Page 50 of Business Casual

I checked him out from head to toe. “I see your barber hooked you up.” I licked my lips. “The pictures didn’t do it justice.”

“Oh, you like that?” He rubbed his hands over his waves and rotated his head to the side. “He did alright.”

The pose was meant to be funny, but with the sunlight illuminating his profile and the navy-blue suit fitting his body the way it did, he looked like a model.

“He did more than alright,” I commented, tilting my head.

He turned to face me. Our eyes locked and all amusement had drained from him.

“Imani—”

The rattling of the coffee cart interrupted his sentence and I spun around just in time to see Josephine wheeling it in.

“Let me get that for you,” Tre insisted, bolting toward the woman.

While he handled that, I made my way to the table near the window. I grabbed my laptop and my notebook out of my bag, and I took a seat.

“Thank you, Josephine. We’ll be working until lunch. Please hold my calls. I’ll return the pressing ones during lunch, but my focus today is preparing for tomorrow.”

“And what about Mr. Franklin? Would you like him to be patched through?”

“If he calls, I’ll give him a call back during lunch. Like I said, we’ll be working on this all day.”

“Very well. I’ll be sure to let your father know.”

I didn’t look back until I heard her and the cart retreating. Tre walked her to the door and closed it behind her.

Iknowshe’s going to make assumptions about what’s going on in here.

“Now where were we?” Tre wondered as he headed toward me.

Thinking about the way Josephine was looking at me and what Mr. Franklin said before he got into the elevator, I stared at my notebook. “We were about to go over what exactly this meeting is and what our strategy needs to be in order to sell the vision.”

Nodding, he grabbed his stuff and then took a seat across from me. “You’re right. Let’s get started.”

While we laughed and joked a little here and there, Tre and I were focused. It didn’t seem like a lot of time had passed before my stomach started growling.

“Did you hear that?” I asked, looking up from my laptop.

“Your stomach making all that noise?”

I narrowed my eyes at him. “You could’ve just said yes.”

He laughed. “I was just trying to get clarification!”

I sucked my teeth. “Yeah, okay. And to think I was going to offer to get you something to eat as well if you couldn’t leave the office.”

“Oh wait, yeah—”

“Nope!” Standing, I lifted my arms up and stretched. “It’s too late!”

“I’m just playing with you…” His eyes roamed my body, and he cleared his throat. “Yeah, you go get something to eat. I probably have a bunch of calls I have to return. My father came by this morning and along with more work, he dropped off food my mom made.”

I grabbed my handbag and then put my hands on my hips. “So this whole time I’ve been starving and you had a homecooked meal waiting for you? Wow, Tre.”

Grinning, he shook his head. “It wasn’t even like that.”

“Mm hmm.” I turned to walk away. “I’ll remember that next time.”

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