“My business is what makes owning the Reapers possible. I built this place from the ground up, and it wasn’t cheap.”
“Oh, I can tell.” She nodded. “Everything is state of the art. Your players love you, too. Just so you know. And I knew that before you agreed to let me shadow you, so it’s not like they were just dropping compliments so I’d hear and tell you.”
“I never thought that.”
“Who is the next meeting with?” She took another sip of her coffee. The woman should just mainline the caffeine and cut the bullshit at the rate she drank that stuff.
“One of my bankers.”
She pouted as we reached the floor of my office. “But then it’s Reaper day?” The woman batted her fucking eyelashes at me, like it would sway me…and it did. She had such spectacular eyes, warm and deep.
“Then it’s Reaper day,” I promised, shaking my head at her terminology.
The door dinged and opened, and she skipped out, making me smile until I saw McKittrick’s name on her fucking back again.
Yeah, I was going to have to either do something to quell the ridiculous jealousy that threatened my sanity or I was going to have to do something about that jersey.
* * *
Day twenty-three, I sat at my computer, typing out responses to what felt like hundreds of emails. Daisy and I had a lull in our day, a precious hour of time where I could catch up on my to-do list instead of adding more to it.
Delegating didn’t take me much time beyond figuring out who needed to handle a particular issue or making a quick decision on my own, and I found myself glancing up every time I hit send.
Daisy sat at the conference table instead of her usual seat in front of me, typing away at her book, a look of utter concentration furrowing her brow. Last week I’d taken a bevy of conference calls with our team leads overseas, and since she wasn’t exactly fluent in Japanese or Korean, she’d spent the time writing. I’d watched her for hours, fascinated by her focus, her ability to block out the rest of the world with a pair of noise-canceling headphones and disappear into the world she was writing.
I answered two more emails and looked back up.
Daisy was twisting in her seat, reaching back, then reaching up, then twisting back with a frustrated look on her face.
None of my business. Five minutes and twenty-two emails later, she was still acting…weird. Her headphones were on the conference table, and she glared at the screen, furiously deleting with her pointer finger only to type something out again, arch her body like a contortionist, and delete all over, restarting the cycle.
“Okay, I give up. What the hell is going on over there?” I asked. “Is there something wrong with your chair?”
Her gaze bolted toward mine. “Oh! No. Nothing’s wrong. Just trying to figure something out.”
“Like if you can spin your head Exorcist style while performing a backbend?” My eyebrows rose. I’d seen her do some pretty odd things the last three weeks, but this was taking the proverbial cake.
“Is that what I look like I’m doing?” Utter dismay washed over her features. “It’s supposed to be sexy, not creepy.” She sat back in the chair, folding her arms across her chest and giving her laptop a murderous look.
The way her breasts were straining against the V-neckline of her dress was certainly sexy, but I wasn’t about to say that. She was in one of those fifties dresses again, the kind that flared out at her waist, accentuating the curve. The kind that had layers underneath the cherry-red fabric that made me want to count just how many pieces of fabric there were between me and the skin of her thighs.
“But it’s totally creepy, isn’t it?” She leaned forward and shut her laptop. “I don’t think it’s going to work.”
“What exactly are you trying to figure out?”
“Nothing.” She stood and leaned back against the conference table, her lips pursed as she stared at the floor like it was a puzzle.
“Clearly it’s not nothing.” I took my fingers off the keyboard. “Just tell me. I’m pretty good at figuring stuff out.”
“I don’t need you to figure it—” Her gaze jumped to mine and a slow smile spread across her face.
“What?”
She walked my way, tucking the closest of her curls behind her ears. “I don’t need your brain to figure it out,” she said softly, coming around my desk. “But I wouldn’t mind the use of your body.”
My stomach clenched. “Come again?”
“No, nothing that explicit,” she teased, her eyes sparkling. “I could absolutely use your help if you don’t mind me squeezing into your personal space for a second.”
“Okay?” Yes, fucking please.
“Scoot back a little? I just need to see if it’s possible to do something in a certain position without dislocating my character’s head.”