Nate smiled as he pressed the red button to end the call. Alex had started using that little phrase way before Nate had met him. It made him smile, because Alex was such a funny, weird little man sometimes.
Laurel
Nate beat her to the office that morning, and she hated that. She felt it gave him the upper hand. In what, she had no idea. But his eyes were on her as soon as she walked through the door. Which was annoying because the five minutes she normally took at her desk to orientate herself, make sure her makeup was alright, have a glass of ice water and prep herself for the day felt strangely pressurised.
‘Morning,’ she said, turning her computer on. ‘You’re here early.’
‘Catches the worm.’
Laurel looked at him, because that was a saying that her grandmother used to rock out.
‘Besides, I live close.’ Nate tried a smile on her.
Laurel would have bet anything that he was wondering whether she’d decided to take him up on his ‘get to know him’ offer. Start again, afresh, ignore what happened ten years ago.
As it was, she’d deliberately not obsessed over Nate’s offer of friendship, of putting a decade-old hurt to bed. If she’d let herself think about it, then she would have spent all night visualising what being friends with Nate Daley meant, running through different conversations in her head, and ultimately not sleeping because she didn’t know him well enough to accurately predict his answers. So, like any self-respecting Fletcher, she’d ignored it. Well, until this morning on her drive to work.
Nate pushed himself up from his table, and grabbed a mug from his desk, looking dangerously edible and flashing that little trail of hair that paved the way into his jeans.
‘Here, I made you a cup of tea.’ He put it on the edge of her desk and looked at her, challenging her to snap at him, to be rude, to give him the excuse to have the upper hand.
‘I don’t drink tea,’ she said. ‘Well, I do sometimes, but not first thing in the morning.’
He looked taken aback, and she wasn’t surprised; who didn’t drink tea in the morning? Laurel had to be in the mood for hot drinks, and people who drank tea when it was promising to be a disgustingly hot British summer day? Yeah, they were weird.
‘Oh, alright.’
He was like a wounded puppy, his bottom lip popping out in a small pout as he reached for the poor neglected cup.
It wasn’t that Nate had been right about starting again, or whatever. It was more that Laurel had realised that she was thirty-two and had absolutely no need to behave like she was twenty. Again. She could let him have a space in her office and she could be accommodating. But they didn’t have to be best friends.
‘But it was very kind of you to think of me. Thank you.’
Why so formal? Oh, that’s right, because she wasn’t sure how to do ‘getting to know you’. Wasn’t sure how to behave around him without the crippling fear of embarrassment dictating her every move. Or perhaps it was because she had literally no idea how to converse with anyone outside of her family, her business acquaintances and her Tinder dates.
Nate glanced at her as he sat down, now with two cups of tea to slurp from, and she smiled a little at him. Not a sarcastic one, not one that didn’t reach her eyes, but a proper one, a ‘yes, we can cohabit this space for a little bit’ smile.
Nate looked at her, narrowing his eyes slightly, his mouth curving on one side in what could have been intrigue, or confusion. Or possibly wind.
The moment stretched as they watched each other, and Laurel’s mouth lost all ability to produce saliva. Her lips parted because breathing through her nose just wasn’t cutting it.
One thing was for certain, and that was that Nate Daley was, and there was simply no way other way of putting it, sexy. Sexy as hell.
Laurel would have to be very careful, very careful indeed.
Nate
Nate was confused. What type of weirdo didn’t like tea in the morning? The weirdo that he was sharing an office with, obviously.
What else was wrong with her? Perhaps she peeled her face off at night to let the demon inside her get some airtime. Perhaps she kept the bones of baby lambs and bunnies to boil up, make a nice stock base for risotto.
These were the things Nate was thinking about as he typed and deleted, typed and deleted. Full sentences were not his friend and it was because he was distracted by the ridiculous ‘thank you for thinking of me’. What even was that? Was that her version of nice?
Regardless, he’d spotted her chest flush, watched the way her legs had uncrossed and crossed again under the desk.
Trying to put thoughts aside of what he would do if he got his hands on Laurel Fletcher’s legs, because that was never going to happen, Nate clicked open the third email from Alex with ‘OPEN ME YOU PRICK’ in the subject line.
Ah, okay. He could deal with this. Alex was coming next week, and that was okay. The dig just wouldn’t be as far along as he had originally planned for with Jane. As well as next week, Alex was coming in a month’s time. He’d already booked rooms at the Dog & Gun in town. It would be nice to see Alex, nice to spend some time with him. Nate would just have to get in the mood, and that would be fine. He could do that.
