanted to make him look like a fool.

Currently he was trying to show everyone what an outcast she was—as if they needed the reminder; she was the only person under thirty and the only female. Outcast status was a given—it didn’t need to be pointed out. Still, he thought it his duty to reinforce the boys’ club.

“Those who can play sports, play sports. Those who can’t, or don’t, are cheerleaders.” Krista waited a second to let that sink into his thick head before she continued with a trite, “What color are your pom-poms?”