Breene, K F - Growing Pains 01 (22 page)

Sean sighed, “I know. She’s had a
hard past, too, I think. She doesn’t need me dicking her around. Excuse the
language.”

“You’ve had a hard past as well.
But I agree, she doesn’t need you dicking her around. You tend to jump in with
both feet, get tangled, and run. We can’t have that on this campaign. Any other
time and I would say go for it. But not on this one. Get to know her, be
friends, have fun—when we land this bad boy, go whole hog. Who knows; by then
she might be on board.”

“Yeah, right. Thanks for the
pep-talk, coach. Except, you needn’t have dissected my life because all that
knowledge changes nothing. I have to stay away from Krista and stay close to
Monica. Your fountain of knowledge doesn’t help.”

“No, but I like to show I’m paying
attention.”

Sean huffed out a laugh as he
turned back to the table. “John’s going to be tracking me down soon. We need to
make shapes.”

“Look at what she did here …” Ray
pointed to the table of contents. “You asked her for sales of sapphires in
California
.
She lists that as item twelve. She then breaks it down to southern
California
and northern
California
, which
makes sense. You should have had that. That was twelve-A.”

Sean looked over Ray’s shoulder.

“Then, twelve-B,” Ray slid his
finger to the next bullet, “She breaks it down again by largely populated areas
and poorly populated areas. Then, twelve-C, by household income. How does she
even think of that information, let alone find it?”

“She’s smart.”

“Obviously, she’s smart, yes. But
at the stage she is over extending your list, she is basically calling you a
fool.”

“Is that what she’s doing? Calling
me a fool?”

Ray and Sean both laughed as Sean
grabbed a few of the books to lug downstairs. The conference room phone rang,
making Sean pause, “That’ll be John.”

“Aren’t you going to answer it?”
Ray asked, collecting the rest of the books.

“No. I’ll talk to him when I get
downstairs.”

“I’m glad you’re a buffer between
him and me.” Ray threw in as he followed Sean out. “I don’t think I could
tolerate him always looking over my shoulder.”

“Some people probably wonder how
you tolerate me looking over your shoulder.”

“Not the women-folk, surely.
They’re jealous.”

Sean huffed as the elevator opened.

“No, I’m in a perfect spot,” Ray
mused. “I am one step away from your overanxious boss, and one step above an
overachieving bookworm. I’d hate to be directly under either of them.”

An image of Krista’s body moving
over him flashed through Sean’s head.

“That’s four blushes. My, my—what
is she doing to you?”

Sean shook his head and ignored
Ray.

It was Friday again too soon and
Krista found herself finished with the rest of Sean’s list. She also found
herself with nothing to do for Happy Hour because Jasmine was going to Tahoe
and Kate was going on a date with some dude she met at her local coffee house.
She insisted he wasn’t g*y. He was a biker with too much facial hair and a
giant tattoo of a bare-chested woman riding a dragon on his back.

Jasmine and Kate believed her. Then
said maybe going for g*y was better. The conversation would be better, at any
rate.

Krista grabbed her latest findings
and headed down to Sean’s office. He sat hunched over his desk, studying a
piece of paper with incredulous eyes. The surface in front of him looked like
an office recycle bin, or like a paper dispenser had rumbled through and
dropped a bunch of babies. It was almost as bad as the art department.

“Hey Cap’n,” she said as she paused
at the door, doing a quick check that no one was under his desk giving him a
blow job.

He looked up in surprise. When he
saw who it was, a small smile parted his lips. “Krista,” he said as his face
went back to a mask of stress, “How goes it?”

“Great. Can I come in?”

“Of course, yes. Please.” Sean
jumped up as if on springs to come around the desk and see if she needed help
carrying anything. Seeing she was fine, he returned to his seat, his eyes
trained on her new stack of books.

“Not more,” he said in agony.

She let the pile plop on his desk.
“What do you mean not more? You’re the one assigning this stuff to me!”

“I didn’t expect you to be so
thorough. I showed your stuff to John, half to brag, I admit, and he flipped.
Then he had about 800 ideas that I should immediately look up as it pertained
to your facts. Then he gave me a last-minute presentation to do. Needless to
say, I’ve been chained to my desk ever since. That’ll teach me.” Sean smiled
radiantly. It was pretty obvious he liked being right.

She bet John hated being wrong.

“Well, I finished your list. Maybe
I can help you with some of the work?”

“You finished my list? Already?”

“My social life took a crap this
week so I had nothing better to do than work my ass off.”

“Do you kiss your mother with that
mouth?” he asked with a chuckle, leaning back in his chair and rubbing his
eyes.

“Only when she makes me. Anyway,
should I take this away so you don’t have to look at it?”

“No, no, show me what ya got.” Sean
stacked up some of his papers to make room for the new onslaught of work. “By
the by, I hear you clean desks …”

Krista paused in her book delivery,
turning beet red. “I can explain.”

Sean smiled, reaching across the
desk for her cargo. “I’ve seen Marcus’s desk after you’ve passed through.
Apparently he never notices until you leave.”

“Yeah, I kinda nudge his papers in
the right direction. I haven’t made him get up so I can do a thorough job, yet,
but it’s coming.”

“Most of the company has had a
walk-through, admiring your latest handiwork. He thinks you are both the
sweetest thing on the face of the planet, and also the most hilarious. He
doesn’t quite understand how your mind works.”

“Yeah, I get that a lot.”

“Bad news is, he’s treating the
sensation like art.”

Krista yanked at a stray thread in
her sweater in embarrassment. “He treats my cleaning his desk like art? What
sort of madness is that? Are they high all day long in that department, or
what?”

Sean laughed, opening her first
book, prompting her to explain work rather than art department people, who were
largely inexplicable anyway.

“Okay, I’ve called that one
Operation: Spy on the Others, because it’s obvious that’s what you were after.
Good luck getting them to spy on me, though.”

“They already are. Spying on you,
that is. The reports I get are mainly that you work too fast and make them look
bad. Oh, and your singing voice is quite good, but your British accent is the
pits. Also that you are an honorary member of the art department mechanical
team, whatever that means.”

Sean’s eyes honed in to Krista’s
face as she tried to hide behind her hair. “I talk to myself in a British
accent when I’ve been without social chit-chat for too long.”

Sean started to laugh. “I was
wondering. Anyway, I don’t need to spy on you. If I did, I would see the amount
of work headed my way and stop your efforts.”

“No you wouldn’t. I’d still do it.”

Sean stilled for a moment, taking
her in. His eyes roamed her face. “No mug?”

His eyes reached inside of her,
making a piece of ice in her middle heat up, then drip, loosening a painful
barrier she’d lived with for so long she’d forgotten it wasn’t supposed to be
there.

“I was afraid it would try and kill
itself again. Thought it was safer left in my office,” she said quietly,
knowing he was trying to head toward personal waters, using her mug as a
scapegoat. Strangely, this time, it was working. He was starting to have an
effect. He poked at that block inside her chest, softly, unhurriedly, wanting
to release it.

It was a startlingly new
development that would surely have Kate whacking her with a baseball bat to get
her back on course.

Sean laughed intimately, honing in
on her. Willing her to let go; to drop all her office stodginess and come out
and play. The warmth building in her sternum made her body tingle, reminding
her of its twin, a feeling she hadn’t felt in a really long time. Since Johnny
Earnshaw, actually. Which, consequently, had been her first love.

It was going to take more than a
bat.

“Wise,” he said quietly, his face
growing serious. Intense.

She hastily cleared her throat. The
moment passed like a fragrant plume of smoke in a breeze. “Anyway.” She tore
her eyes away and pointed them at the desk. “Here is what you asked for. The
first is the art from our extensive system. All the images from that other
meeting were there, but I didn’t include those. I did some digging and found
some other stuff that looked good.

“After that are other, similar
images from other ad companies across the span of time. It is pretty fun
looking for all that stuff, so I put a lot in there. Too much probably, but
copies are cheap and knowledge is not, so what the hell, right?”

“And you have more,” Sean said it
in a flat tone, now looking through the books.

“Yeah, well, uh, I decided to find
some pictures that went with Marcus’ ideas. Like I said, images are so easy to
find and so readily downloaded and copied, so I just thought, ‘why not?’”

Without saying a word Sean grabbed
hungrily for the other books. He turned and got the research she did previously
on Marcus’s ideas. He found what must have been his favorite ideas and paired
them with the new images. He let out a “hmmmm” as he tapped the page.

“This is good, Krista. Have you
shown these to Marcus?”

“No. He’s mad at you for making him
work, so I didn’t want to add fuel, so to speak.”

“Hmmm,” still looking at the open
book, he picked up the phone. “Yes, Marcus? ...” Sean listened for a while, his
brow furrowing in concentration. “Yeah, great man, that is awesome… No, no I
don’t need to see it right yet… No, that’s fine. Listen…yeah, great. Perfect…
Listen, I am sitting here with Krista--…no, for once she is making you look
good. Come see what she’s got…Great.”

Sean hung up and went back to
looking at the images. Krista was forgotten for the minute, until Marcus came
in and leisurely sat next to her.

“Miss Marshall,” Marcus said in his
relaxed way, “You are no longer allowed to work on any of Sean’s ideas. We
can’t keep up. There is not enough Red Bull in the world to compete with a
twenty-year-old.”

Sean looked up with a smile and
offered Marcus her latest. He then picked up the phone again. “Ray, come in
here…Please.”

Marcus was exclaiming in delight
with his hand clutched on Krista’s shoulder. “Geek Girl, I am a genius! Sean,
call Judy.”

Sean did not hesitate, and soon the
entire team was stuffed into Sean’s office. Ray and Sean were talking about
strategy while Marcus and Judy were talking about ideas and making notes.
Krista, forgotten again, was squished against the wall in bored delight.

It was at this time that John
walked in, his normal cartoon-style, hurried pace slowed with the bland look of
the research girl idly standing against the wall. Krista imagined that was the
reason for the perplexed expression. “Sean, it’s time to move you to the new
office I think.”

It was like an arctic gale came out
of nowhere. Everyone froze with wide eyes, like a kid caught drawing on the
wall with permanent marker. The office resembled a game of Twister, with limbs
intertwined and frozen, waiting for the next spin. All eyes found John in a
pronounced widening.

“John,” Sean said behind a guarded
mask.

“What’s going on here?” John asked
in disapproval.

“We are reviewing the latest
information from our researcher.”

“How is the proposal going?” John
glared intently at Sean, no one else in the room existing at that moment.

“Halfway there. It will be on your
desk Monday morning, as promised.”

John let his gaze sweep Sean’s
office, catching the books Marcus was holding. It was apparent that he should
leave after chastising his subordinate, but it was just as apparent his
curiosity was staying his feet.

Pandora’s plague won out.

“What have we got?” he asked in a
brusque tone.

It was Marcus who jumped up with
the books, reaching around Judy to yank Krista to his side. He began rapidly
explaining what he thought was his best idea, showing facts on it, then the
images. John took the statistics from Marcus, being that Marcus really hadn’t a
clue how to explain them, then skimmed the pictures.

“Where are those pictures from?”
John stabbed at the book in Marcus’s hand.

Krista got Sean’s acute gaze that
told her to keep quiet about the vast resources. He must have forgotten it was
her secret in the first place.

“Well, first I took some of my own
pictures from places around the city,” Krista said into the stuffed office.
“But I am no photographer, so I went to the library archives and found images
that seemed to fit. They don’t belong to us, so I am sure they can’t be used,
but I thought a general idea would work for Marcus and Judy, and then they
could go from there. I mean, if they wanted to. You know…”

It was a lame way to end her
babbling. As such, everyone kept staring at her, probably waiting for the end
of the sentence. Especially John, who was trying to pin her to the carpet with
his flat stare. After another beat he went back to looking at the figures. He
nodded once, and then handed the information to Sean, who took it quietly.

John said, “Monday morning.” He set
his speed to turbo and flew out of the room.

There was a collective sigh. Krista
was nearly ready to cry. Sean saw it and moved toward her, trying to get
between Ray and the desk to do so, but before he could get there Marcus and
Judy said together, “Relax” in that special way.

It immediately cut the tension.

“That was a good sign, Krista,”
Judy said, reviewing her notes. “A good sign. He had nothing to yell at us
about. Which is a first, I think.”

Ray was letting his mask of worry
melt off his face. He knew John about as well as Krista did and probably
thought his job was going down the tube as well.

“Nothing to yell at us about,”
Marcus said with a grin, dark eyes flicking to Sean. “Sean, on the other hand,
will be working all weekend.”

Sean nodded and flopped into his
seat. “He has the most unreal expectations.”

“Can we take these, Sean?” Judy
asked, indicating Krista’s latest.

“Krista, is that saved somewhere?”
Ray asked.

“Yeah, it’s on my computer in my
public folder and it’s on a flash drive.”

“Can we borrow the drive?” Judy
asked.

“Yeah, no problem. I’ll go and get
it—“

“Wait.” Krista stopped and looked
back at Sean in expectation. “You are finished with your work, right?”

“Yeah. Want me to help with
something?”

“Yes!” Sean sighed before he caught
Ray’s frown, “Please.”

Judy and Marcus quickly shuffled
out of the room. If work was being doled out, they didn’t want their share. Ray
patted Sean on the shoulder and left the office as well.

When it was just her and Sean,
Krista lowered herself to the visitor chair, the electrical current in the room
once again started to buzz through her body. Her eyes couldn’t help but focus
on his sensual lips as he chewed on the end of his pen. He glanced up in
thought and then focused on her gaze, hunger burning in his eyes.

“Fan please,” Krista said lightly,
spreading her arms away from her body just enough so her deodorant didn’t have
to work so hard.

Sean smiled. He swiveled in his
chair and flipped on the fan, then faced her again. There was a tense beat. It
seemed like he was trying to rein himself in. Trying not to take a step he had
been dying to take.

“Should I come back later?” she
asked in self-preservation. If he asked her out, she’d say yes. She knew she
would, and she hated herself for that fact, but there it was. She was a damn
fool who obviously didn’t learn from her past mistakes. Her only lifeline was
to head him off at the pass with a topic change.

The Cosmos was cackling at her
life, she knew it.

Sean’s brow furrowed for the
briefest of moments, making her half think he realized what she was doing, then
his expression cleared. “No way. If you leave you might sneak out and go home.
Then who would I get to do my work for me?” Sean looked around his desk
distractedly. “Okay,” he shuffled the piles of papers into other, smaller piles,
“I have to make a proposal to a shoe company. I have some research…” he passed
her the information, “—and, I have some art.” He passed her some other papers.