18
ISABELLA
Back in the States, we were in Parker’s office and he still wasn’t taking things as seriously as I would’ve liked. “Try it again. It’s not a difficult script to follow, but it’s like you’re not even trying.”
He stood at the edge of the conference table, looking sharp in one of his new outfits, but his facial expression didn’t match the professional suit. “This is ridiculous. You can’t expect me to try that hard when I’m talking to a bunch of punching dummies.”
I looked around the table, but as proud as I was of myself for coming up with his plan, I could kind of understand why it was tripping him up. “Pretend they’re real people. We’re practicing your new pitch, remember? I’m trying to replicate the environment of a real meeting. Imagine they’re investors you’re trying to woo.”
“They’re punching dummies,” he repeated stubbornly. “Their faces were literally designed to make you want to punch them. Unless you’re envisioning the pitch meetings turning violent, this just seems silly.”
I pinched the bridge of my nose. “Just take it from the top, would you? You promised we’d work harder from now on, but I’m just not seeing it.”
Those lips of his—which I was having trouble looking at without remembering how they’d felt against mine—pressed into a hard line.
“We’ve been working night and day, nonstop, since we’ve been back. If that’s not me keeping my promise, I don’t know what is. I don’t need help practicing how to speak in front of people. You saw me in action in Italy. I’m a natural. This, however, is not natural.”
He motioned to the dummies on the last sentence. “You can’t blame me for not trying when you brought in a bunch of plastic chunks to speak to.”
“You have to be able to take anything in stride. Besides, I dressed them up, didn’t I?” I’d stopped at a thrift store on my way in and picked up some cheap ties along with a few other tidbits. “Why is it so hard for you to just go over the new pitch?”
“What was wrong with my old pitch?”
“It wasn’t getting you any real offers,” I said. Despite how it might’ve sounded, I wasn’t trying to be a bitch. “All I’ve done is to fine tune it into something that hopefully will bring in the real offers. Focus on that. Focus on how incredible it will be when the call comes in and we both get everything we’ve ever wanted.”
“I’ve been focusing on that,” he grumbled. “That’s the only thing I’ve been fucking focusing on, but I can’t be convincing if I’m speaking to dummies. Get me in front of a real board, if Italy didn’t convince you that I could speak publicly.”
“You did well at the wedding,” I agreed, though I’d known my lack of professional interest that night would come back to bite me. “Pitch meetings aren’t the same as making a speech about your best friend, though. You need to be able to recite numbers without putting people to sleep. You need to know your material backward and forward, inside out. If you fumble so much as one question, you’re out.”
He dragged in a long breath through his nostrils, then nodded. “Let’s try again. Just don’t interrupt me this time.”
I rolled my eyes. “As long as you give it a serious try this time, I won’t need to interrupt you.”
Glancing down at the flashcards I’d made for him, he started the pitch without bickering with me over my comment. There had been a weird tension between us since that last morning in Verona. The obvious conclusion was that it was there because we’d slept together, but I didn’t think that was it.
Neither of us had said a word about what had happened, but somehow, it seemed we were actually both okay with that. We didn’t need to discuss in detail what it had meant to us because it had been a spur of the moment thing that hadn’t changed the fundamental nature of our relationship.
While I would admit that I got even more hot and bothered by him just being himself these days than I had before, nothing else had really changed. Nothing else had happened, and we were both okay with that, too.
This tension seemed to stem from something else that had happened that day. Parker had seemed more on edge ever since, his tone sharper and his laughter less frequent. When he was with me, anyway.
From my window, I’d watched him interact with his clients and the workout group he was part of that was made up of a few of his friends. Men I knew but had never met. Except for Nash, obviously.
Every now and then, he’d look up and wave at me. I’d have given a tooth for an in with some of their other friends, but I never went down there to get an introduction. That just seemed tacky and desperate to me. Besides, all my attention was needed on putting together a deal for Parker.
With them, he seemed like his old self. He seemed lighter than he was when he was up here, working with me. Since I’d agreed to his stupid idea of pretending to be engaged, I didn’t know what was pricking at him. I’d have thought he’d be happy with me for going along with the charade, but he definitely wasn’t.
If anything, he seemed strangely disappointed about something. I leaned back in my chair, watching him read from the flashcards in a completely monotone voice. He rushed over the words, stumbled over some of them like he was nervous, and when I tried to help him, it only got worse.
“Relax, Parker,” I said. “Remember what you’re talking about here. You’re telling people about how you discovered your method, how you built the gym, and where you see it going. That should be easy for you.”
“It used to be.” He tugged at the collar of his shirt, pulling it away from his neck before huffing in frustration. “Nothing about this feels right. Everything is just off. I don’t know why, but those fucking dummies aren’t helping.”
Finally, I got up and walked over to him. I put my hands on the sides of his head and looked him right in the eyes. “Just breathe. It’s going to be fine. If the dummies are bothering you that much, don’t look at them. Pretend it’s just the two of us because, if you think about it, it really is just the two of us.”
He breathed in and repeated after me. “Just the two of us.”
The anxiety behind his dark gaze fizzed out when he looked back at me.