Not Safe for Work(37)

And a long, long night.

As subtly as I could, I took and released a deep breath. I willed my heart to slow down. And my cock…f*ck…

Baseball. Old Yeller. Food poisoning.

Okay. That was helping. Just had to keep thinking about anything that wasn’t a turn-on, and—

I let my gaze drift toward Rick, and no amount of unpleasant thoughts could turn me off.

He was focused—or appeared to be focused—on whatever Mitchell was talking about. Elbow pressed against the armrest, chin cradled in his hand with his middle finger across his lip. Nothing out of the ordinary. Nothing at all.

Nothing except that sheen of sweat along his hairline. Or the way he held perfectly still, conspicuously still, not even idly twisting his chair back and forth like Dion did beside him. Every time he did move, his discomfort registered on his face. Lips twitching. Jaw clenching. Brow knitting together.

So much for turning myself off.

By the grace of God, we both made it through the meeting. As everyone stood, I heard Dion ask him, “You all right? You’ve been walking like an old man today.”

“Yeah, I’m good. Just”—Rick’s eyes flicked toward me, and his cheeks colored. “I’m good.”

“Sure about that? You’re moving almost as fast as Kyle was after he pulled his groin. What’d you do, take up basketball or something?”

I didn’t hear Rick’s response because Marie was herding Teagan and me out into the hallway. Oh, if Dion only knew. Maybe he hadn’t called the injury, but he’d certainly zeroed in on the right region.

“Any changes on ETAs?” Marie asked, as if there wasn’t a walking—well, limping—distraction in the conference room behind me.

“I’ll be finished with the piece for Spry Enterprises by noon tomorrow,” Teagan said. “After that, do you want me to start on the museum for Horizon? Or keep going on the Spry project?”

Marie pursed her lips. “You know what? Go ahead and keep up on Spry. You’ve already started, so wrap it up and get it out of your hair. We’ve still got some time on the museum.” She paused. “Unless you think it’ll take longer?”

Teagan shrugged. “I’ll look over the blueprints for both projects when I get back to my desk, and I’ll let you know before the end of the day.”

“Good. Perfect.” Marie turned to me. “What about you?”

I’m about as focused as Rick right now.

“Just about done with my current project, and I’ll do like Teagan—e-mail you with a tentative schedule for my next few.”

She nodded. “Excellent.”

She dismissed us, and we headed for the elevator.

“We’d be a lot further along if we didn’t have to go to these stupid meetings,” Teagan grumbled.

“No kidding.” I glanced over my shoulder just in case there was a client or bigwig within earshot. “But you’ve got to admit, if they make some major change to something we’re about to start building, it’s good to get the heads-up. Especially if it’s going to get hung up in Codes & Regs.” Our Codes & Regulations department was notorious for dragging their feet with updated drawings, and Teagan and I had both entertained fantasies of slapping the hell out of the engineers when they notified us of a change after we’d already spent hours or days on a model. As much as these meetings sucked, sometimes they were our only warning, and wasting an hour or two here saved us days or even weeks.

“Well.” She scowled. “You would think they could just e-mail us and tell us if anything like that came up during a meeting.”

“You would think. But you know damn well if someone didn’t convey that information, it’d be our fault for not being there to hear it ourselves.”

She muttered something incoherent. Then, “So I wonder what Pierce did to himself.” She smirked. “How much you want to bet there’s a woman limping even harder than he is right now? Oh! You think he nailed two at the same time?”

The thought of Rick in bed with two women damn near short-circuited my brain. And oh, what Teagan would’ve thought if she’d known who he’d really been in bed with. Or why he was moving so gingerly.

“Jesus, Teagan.” I clicked my tongue. “Are you and Bianca writing Rick Pierce fanfic these days or something?”

“No, but…” She stroked her chin thoughtfully. “That could be fun. Pierce porn.”

I rolled my eyes. “You two are incorrigible.”

“Whatever. If they still brought their COO to these meetings, you’d be ogling her and you know it.”

Fair point. The COO of Horizon Developing was gorgeous and she took crap from no one. Between her and Rick, it was a wonder I’d never started openly drooling on the conference room table.

“Something wrong with you today, McNeill?” Teagan asked. “One minute, you’re snickering at something, and the next you’re staring off into space.”

“And this is new?”

“Okay, no, but you’re doing it more than usual.”

I shrugged. “Nah, it’s nothing. Right now, though, I’m trying to work out how to finish my model before the weekend so I don’t end up on overtime.”

“You and me both. Guess we’d better get cracking.”