Breene, K F - Growing Pains 01 (25 page)

They exited the parking garage into
the mild, late winter day.

“Where to?” Sean asked.

“46th and Quintara.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, I know, way out there.”

“Do you surf?”

“Funny story. I intended to when I
moved out from
Seattle
, but …”

“What happened?”

“The temperature of the water.”

Sean barked a laugh, “Say no more.”

“Do you know the way?” Krista
asked, scanning the streets with squinting eyes.

“Sure do.”

They sat in silence for a second
before Krista ventured to speak, “So…”

“Sew buttons.”

“About what happened earlier…with
the…episode I had…“

“When you turned into a vampire,
you mean?”

“Yeah, about that. Sorry that I…you
know…”

“Tried to suck my blood?”

Krista blew out her breath. “Yeah.
I wasn’t in my right mind. I don’t usually make it a habit of going around...”

“Chewing on people’s necks?”

Krista laughed nervously, “That,
yeah.”

“What was up with that? Did my
stink overcome you and you turned werewolf or something?”

She laughed again, more relaxed now
that he was laughing it off. She looked out the window. “I was daydreaming
about Brad Pitt, I guess.”

“Oh yeah, I get that all the time.
The likeness is uncanny, so I’m told.”

She rolled her eyes. “You look
exactly like him, sure. You could be his wax statue.”

“His wax statue?” Sean laughed.
“Tell me honestly… You were actually going for my jugular, weren’t you?”

She gave another relieved laugh.
“You caught me. I figured I’d end it there, but then I realized that Marcus
would tell and I didn’t feel like going to jail.”

“Consider me warned.”

They drove for a while longer in
silence. Krista turned to him suddenly.

“You’re happy to finally get to
meet Ben, aren’t you?” she asked suspiciously.

It was one of the reasons he was in
such a good mood, just about the only one that he’d openly admit. “Guilty. I
want to see if he is as good as he seems. And if he is, I want access to him.
We could use him.”

“He’s in school. He only works
part-time.”

“Good. He’s cheaper. If he is a
fast worker, we only need him part-time.”

“He’s terribly slow with art.”

“You probably think that because
you get bored watching him do it.”

“And listening to him talk about
it.”

Sean laughed as they pulled onto
Krista’s street. She directed him to her house then jumped out to get Ben, who
answered the door with arms full of what could only be called junk.

“What are you mak—actually, no,
never mind. C’mon.” Krista took a large piece of Styrofoam and turned back to
the car.

“I ate your pizza,” Ben said as he
navigated down the steps.

“You ate my pizza?” Krista whined.

“I am doing you a favor over finals
weekend. You owe me. I decided that pizza was the payment.”

“Can I help?” Sean asked, not sure
what to grab because there were pipes and ribbon and all manner of odd things.

“There is more in the house,” Ben
threw his head toward the open door, getting to the sidewalk. “Is this the
car?”

“Sean, you owe me pizza,” Krista
yelled after him. “And I want Goat Hill because it is delicious and I was
really looking forward to it.”

Sean passed her with a pile of
pipes. “Done. I’ll buy, you get delivery.”

Ben gave Sean direction on how best
to fit it in the trunk. Then the boys faced each other.

“I’m Sean.” He extended his hand.

“The Captain?” Ben asked, shaking
hands.

Sean smiled. “I loved what you did
with Krista’s presentation.”

“Oh, that was easy.” Ben cast his
eyes at the ground. “You should see what she does with my finances.”

“C’mon,” Krista said, getting into
the car.

“I think I put her in a bad mood,”
Sean apologized.

Ben stepped around him toward the
back door on Krista’s side. “Oh no, I knew full well what I’d get if I ate her
pizza. She gets cranky when she’s hungry. Or when you eat leftovers she was
looking forward to. She’ll get over it.”

Sean crossed to the driver’s side
as the other man got into the car. Ben was a trip. Small, nerdy, mousy—he
wasn’t a type of guy Sean had ever hung out with—which was about to change. Ben
obviously knew Krista well, which meant they were friends. It was another “in”
to her life, and Sean would take everything he could get. He wanted to get bit
again.

When Sean crawled in, the two were
sitting in silence. “All set?”

“Yup,” Ben said, crossing his hands
on his lap. Krista looked out the window.

“Kris, I didn’t have any choice.
You can just order more,” Ben said reasonably.

“I know. I need a minute to mope.”

“Are you like this with all food,
or just pizza?” Sean asked as he started the car.

“Never touch her chocolate,” Ben
declared as he looked over his pile of art in the back seat.

“So what are you working on?” Sean
asked Ben.

Krista immediately zoned out. Once
Ben got going he was unstoppable, and it all sounded harebrained. To Krista, a
sculpture made out of junk was still just a pile of junk. To Ben, it was an
expression of humanity’s struggle with garbage. And he was paying top dollar to
express that. Purely illogical.

Once they got to the building and
parked, Krista and Sean helped Ben carry all his crap up to the office Sean
would soon move into. Apparently Ben would get to work in the art department
later, after Sean was sure everyone had gone home. They all walked in to the
giant office, equipped with a bookcase, a giant desk, a table with chairs
around it, and a great view.

“Nice life,” Ben said, looking
around. “It’s bigger than my bedroom.”

“It was not easy to get.” Sean
crossed to a visitor chair and pointed for Ben to take the plush leather seat
behind the desk. Ben looked way out of place.

“Krista, show him what we got and
what we need,” Sean said as he leaned back, closed his eyes and crossed his
ankle over his knee.

“Please,” she replied in her
mother’s voice.

“S’il te plaȋt,” Sean said in
French with a smirk. Krista got a zing in her stomach that he used the familiar
form. Also that he even knew it. “But first, look in the right top desk
drawer.”

Krista slid the drawer open and stared
down at a well-organized drawer full of office supplies.

“Right desk drawer.”

“Oh,” Krista said, not quite done
moping about her pizza. She’d grown up with a little sister who ate everything
of Krista’s. Literally everything. Ice cream was the worst. When you got home
after school and you wanted your Rocky Road, especially after thinking about it
all day, and you opened the carton, so excited, and you found … an empty
freaking carton with a note that said, “Loser!” it really killed a girl’s mood.
It didn’t matter where she hid her food, either, her sister found it and ate
it—even the stuff the wench didn’t like.

It was now one of her biggest pet
peeves.

She opened the drawer and found a
Snickers.

“Will that help?” Sean asked,
observing her.

Krista snatched it and met his
sparkling green eyes. “You keep candy in your desk?”

“Snickers for when I can’t get out
to lunch and need a lift, but I’ll start stocking more from now on.”

“Wise,” Ben nodded.

Krista held on to the Snickers as
she leaned over Ben and logged into the computer. She accessed the art database
and presentation, both showing him the research, which he blinked at and shook
his head, and then the art portion.

When she was done, he said, “That’s
a mess.”

“Can you put it together?” Sean
asked, hope replaced with worry.

“Well, do you have any other
pictures? Those don’t really go with what you’re trying to convey.”

“Show him the files,” Sean gave a
vague motion with his finger.

“Please,” Krista said again, hiding
a chuckle as she clicked the mouse over Ben’s shoulder.

Sean sighed. “Pretty please.”

“Don’t sigh around Jasmine,” Ben
said as his eyes followed Krista’s hands on the keyboard. “She’ll flick you in
the head. It hurts.”

Sean sat forward laughing as Krista
showed Ben how to search the database. Ben was a smart kid—it took him one pass
and he was on his own. He made happy sounds of an art nerd’s wet dream. It took
him all of fifteen minutes to find what he was after, then another fifteen
putting everything together. He lost no time in accessing Krista’s research and
changing the layout. “Kris, I don’t know how to work with this graph and
stuff.”

Mouth full of Snickers, she saw her
information in different colors and different places on the page. The only
thing she’d done that still looked the same was the actual data.

“Sean seems to think I do good
work,” she said in humorous exasperation. “Then you come in and change
everything like I’m a dunce.”

Ben shrugged, “It’s the hair
color.”

Sean started laughing again.

Ignoring Sean, but unable to keep a
small smile from her lips, Krista changed the graph to Ben’s precise, and
irritating, qualifications, then straightened up and looked at him.

“Print,” Ben commanded. “Now you
can just put it together while I look through all this great art! My company
doesn’t hold a candle to all this!”

Sean opened his eyes with a gleam.
He now knew how to sell Ben on a job. Krista wondered how long it would take to
bring him over to the dark side. Her guess was not long.

She got everything off the printer,
put it in order, including her revamped table of contents, and gave it to Sean.

“Amazing,” he breathed quietly.

“It will work then?” She asked,
inadvertently noticing the bulge of his pants as they tightened over his man
parts. She wondered what kind of underwear he wore. Also, if he was this big
when relaxed, she wondered how big he was when he was at full mast...

Sean glanced up and caught her
look. He cocked his head with that devilish grin playing on his lush lips. It
was awfully hard to bluff when you kept showing your cards to everyone at the
table.

He held her eyes for a moment
longer, heat kindling, before he tore them away and looked down at the new
report. He cleared his throat then said, “This is perfect. I need to add a few
things of my own, then it’s ready for John. This company needs people in charge
like you and Ben. This took half a work day, tops, and it’s in perfect shape.
Just think what we can do with more time?”

After the report was ready for
Sean, and Ben got a tour of the art department, which had his eyes sparkling
like a man in a mid-life crisis looking at a Ferrari, everyone was left to
their own devices, which meant Krista, who refused to take Sean’s money for
pizza, went home alone to an empty house and an empty calendar. She would have
had an empty belly, too, since without the pizza the fridge she was down to
moldy cheese, OJ, and Abbey’s labeled items, but five minutes after she got
home she got a text from a number she didn’t recognize telling her Goat Hill
was on its way.

She now had Sean’s number. It was
the whipped cream to the mud pie of the day.

Once Sean had Ben’s phone number,
effectively pushing aside the middle man—Krista—it was only a matter of time
before he talked Ben into a job. She had absolutely no doubt it would happen.
Not many people could say “no” to Sean for long when he had something in his
sights, and Ben barely needed a push. Once he saw the empire the catalogers had
built, and the fully stocked art department, he was begging to be brought over.

So barely a week later, when Ben
plopped down next to her on the couch one evening, she figured Sean was
somewhere, relaxing, complimenting himself on his effective sales work.

“He talked you into it,” she stated
without preamble.

“He said that someday I could be
the head of the art department. And after all, I need a job, why should it
matter which company? And your company is seriously set up in a way my other
company wasn’t.”

“Ben, he could tell anyone they
could be the head of the art department. It doesn’t mean you will be.”

“But he said if I worked with you
then we would probably rise up together. And that makes sense because we do
make a good team.”

“We would be in different
departments. It wouldn’t be our choice to work together.”

“But he’s right; I can work
anywhere while I am going to school. I might as well work in the place that
gives me the best deal.”

She couldn’t argue with that. If it
was a good deal for Ben, and knowing Sean, it was, then she couldn’t fault Sean
for making it happen.

She answered by shrugging. The
decision was made and she hoped Sean and company didn’t gobble him up.

After watching TV for a few
minutes, Ben said, “He is a very attractive guy.”

That’s an understatement. But where
was he going with it? Ben wasn’t g*y, but he did have an artist’s perspective.
A glance at him revealed nothing. Was it just commentary in general, or aimed
at her specifically? She knew Ben would never point out that Sean was out of
her league, but her brain certainly put the implication there.

“Indeed,” she replied nonchalantly,
hopefully leading him nowhere with her response so he would have no choice but
to elaborate.

Frustratingly, he left it at that!
That meant she had to, too, or else it would be glaringly obvious she liked the
guy, which was something she didn’t even want to admit to herself, let alone
say out loud.

The day approached for the
long-anticipated dinner and wine fundraiser. As promised, the whole team would
go sans dates, along with, but not in the same ride as, the executives and some
prominent members of the company. Sean’s team would be solely responsible for
hanging around and hopefully talking to someone important. They were given
assigned tables and, apparently, paired with someone they could dazzle.
Krista’s person of note was one of the guys in the presentation room so long
ago. In other words, no one of consequence. All she had to do was let him look
at her boobs and it was in the bag.

Which meant she had an excuse to
show them. Dazzle factor: check!

She was wearing a new dress that
made her bod look super sexy, but was still mostly conservative. It covered all
the necessary elements while still showing off her form. And yes, maybe it
could have covered a little more boob, but it was still G-rated, and she did
have an excuse for that, so she didn’t worry about it.

She did her hair in a long flowing
coif and applied striking makeup since it was a dressy affair. She had a ton of
fun making herself look glamorous, which meant she completely lost track of
time, so when the doorbell rang, she threw out a curse, hastily grabbed her
heels and sprayed on some perfume before she rushed to the door.

Ray was standing there, waiting
patiently, dressed in a well-tailored suit and perfectly combed hair. His shoes
were like mirrors and relatively new. He probably hated dressing like this, but
being a salesman, he was an old pro at it.

“Ready?” he asked pleasantly.

Krista checked to make sure
everything was in place. “Crap, my clutch!” She clattered down the hall like a
lame horse. When she returned with everything accounted for, Ray led her down
the front steps, holding out his hand to help her. Apparently the unlady-like
clomping on wood floors made him nervous.

“I got it,” she said, daintily
following him. She figured she’d better be extra elegant so he didn’t think she
was homicide in heels.

It was then she was greeted by a
fantastic sight! Nothing said important like showing up in a limousine! This
was shaping up to be a good night.

“Going in style!” Krista said as
Ray opened the door and handed her inside.

“Krista, honey, you look
ravishing!” Marcus exclaimed as she climbed in.

Krista smiled radiantly. “Thanks,
kind sir. I just bought this dress.”

“Who is it?”

“Michael Kors. I can’t afford
Gucci.”

“Not yet, honey. Not yet. But
someday soon you will.” Marcus and Judy laughed together as Krista got
comfortable, a non-hopeful smile on her face.

Krista surveyed her surroundings as
Ray handed her a glass of champagne. Sean sat near the front of the long,
totally decked out limo. An overdone-up Monica sat beside him in a pair of tall
stilettos, a super tight, ultra revealing black dress, and her entire bag of
makeup applied to her face.

Those two were sitting in
no-man’s-land, which was the very end of the limo, without a door in easy
access. A person at that end had to crouch, scoot and climb down the middle of
the smallish aisle while trying to look graceful and not tripping and falling
on their head. If you were a girl with heels and a tight dress, like Monica, it
guaranteed a fall! Krista should know, she’d been there before. Twice.

“Jesus Geek Girl, you live out in
bum-fuck nowhere!” Marcus exclaimed.

“A.K.A. by the beach,” she
retorted.

Marcus and Judy sat halfway down
the long aisle, across from the champagne.

“Yeah, way out by the beach,”
Marcus said as he looked out the window at the not so distant waves. “I haven’t
been out this far in I don’t know how long.”

“Well, at least you’re doing it in
style!” Judy said in high spirits.

Judy and Marcus looked a perfect
pair. Both were dressed in sleek, black numbers. Marcus was in a suit that made
him look young, hip and at the height of fashion. His handsome face was shed of
all stubble and his smile was never misplaced.

Judy was the model of conservative,
with a high-neck, form-fitting dress. It was flashy without being tight or revealing.
She had a cute pair of pumps that seemed well placed on her matronly, yet
somehow still sleek, appearance. Krista hoped she looked half as good at her
age.

And if she’d said that out loud,
she’d probably get slapped. Mental note.

Then there was Sean.

Krista had to hand it to him, the
man made the world sigh when he went all out. She didn’t get to see him
standing, but she could imagine. Armani suit, she was sure of it. She would
later learn it was perfectly tailored to his outstanding body. His hair was
spiky in front and tamed on the sides, which made him look trendy and bad-boy
at the same time. The man was a confident, shiny million-dollar-bill.

She refrained from looking at him
other than in glances, because Monica was overbearing in her scrutiny of the
newcomer. Krista did not want to get in a catfight for a guy she had no
interest in pursuing. How high-school.

It took about ten minutes before
Sean started his tirade of what to expect, who was important, and what to say.
Moreover, what not to say. None of this dealt with the idiot at Krista’s table,
so she let the bubbles wrap her up as she looked out the window in the lap of
luxury.