His eyes slid over to Grace, and I felt myself grow annoyed.
“I can’t believe she told you,” I whisper shouted.
His smile was pure ‘cat ate the canary’.
“She didn’t tell me a thing. I was picking up on the vibes between you, but I’m glad to see I was right.”
I wanted to punch myself in the face for being so gullible.
“There’s nothing going on with us,” I insisted. “We’re just work partners. We hated each other in high school and don’t particularly like each other now.”
“Ah yeah, enemies to lovers is my favorite trope.” He looked delighted. “This will be so much fun.”
Out of the corner of my eye I saw Grace approaching us. Instinctively I straightened in my chair and subtly sucked in my stomach.
“What’s going on?” she asked suspiciously. “Are you hassling Nicole, Theo?”
Theo let out another one of his booming laughs.
“I’m merely getting to know our new partner, Gracie. You don’t need to worry.”
He got up and patted her on the shoulder as he walked by.
“She’s all yours.”
Somehow that sounded dirty, or maybe that was a figment of my overactive imagination.
“How do you like the team?” she asked, dropping into the chair next to mine.
“They’re awesome,” I said truthfully. “You and Maeve and Ariel have really built something great here, something you can be proud of.”
She gave me something I’d never gotten from her before: a sincere smile.
“Thanks, I appreciate that. I need to work on some things for my job here at AGM, but maybe we can touch base later?”
“Sure, that works.”
I got up, gesturing to my team members who were lingering by the table filled with coffee and pastries. I’d say one thing for AGM, they were great hosts.
“I’ll see you later.”
For some ridiculous reason I put out my hand to shake, even though we had never done that before. Grace didn’t hesitate, her soft fingers wrapping around mine. It was a mistake, something I realized as soon as little jolts of electricity started shooting up my fingers on a direct path to my core.
We stood completely still, our hands joined, staring at each other. It was like I was in some kind of a trance, and so was Grace, because she wasn’t exactly pulling away.
“Are you ready to head back Nicole?”
My coworker’s voice broke through the haze, and I stepped back, resisting the urge to rub my hand.
“I, uh, I’ll talk to you later.”
Grace just nodded. For the first time since I’d met her, she seemed at a loss for words.
Grace
This damned project was going to kill me.
First of all, the workload was crushing. These damned bureaucrats at the city had given us an impossibly tight deadline for such a big project. Second, coordinating with three different firms made everything more complicated. Thank God that Ariel had tasked Theo with managing our joint project tracking chart, it was the only thing that made me feel like I had an idea what was going on.
