Lost and Found (Growing Pains #1)(37)

If her boss were cool, she would share that hilarious thought process. She looked up at Mr. Montgomery in expectation, then said, “Oh.”

“Yeah, he said something about working with that Sean on some project for the company? Did he mention that to you?”

This was dicey. Krista didn’t want Mr. Montgomery to think she was in league with the enemy, which was Sales, but she also liked the prospect of working with younger, livelier people, so she wanted to give this idea a shot. She just didn’t know how to work with John to get Mr. Montgomery to agree.

She chose the “Sales-sucks-and-I-am-a-woman-therefore-I-have-a-small-brain” approach.

“I went to talk to Sean about the presentation because I hadn’t heard how it went--no one called me after.” She gave a sigh and rolled her eyes, playing up Mr. Montgomery’s bitterness. As hoped, he also sighed and leaned more comfortably on the wall.

“Sean said I did okay,” she continued, “then John, ah, Mr. Susan came in and said I did a good job and talked about some ideas, but he wasn’t making all that much sense. He moved around a lot, so I just kind of smiled and nodded. Maybe that was what he was talking about?”

Playing dumb was easy for a blond girl—no one thought they had a brain in the first place. Some people played the race card, others the glass ceiling issue—Krista played the idiot factor, and it worked better than any other excuse. Granted, she couldn’t use it in her favor as often, but when she could, it was the golden ticket with no raised eyebrows.

“He does talk fast, yeah. You have to really keep up to make sense of him. I’ve been here fifteen years and I am just now getting a handle on his tactics.” Mr. Montgomery shook his head then went on. “Well, I hesitate to loan out our newest star, but Mr. Susan has made it perfectly clear that he will personally block any attempts I make to give you that promotion if I don’t give in.”

“Oh.” She didn’t have to reach far to sound deflated. “Well, I don’t really want to be a salesman. It isn’t the job I signed on for.”

“Oh I agree, yes,” he said, now looking at a framed picture of her and a friend from college. “But you would still be working for me. You would just be working on one specific project with some team Mr. Susan put together.”

“Oh. Well, that wouldn’t be so bad, then, I guess.” She sounded more hopeful, but still nonchalant. Maybe she should have been in sales.

“Yeah. That’s what I was thinking. Yeah. Hmmm. Well, I’ll see what Mr. Susan will do for you in terms of what I already promised.”

That was one good thing about Mr. Montgomery—he always tried to get something out of the company. It didn’t matter if it was for himself or his crew, it didn’t matter if it was money or a new microwave for the break room; if there was a chance he could get the company to spend money, he would drop everything and pursue it.

He muttered something else she didn’t catch, probably “Yeah,” his favorite catch phrase, and wandered away. She just shook her head and went back to her work. It was out of her hands now.

The day after Krista had just finished a report that was supposed to take her all day, and was about to step out for a late lunch, when the phone rang from conference room B. It was true that she was a fast worker, but these deadlines were ridiculous! If they didn’t have the giant database with pre-completed reports, she might understand, but as it was, the amount of time she wasted emailing her friends and shopping online was staggering. In order to have work all day, or most of the day, anyway, she would have to work at a snail’s pace.

She grabbed the phone, thinking about restaurant choices, and said, “Research, Krista speaking.”

“Krista.” Her mind snapped away from sandwiches and clung to the plastic earpiece pressed painfully against her head. She couldn’t help it, she loved the way Sean said her name. The nuance of it. The tone. It was like he reached through the phone and licked her ear.

She was going to get in so much trouble from Kate.

She decided not to give him the satisfaction of recognition. Plus, he was on speaker. Lord only knew who was listening in. “Yes?”

“This is Sean.” He paused, and when she didn’t fill the space—maybe she was taking the failure to recognize a little far—he said, “McAdams.”

“Oh yes, hi.”

“You’ve been successfully assigned to my team. Could you please come up to conference room B? I would like to speak with you.”

Krista had a rush of pleasure before she could stop herself. She pushed it down fiercely.

“Oh, sure. Do I need to bring anything besides a notepad?”

“Just your winning personality.”

Trying not to roll her eyes, she hung up. Then tried to control her elation as she made her way upstairs. She told herself, over and over, that she was excited to see her lucky mug, and that was it. As she walked in, excitement unfurling from her gut, she looked around at five faces, one being extremely gorgeous in another perfectly fitting suit that hopefully had her mug.

She met Sean’s clear green gaze as he glanced up at her, did a once over on her body, and returned to the report he was working on. Excitement turned to uncertainty as three sets of eyes settled on her, judgment plain on their faces.

“Great,” Ray said as he stood and walked toward the front of the room. His wasn’t one of the three. “Krista, I’ll get you some water.”