Breene, K F - Growing Pains 01 (7 page)

In a struggle of life-and-death,
the mug bounced once, spilled its contents, and then came to a rest under
Sean’s desk in one piece. She sighed hugely in relief, her head and shoulders
uncomfortably wedged between wood and chair.

My mugs try to commit suicide in
Sean’s presence. Don’t think I don’t notice!

“Crap, Sean, I’m so sorry! Let me
clean it up.”

“No, no, it’s fine. Really Krista…”
Sean was trying not to laugh. He was also looking at her in bewildered shock.

Apparently he didn’t believe her
when she said her mug was important. If he did, he would have known that of
course she would dive under the desk to save it! Small price to pay for job
longevity.

He put a large, warm hand on her
shoulder to prevent her sprinting out of the office in search of paper towels.
The shock of it was so intense she stopped moving in wonder. She felt a zing of
electric current slide up and down the middle of her body, tingling off her rib
cage, sizzling down her thighs, and alighting all her pleasure sensors one at a
time as if they were light switches being turned on. It was like touching a
live wire, but instead of being painfully electrocuted, she was injected with
adrenaline.

She did look up then. His eyes were
soft with immeasurable depth. Looking into them was looking to the center of
his soul. He returned her look, deeply. Wanting the connection. Wanting to be close
to her.

He brought his hand up, needing to
touch her. Needing to know this intimacy was shared. But the horror, surely
represented on her face, stilled his movement. She didn’t want this. She
couldn’t want it. She didn’t want to take a chance and be let down, because he
would let her down. She didn’t need Jim’s example to know that, she had proof
all around the company.

“I’ll clean it up. Let me grab your
mug,” Sean said softly, ruffling her hair with his breath.

She wanted to give in. Right then,
she wanted to stop being on the defensive. But if one didn’t learn from the
past, one was a nincompoop. It was too soon to get hurt again.

Thankfully, he was moving away,
allowing her a second to regroup.

“Got it!” she said, holding up her
coffee-stained arm with a mug attached to the end. “It’s okay.”

Sean was shaking his head sadly.
Quietly he said, “You and that mug.”

“Yeah, well, we all have our
crutch.”

“Yes we do.”

“Sorry again. I have to go.” She
nearly ran out of the office.

Sean let her go.

Krista woke up with a jolt. Today
was the day. She was unprepared!

No she wasn’t. She was prepared.
She could do this.

She got out of bed two seconds
before her alarm clock blared. Lunging for it, she slapped it off and
straightened up.

“I can do this today.”

She was answered with the sound of
rolling waves. Good enough.

She took special care with getting
dressed. She applied makeup and did her hair. It sounded like a routine, but
for the past few months she had barely bothered. It wasn’t the thing to be all
made-up when you went to work anymore, just like it wasn’t the thing for guys
to shave every day. The trend was laziness, and Krista was onboard.

Except for today. Today was
special. She had people to impress today. She would give her presentation!

“Oh God, I’m nervous!” Krista took
a second away from liquid eyeliner to hold her stomach and take a breath.

“Krista, are you almost done?”

Ben was huddled outside the door in
X-Men pajamas, squeezing himself for warmth with dark circles under his eyes.

“What are you doing up so early?”

“I have a meeting with my group
before class. I have to get the bus all the way to Fisherman’s Wharf area.”

“Oh, that sucks. Uh, I am nearly
done. Can you wait ten minutes?”

“’Kay.” Ben trudged back to his
room.

Krista finished up and got on her
way. The meeting wasn’t until
10 o’clock
,
so she wasn’t worried about Muni running late. In the office she put all her
stuff down, stowed her laptop so if someone were brave enough to enter
Research, they wouldn’t steal it, and got her mug. Coffee, then practice, then
show time!

Butterflies had turned carnivorous.
They were eating her stomach lining!

Sean was absent, which was great
since she hadn’t seen him since that day in his office, so she filled up her
cup and headed to the creamer station. She thought she might use extra cream
and sugar for a little kick.

“Good morning.” The absence had
been too good to be true. Sean sauntered in, looking confident, looking like he
hadn’t a care in the world. He probably didn’t. He’d done so many presentations
they were probably old news.

“Mernin,” Krista replied.

“I haven’t seen you in a while.”

“Yeah, I’ve been grabbing some
Peet’s on the way in. Muni has been spotty lately.”

“Ignoring your lucky mug? I’m
surprised.” His statement was easygoing and friendly, but underneath, if she
wasn’t mistaken, there was an edge of wariness.

“Oh no, I pour the coffee into my
mug when I get in. It sees plenty of action.”

Sean nodded, not quite laughing.
She could feel his eyes focused on her like a spotlight. She turned into the
fixed gaze.

“Are you ready for today?” he
asked.

“Yes, I am completely prepared and
ready to go.” She felt formal, she sounded formal, and she hoped that when the
presentation came around, she portrayed formal.

“Ready to go, huh?” Sean repeated
with a hint of animalistic hunger.

One thing she didn’t need today was
this old song-and-dance. She excused herself and headed out. He had nothing to
offer her when he was pulling womanizer.

“Krista.”

She closed her eyes against the
soft lick on the inside of her brain. No matter how much she distanced him, he
still had an effect on her. It was probably the most frustrating thing about
him.

He was looking at her with a
focused, piercing gaze. It was like he suddenly switched off the bullshit and a
machine stepped in. There was no angle now, especially not a faux-romance one.
“I wasn’t kidding when I said this was a big account. A very important account.
To me. So if you need anything, any help or even just a second opinion to
springboard some ideas, please call me this morning without hesitation.”

He sounded normal. And helpful. And
polite. His voice was velvet with a hint of deep gravel, exfoliating her
nerves, but in a good way. It made her feel more confident. Less alone.

“I am pretty set, Sean, but
thanks.”

“Anything at all, Krista, I’m here,
okay? I know you’re inexperienced, but you have a team supporting you today, so
we’ll catch you if you stutter. Don’t be nervous.”

Krista took a big breath and
smiled. “Good pep talk, coach. I needed that.”

Sean smiled, too. “I could tell.”

Back at her desk, Krista looked at
her materials. She went over her slides again. She reviewed and reviewed until
she was ready. More than ready. She was eager.

That’s going a bit far.

Ready. She was ready.

When it was time, she grabbed her
laptop, her lucky mug, and headed up to conference room C. The smallest one.
Why Sean, the best salesman, was heading a sales pitch for a tiny, weak
company, when everyone important—including the rest of Research—was working on
Dell, Krista couldn’t even guess. It probably had something to do with the
Cosmos laughing at her.

Regardless, it was experience and
that’s what she needed.

Up at the conference room, with
weak legs and a tingling, nearly churning stomach, she poked her head in the door.
Sean was standing with two women and a man, reviewing pictures on a large
billboard.

“Can I help you?”

Krista jumped and spilled the
contents in her mug. Luckily, it was water. She had been worried about being
too wired with coffee so she switched it up.

She turned as she stepped into the
room. A smallish man wearing an off-the-rack suit, probably from the Men’s
Warehouse, was addressing her. He had gelled hair, a wide, flat nose, a goatee,
and a sparkling, giant gold watch. Krista wondered if he was a car salesman
before this job.

“I’m Research. Krista, I mean. From
Research. I’m supposed to be here.”

Lame.

“Krista…” It was Sean. She turned
to him gratefully. The intensity of the car salesman’s gaze was disconcerting.
“Just the person I was looking for. Would you mind walking me through what you
plan to go over?”

“Uh…” She glanced back at the other
salesman, wondering if she should say something. He quickly shifted his gaze
from her butt to her face.

That question answered, Krista
shuffled into the room quickly. Sean stepped behind her, cutting off the
eye-line of the other yahoo. It was a bad start and certainly not the
professionalism she expected.

Letting it drift away, she set up
her computer at a far table, butt to the wall, before looking back up at Sean.
She could tell her mouth was a thin line of disapproval, but she was angry and
disgusted, so there wasn’t much to be done.

“Your slides?” Sean prompted,
looking fixedly into her eyes.

Krista cleared her throat and
tucked a flyaway strand of hair behind her ear. “I thought you approved the
slides?”

“I did, yes. The slides were
artfully done. I was just wondering about your delivery?”

Krista swallowed nervously,
hesitating to make sure her voice would stay steady and unaffected. He took the
pause for suspicion.

Smoothly, he said, “I just want to
make sure we are all presenting as a team. I’ve already talked with everyone
else, and I want to be the glue between your faction and the art people. It
makes for a more cohesive presentation, don’t you think?”

God she was inexperienced, and she
was doing a poor job of hiding it. She felt like she was about to throw up, but
she nodded as if trying to say, Yes, of course, that sounds about right. “Oh,
sure.”

She angled her laptop toward him
and stepped to the right, allowing him to step closer and view the screen. She
opened up the presentation and put it on slide show mode. Before she could
begin, he said, “You changed some of the colors.”

He scooted in closer, hitting her
with those vivid, sparkling eyes, so confident, a question in his look.
Krista’s nervousness combined with butterflies at his proximity quickly
derailed her already fragile concentration.

“Would you like to sit on my lap?”
she blurted.

“Oh. Excuse me.” He took a
half-step away with a devilishly handsome grin, swirling his unique scent
around her head.

It was a smell you couldn’t buy. He
smelled like the beach at sunset on a mild summer day. A proper beach. With
beautiful people and cresting waves. A Hawaiian beach, maybe. Or
Mexico
.
Somewhere warm and lovely. Get her a Mai Tai and a beach chair and she was
home.

She distractedly waved her hand in
front of her face to clear the air. She needed fresh air.

“Not much I can do about the
stink,” Sean said casually.

She could feel a smile working its
way up her face as she looked at him with wide eyes. “Well, we can’t all be
perfect.” She couldn’t help but laugh.

He laughed with her and leaned a
little more comfortably against the table.

“Okay.” She sighed. Then flinched.

“You okay?”

“Oh. Yeah. Mr. Montgomery has a
ba—uh, habit of sighing all the time. For some reason I’ve picked it up, but my
friend told me she’d give me a Thump Bird the next time she caught me doing it,
so I’ve been trying to stop.”

“I noticed that about him. It
drives John crazy. What’s a Thump Bird?”

Krista’s face went red. “Oh, it’s
a…well…”

She looked around the room, making
sure no one was watching. When she saw that they were all engrossed in poster
boards or idle chit-chat, she touched her middle finger to her thumb like she
was doing an “A-OK” sign gesture, but with her middle finger. The other fingers
were out as straight as possible. She made like her hand was a bird, flying,
her fingers wings, bobbing as if in the air. She lost her nerve before she made
the traditional Thump Bird sound, and then collapsed in a fit of giggles.

“I can’t do it. If you ever meet
Jasmine have her show you. Eventually you get flicked in the head. It doesn’t
hurt per se, but she does it when you least expect it. You sit there wondering
what that weird sound is… then bang--Thump Bird.”

Sean was looking at her with a
lopsided smile. It was as if he couldn’t believe she could be so silly, and the
realization made him wonder if she was an alien.

She regained her composure
immediately. “Anyway, strange anecdotes aside…” She waited for him to shift
back toward the computer. When it didn’t happen, she looked up to see what the
holdup was.

Turned out it was her. He was
studying her, his face intent, hunger evident in his eyes, but not the kind she
usually saw. This time it was a softer craving. It wasn’t sexually based. It
was something else…

Her head filled with buzzing. She
nearly picked up her pen, treated it like a stake, and stabbed him in the
chest. It would end this slow torture once and for all.

So would sex.

“REGARDING THE PRESENTATION!” She
yelled to block out that last, damning thought.

The whole room turned to her.

“Sorry to interrupt, everyone.
Sorry about that. I was just joking around over here. Hah hah…”

Sean’s look had turned piercing,
half in frustration, half in boyish amusement.

When everyone turned away—after
making a show of rolling their eyes at the inexperienced idiot in the
corner—she turned back to Sean in a brusque manner. “Focus, please, Sean. This
is my first presentation to a real client and I want to do well.”

He did sober then, finally. “I’m
sorry. Yes, please continue.”

Another sigh followed by a wince
and a guilty look at Sean, and she got back on course.

“I did change the colors, yes. The
art people’s stuff clashed with mine, as you saw, so I changed it to something
that would add contrast, but still worked within their color schemes.”

She moved to the first topic slide,
but before she could explain her desired approach he asked, “Who helped you
with this?”

“--what?”

He took a step away from her and
that business look of his was back. “Did you make that decision on your own?
About the colors, I mean?” His voice was quieter. It rumbled deep in his chest.

“Yes? Why? I thought you showed me
the art stuff so I could mesh the two…?”

“Yes, of course,” his eyes bored
into hers unwaveringly. “I’m just not used to your department thinking about
the overall presentation. Usually they’re more concerned with the numbers and
less concerned with the appearance.” He paused as dawning struck, “That’s why
you asked if James had seen it when I showed you the art mock-ups.”

“Um, yeah?” She sounded like a
valley girl. “I mean…yes. I thought someone would’ve told me the color scheme
before I did all the work. It’s the same presentation so it should look similar.
Right?” She could feel her face flush in uncertainty. She also wondered if
anyone had noticed the large “Student Driver” sign around her neck.

“Yes, exactly,” Sean looked back at
the computer.

Krista had worked on Sean’s notes
without hesitation or problem, which would have irked Mr. Montgomery had he
known. Sales often gave critique to Research, but Research wasn’t obligated to
follow it unless it came from John or higher. Sean just sidestepped that need
since Krista had already agreed.

The problem hadn’t been with Sean’s
notes, though; the problem was with her presentation versus that of art. Art
people could do art … obviously. And while Krista could make a numerical
presentation look nice with graphs and pictures, she was hard pressed to come
up with a matching cohesive color scheme to match some else’s. That was what
Ben was for.

She had asked Ben, very nicely, to
help her put it all together. Even though her being extra nice made him
nervous, he had looked through it once, played around for ten minutes, and
turned the computer back to her with exactly what she was going for. Then,
because he wasn’t satisfied with the job he had done, regardless of Krista’s
heartfelt praise, he had her explain the art side and what she was going for
numerically, and went at it again.