Sweet Deal (26 page)

Andrew shrugged. “Don’t know what else I can do.”

Jake sighed and rubbed the back of his neck. “Yeah. Short of searching the building, which I guess is a bit much, huh?”

Andrew regarded him thoughtfully. “Yeah. Not that I don’t know how you feel.”

“Andrew, can we…oh.”

They both turned at the feminine voice in Andrew’s open door. Jake’s mouth dropped open to see Shelby standing there, staring at both of them.

She was stunning in a little suit that hugged her curves, killer heels, and those glasses that made her look like the sexiest little librarian he’d ever seen, even though her nose was faintly pink under light makeup.

She glared at Jake. “What are you doing here?”

Chapter Twenty-Two

Shelby stared at Jake, her heart pitching into an unsteady rhythm. Her palms went sweaty, her face hot.

“Looking for you,” he said, not moving.

“Why?” Her eyes flickered toward Andrew and then back.

“I heard about your project. I tried to call you and they said you’d gone home. I went to your place and saw you coming back here. So I followed you.”

“I don’t understand. How did you hear about my project?”

“From Andrew.”

Her head whipped around to stare at Andrew.

He ran a finger inside his shirt collar. “Uh, yeah. I went to see Jake this morning.”

“Why?”

“We had some issues to talk about.”

“As do you and I,” Jake added. “Shelby, we need to talk.”

She frowned. “I don’t think so. Besides, I’m working and I have business to discuss with Andrew.” She lifted her chin and looked at her boss. “If you have time.”

He met her eyes and nodded. “Yes. I have time.”

Jake stared at her for a long moment. “Business, huh.” He nodded slowly, rubbed his chin. “What are you going to talk about?”

What?
What?
“Business!” she snapped.

And then he smiled. A slow, kind of sad smile, but a smile. She blinked at him.

“Okay. Good.” He walked toward her, stopped right in front of her and spoke right into her ear in a low voice. “Stand up for yourself, Shelby Rose. Don’t let the past mess up your future. You don’t have to drag that crap around with you forever. You’re smart and talented and you can do this.” He brushed his lips over her cheek.

Her mouth fell open as she watched him walk out of the office, closing the door behind him.

She turned to Andrew.

“What is it you wanted to discuss, Shelby?” He regarded her with an expression on his face she had a hard time identifying. Probably felt sorry for her. Dammit.

“Um.” Her mind was a snarl of confusion. “I…ah…didn’t get a chance to finish telling you my solution to the project problems this morning.”

“I had another meeting to go to. I’m sorry.”

“Yeah. Well. I didn’t feel you were very open to hearing about it. Since you’ve already assigned the new project to someone else.”

He said nothing, but his mouth tightened and he gave a short nod. “I’m open to hearing whatever solutions you think you might have.”

So she laid it all out for him, including her cost benefit analysis and the research she’d done. Her projections for time, money, resources. He looked over the documents she showed him and listened.

Finally he leaned back in his seat. She waited, breath suspended for his reaction. Then he nodded. “It could work.”

She let the air seep slowly out of her. “I think it definitely could.”

“Such a simple solution, really.”

“The best ones usually are.”

He grinned. “True.”

“What would you do about the other project and Brad?”

He bit his upper lip briefly. “He could still manage it, but it would mainly be monitoring the work of the consultant. It would give him time to work on other things as well.”

She nodded slowly. “And I could keep this project?”

His eyes flickered. “Yes.”

Relief flooded through her and her head went light. “Thank you.”

“Shelby. We need to clear the air about some things.”

Her body tightened. “Okay.”

“I know about what happened at your last job.”

“You know?” She blinked rapidly.

“Jake told me.”

“You two had quite the conversation apparently.” Her mind raced.

Andrew gave a huge sigh and sank down into a chair. “Yeah.”

She caught her bottom lip between her teeth briefly. “Oh. Anyway. So you know what happened at my last job. It might’ve…uh…made me a bit paranoid about…some things.”

“Ya think?” He gave her wry smile. “I was never trying to sexually harass you, Shelby.”

Oh Jesus, he knew everything. An inferno roared to life beneath her suit, scorching her cheeks. “Oh.”

“Let’s just get it all out,” he said. “If we’re going to work together, we need to clear the air here. I went out on a limb to hire you because I thought you had a lot of talent. You’re smart, experienced, you have great technical skills and people skills. That’s rare in this business.”

She gaped at him. “Uh, thanks.”

“I wanted to make sure you succeeded here at Gold Shield. So I spent some extra time with you.” He rubbed his forehead. “I never gave you projects I didn’t think you could do, Shelby. I wanted to challenge you. I had faith that you could do it.”

“Oh.” Her mouth fell open even more as she watched and listened, her mind racing to process it all.

“I never realized the impression I was creating. Jake filled me in on that too.” He winced.

“Oh,” she said again.

“I’m sorry about that. You’re so easy to talk to, I came to enjoy having coffee with you. I like talking to you and you always seemed to have good advice about Gianna. But I want you to know that I love my wife and I had no intention of starting anything with you other than a mentoring relationship.”

Relief mingled with embarrassment inside her.

“And this morning…okay, I apologize for that too. I didn’t have time to listen to your suggestions. But seriously, Shelby, I would have listened if you’d come to me later.”

“I’m sorry.” She twisted her fingers together in her lap. “I was just so afraid it was happening again. My last boss destroyed my career at RBM.”

“Do you think that little of me?” he asked, almost looking disappointed.

What could she say? “No. I don’t. I’m sorry. I do like working for you, Andrew. I’ve learned a lot. You’re a good boss. I was just paranoid, like I said.”

He nodded. Took a deep breath. Let it out. “Okay. Let’s start fresh. Your idea for how to continue with the project does sound like it would work. Your business case was well thought out. So let’s see if we can do it.”

She grinned. “Okay.”

“We don’t need to be friends to work together,” he said. “But we need to be honest with each other.” He met her eyes and she nodded her agreement.

“I agree.”

“I’m sorry you felt like you had to lie to me about having a boyfriend.”

More hot embarrassment washed over her at that. What could she say? “Well. I’m sorry I did it.” She rolled her eyes. “You have no idea how sorry. Are things okay with you and your wife?”

His eyes shadowed. “I don’t know.”

Anger at Jake spiked again. “Jake’s an asshole for doing that. He shouldn’t have used me to get back at you. To try to steal your wife away from you.”

“He wasn’t trying to steal my wife away from me.”

Her chin dropped again. “He wasn’t?”

“No. Though maybe he could have. She wouldn’t talk last night, but after I saw Jake this morning, I went to her office and we had it out. She was the one who instigated that. She says she’s confused. After she saw Jake at the company barbecue, she started to wonder if she’d made a mistake.” He looked like someone was squeezing his testicles, but he kept going through gritted teeth. “I guess I should have known that someone who’d ditch one guy for another would probably do the same to me.”

“I’m sorry.”

He grimaced. “Anyway, Jake didn’t rat her out. He was going to let me keep thinking he was the one who’d done it. And for what it’s worth, I don’t think he was using you either.”

“Y-you don’t?” Her thoughts ground to a halt yet again.

“No. He also told Gianna…” He stopped, shook his head. “You should talk to him.” He gave her a crooked smile. “How about you take the rest of the afternoon off and we’ll start fresh tomorrow morning?”

She swallowed through a dry throat, gave a short nod and rose to her feet. “Thank you, Andrew.”

“Shelby.”

She paused with her hand on the door, looked over her shoulder. “Yes?”

“We can talk more about this tomorrow, but I think I know who the consultant should be to work on the project.”

“Oh. Okay. Who’s that?”

“Jake.”

She went very still. “But he’s…not a consultant.”

“Yes, he is. He quit his job yesterday.”

She didn’t move. Tightened her fingers on the door knob. He’d quit his job. Joy swept over her, joy for him that he’d finally done it. All her insides quivered with excitement. “And you’d hire him?”

He smiled. “Hell yeah. I can’t think of anyone better.”

Oh. Her heart almost exploded out of her chest. Maybe things would be okay between him and Jake too. Or maybe not. Lots had happened. But this made her pulse leap with excitement and feel a little giddy.

“Thank you, Andrew.” Their eyes met in a brief connection. He nodded.

Well. She still had her job. She still had her project. Her relationship with Andrew might take a little while to rebuild, but it sounded like he didn’t want to get rid of her. In fact, it sounded like he really liked her. Liked her work, she amended in her mind. He’d never been after anything else. Relief blossomed and spread through her, but then her heart tripped as she remembered Jake.

She’d put on her big-girl panties and come back to work and dealt with the problem. But thinking about Jake still hurt. A lot.

She almost ran a red light on her way home, she was so preoccupied thinking about him and what had happened. Once safely inside her apartment she changed her clothes once again, back into her comfy yoga pants and T-shirt. She sat on her bed.

Andrew didn’t think Jake had been using her.

She rubbed at the tightness between her eyebrows as she tried to make sense of it all. He and Gianna had been in love. Andrew was his best friend. Then Andrew and Gianna had fallen in love with each other.

She touched her fingertips to her lips and closed her eyes as she imagined how that must have hurt Jake. She knew about his past, about his mother, and how he didn’t do relationships. He’d gotten involved with Gianna though, and although it hurt her to think about, it hurt even more to think about his pain when Gianna had fallen in love with his best friend. How much that must have hurt Jake.

Her throat constricted. So when he’d run into them that day at the picnic, it must have been like getting slapped in the face yet again.

He’d told her about his and Andrew’s plans to go into business together and she knew how disappointed he’d been about that even though he hadn’t told her the whole story. So not only had he lost his girlfriend, he’d lost his best friend and his business plan. That was a lot to lose all at once.

She wanted to hug him, to kiss him, to tell him she understood. Then she remembered that he’d used her and anger rose again. Except…Andrew didn’t believe he’d been using her. And thinking back over the last few weeks, and all the time they’d spent together, it didn’t
feel
like she’d been used. She remembered laughing with him, crying with him, bike riding, walking Wayne, baking cookies with Taylor, and all the things he’d done for her and for her friends when Adam died.

No. That wasn’t using her.

Maybe her stupid optimism was going to be her downfall yet again, but she just couldn’t stop the buoyancy that rose up inside her. He
did
care about her. He might not want to admit it, probably because he was afraid of getting hurt again, and okay, she got that, given his history, but she was suddenly, absolutely positive that he did care.

What had he said to her? Don’t let the past mess up your future? Something about dragging crap around with her?

Yes. That was what she’d done. All her life, basically.

She’d known she shouldn’t get involved with her boss at RBM but she’d done it anyway. She’d tried to learn from it. And yet, she’d brought that hurt with her, and it had colored everything, made her think that Andrew wanted more from her than he really did. She’d made a mess of things when she should have just had a conversation with Andrew.

So she knew what it was like. She knew what Jake was dragging around with him. And he needed to realize that too. He needed to know that everyone he cared about wasn’t going to leave him.

She rose to her feet. She had to see him. She looked at her watch. Would he still be at work? She didn’t want to go see him there. She’d wait until he was at home. And she knew what she’d do to keep herself busy until then.