Lost and Found (Growing Pains #1)(33)

Sean picked up the phone and started dialing. This was another power play tactic, she was sure of it. They were in the middle of a serious conversation, but he would render her unimportant by doing other things. In other words, she didn’t have his undivided attention. The sneaky bastard.

Whatever, she could play this game, too. In fact, a break from critical thinking was welcomed, her head was pounding. She put her lucky mug on the desk and leaned back, mirroring the guy next to her, and waited patiently for Sean to get off the phone.

“Hyenas, not wolves.” He said into the receiver. It took her a minute to realize he was talking to her. “They weren’t smart enough to be wolves. Hello, John?”

It felt like cold water was splashed in her face. Sean was calling his boss. That couldn’t be good.

She nearly grabbed her lucky mug in panic, but that would lose the power struggle—assuming she had any power to begin with. Instead, she pretended like nothing was amiss and leaned back in her chair. For good measure, she crossed one leg over the other.

She used the down-time to pretend her head wasn’t exploding, and that she didn’t need to throw up. She thought of the beach, then her bed. She tried her best to emulate a breezy life, cutting out this office and her overwhelming urge to bury her head in her shirt and hope it’d all just go away. Maintaining any degree of normalcy was made that much harder, though, with the guy next to her and his friendly smile. He looked worried.

“Yeah,” Sean was saying, “I have Krista in my office.” He looked up at her. His eyes sparkled burnished-green fire as they caught the light. A surge of heat erupted in her groin, scurrying the butterflies in her stomach.

Oh God, please don’t throw up!

That guy next to her eyeballed her again. Did he realize how exasperating that was? She was concentrating on not throwing up. She didn’t have time to focus on his judgments!

“Do you have a minute?” Sean was saying, as he continued to look at her. “...Yeah, Krista from Research is--….Yeah, she came first thi--…Yeah…Great.”

He hung up the phone and leaned back in his chair. His gaze flickered to her lucky mug, then to Ray. “Ray, would you mind getting John a chair? He won’t use it, but the pretense is always nice.”

“No problem,” Ray said as he left the office, closing the door on his way out. That was the wrong decision for air flow. Now she was in a medium-sized room with warm air and Sean’s stinky scent. Usually, she loved the smell. Today, smell of any kind was an enemy.

She gulped, but did her best to remain calm and unaffected. She grabbed her mug and took a sip. Cold coffee. That did not help her queasy stomach.

She took a deep breath and pretended she wasn’t sweating. This whole situation was going completely pear-shaped.

“In response to your question,” Sean said, still leaning back in his chair, his eyes following the progression of the mug. “I didn’t want you in the room to distract our clients. Two of them didn’t hear a word from your mouth or notice a line from your power-point presentation. The other one only caught the broad strokes.”

“Yeah, I know the information is boring,” she said, fanning herself, eyeing the trash can again, “but it was all I had to work with. Our department is the facts, not the visual stimulation.”

“Oh, you provided ample stimulation, just not in the direction that was conducive to the meeting.” He had a mouthwatering, devilish grin on his face behind his steeped fingers. His bemused eyes willed her to share the joke. Unfortunately, she didn’t think that kind of humor was funny.

At least not when he said it.

“Okay, well that may be true, through no fault of mine since I was appropriately dressed, but that one client did pay attention and asked a question that I had no business answering. You should have answered it.”

“But he asked you.”

“It wasn’t a question for me, as you well know, Jingle-Jangle. You’re a good enough salesman to know your role.”

“Jingle--?” Sean shook his head with a smile, then got serious. That focused look was back. “Yes, I am. And do.”

To her undying relief, he reached back and switched on the fan before he continued. “My role is to get that sale. To get that account. Your role is to help me do that. The question was asked of you. I thought you could handle answering it without being mothered or treated like a puppet.”

“But isn’t that just what you did? Treat me like a puppet?”

Sean unexpectedly gave that uninhibited laugh she loved, the one that hinted of another guy, a carefree guy she’d like to know. Her heart started pounding again. She looked away from his sparkling green eyes as her breath ran short.

“Touché,” he said quietly, reeling her eyes back to him.

She had enough time to recognize a look of hunger, and feel a worrying surge of desire, before she was saved by Ray opening the door with a chair. John was right behind him.

Krista didn’t bother masking the loud sigh of relief.

John came in to perch on the desk on Krista’s side of the office, all his attention on her. Ray closed the door and took a seat, moving his chair away from her a little, and Sean leaned back. Krista was suddenly extremely nervous. John usually didn’t have this effect on her, but usually she wasn’t worried about being fired, either.

She put her mug on the desk so her sudden onslaught of Parkinson’s didn’t upset her cold coffee.