Page 6 of One Little Favor
CHAPTER3
AVERY
I clench and unclench my hand in the elevator as I glance down at the three gallons of paint at my feet. Carrying them from the security desk in the lobby to the elevator just about broke my fingers.
“So, do you think I should bring it?” Mom asks through my earbuds, bringing me back to our conversation.
“Sorry, Mom. Bring what? I’m in the elevator and I think you cut out for a second.” More like my brain mentally cut out. I’m slightly distracted after having stayed up half the night planning out the look of Tom’s new office—new paint and some new furniture doesn’t seem like it’d be that hard to pick out, but if I’m doing this, I want it to be spectacular. I want people to walk into his office and think, “Wow, I wasn’t expecting this.”
“Dad’s walker,” Mom says as the sound of her zipping up a suitcase whistles in the background.
“He hardly ever needs it,” I remind her. “Maybe just contact the cruise company and ask if they have that type of thing on board for emergencies? They probably do.”
“That’s a good suggestion,” Mom says.
As the elevator approaches our floor, I bend down to pick up the gallons of paint and swallow down the butterflies that tumble around my belly at the thought of being alone with my boss in an empty office this weekend.
Because the images running through my mind—me pressed up against his office door with my legs wrapped around his hips and my skirt pushed up over my waist, or him bending me over his desk, or me on his lap in his chair with my thong slid to the side under my skirt as he touches me—are all based on my fantasies when I’m home alone. Thank goodness I can compartmentalize those fantasies; otherwise, I’m not sure how I’d manage to get any work done with him on the other side of his office door.
Totally inappropriate, I remind myself. But there’s never been anything appropriate about my attraction to Tom.
My relationship with my ex-boyfriend, Logan, ended because of his jealousy over Tom. How I’d drop anything if he needed me, how I’d talk about him even when I wasn’t at work. Logan was convinced there was something going on between us, even though neither one of us haseverstepped a toe over that line.
I take a deep breath, reminding myself that I need this job, and I can’t do anything to jeopardize it. I make very good money here, and there’s no way a night with Tom would ever be worth more than helping my parents—two of the loveliest people in the world, who have never done anything but love and support me.
“You okay?” Mom asks.
“Yep,” I tell her right as the elevator dings. “Just carrying something heavy.”
I step through the elevator doors, wincing as the handles of the paint cans cut into my bent fingers, and Tom is standing there. He’s wearing worn-in jeans, an old Columbia hoodie, and suede sneakers. His hair’s a little messed up, a lock of it falling across his forehead. He looks ... adorable. Not devastatingly handsome, like when he’s in the suits he wears to work, but cute and comfortable.
“Hey,” he says, “why didn’t you call me to come help you? I would have met you downstairs.”
“I’ve got to go, Mom,” I say into my earbuds, and he looks like he didn’t even realize I had them on, despite the black cords dangling from my ears. “I’m at work.”
“On a Saturday?”
“Yep. I’ll call you later, okay?”
We say our goodbyes, and she hangs up just as I hand him two of the gallons to free up one of my hands. Then I shove my earbuds into my coat pocket with my phone.
He shifts the two paint cans up so he’s cradling them in one arm, then he reaches over to the reception desk and hands me a coffee and a small brown paper bag that was sitting there. “I got you breakfast.”
This is such a role reversal that I’m surprisingly touched. To cover up the lump that rises in my throat, I say, “I didn’t know you actually knew how to get breakfast.”
“Smart ass,” he says, but he presses his lips together like he’s trying not to smile.
“Pretty much,” I say as I take the coffee and the bag from him with one hand, trying not to notice how his lips twitch again at my response, and how much I like it. “Do you want to go downstairs and get the rest of the supplies from the security desk, or do you want me to?”
“I’ll get them.” He sets the two gallons of paint I’d handed him on the curved stone countertop of the receptionists’ desk, and uses his chin to gesture to the space beyond the frosted glass wall that readsCallahan, MacDonald, Reardon & Shepherdin gold lettering. “You go eat.”
I leave the paint—the least Tom can do is carry it back to his office—and take my breakfast. I stop at my desk to pour my coffee from the travel cup it came in to one of my mugs from the collection that sits on the wall shelf to the right of my desk. I choose the pink one that hasCoffee makes me feel less murderywritten in black hand-lettered script. It feels appropriate for this morning, because too little sleep and having to work all weekend, combined with my parents leaving on a cruise and knowing that I’m facing Christmas week alone ... I’m feeling kind of murdery myself.
Deep breaths,I remind myself,you can get through spending two days alone with him.The overtime I’ll get this weekend will be enough to pay for Dad’s physical therapy for the next month, if not more, and I need that.
I take my cup of coffee and the bag with my pastry through the open door into Tom’s office so I can have a look around and make sure everything I’ve planned out is going to work. But as I walk across the room, the sun peeks out above the buildings of lower Manhattan, which rise in the distance. It’s such a spectacular sight that I walk around behind Tom’s desk so I’m facing the windows. Moving his chair to the side with my hip, I lean back against his desk and take a sip of my coffee. I pull the pastry from the bag with my free hand and relax as I take a few bites, letting the almond paste and the sugary frosting drizzled across the pastry melt on my tongue as I watch the sun rise higher in the sky.
I consider that maybe I wouldn’t mind getting to work so early if I got to see the sun rise above the buildings like this from a corner office. The windows in my own space face north, so while I get natural light, there isn’t much of a sunrise or sunset view. I take another sip of coffee, so wrapped up in the beauty of the moment that the “Damn, that was a lot of stuff!” coming from just over my shoulder shocks me.
