Page 18 of In This Together

She had considered acquiring a new, thriving label and there were a couple of contenders, but there was only one label that really stood out and that particular label hadn’t made it into her presentation for one reason: she couldn’t, wouldn’t, poach Sanfia Records from her sister, and she knew not all the money in the world would convince Sofia to sell the family label to a giant like the Stellar label of XM Music Group.

She admired Sofia’s strength of will. Her devotion to the label their father had founded. Hell, she was almost jealous of the way nothing meant more to Sofia than the people she loved. But Andrea had chosen over the last couple of years – and for the first time in her life – to focus on herself and her career. Things that didn’t fight back. Things that didn’t misunderstand her and threaten to break her heart. But Sofia’s best interests were her kryptonite and damn if that wasn’t causing her a headache for her presentation.

She tapped her manicured nail on her desk as she waited impatiently for her PowerPoint presentation to load.

‘Come on,’ she muttered, checking the small clock on her desk again.

She hadn’t even seen the dress Hannah – or Rosalie, as it transpired – had recently bought for her to wear.

‘Finally!’ she said, as the presentation Hannah had typed, following Andrea’s lengthy notes, opened on her screen.

She reviewed the first of twenty slides.Perfect.Exactly as she had instructed.

She moved to the next slide. She recognised it but… ‘That’s number three.’ She scrolled on and realised that only ten of her twenty slides had been compiled.

‘What the hell?’

She stormed out of her office to Hannah’s desk.Empty,like every other desk in the secretary pool. Finding her notes amongst the piles of documents on Hannah’s desk, she flicked through her hand-drawn slide deck.

‘For fuck’s sake, Hannah!’ she yelled as she realised what had happened. Back in her office, she tossed the pages in temper. Hannah had missed the reverse side of every page. She had missedevery other slide.

Now Andrea had ten slides to make before she could even rehearse her presentation, which was at nine-thirty in the morning.

Almost on reflex, she dialled Hannah’s cell, which went straight to voicemail.

‘Hannah, for God’s sake! This presentation has to be done first thing and I need to check it before relying on it. How could you miss every other page?’

‘Problem?’

She would have gone on an endless rant to Hannah’s voicemail but Hunter’s appearance at her doorway stole her thoughts, her heartbeat and her breath, all at once.

He strode toward her as she dropped her landline into its holster. His navy dinner suit was trimmed with black lapels and cuffs. The line down the leg of the pants was black and his bowtie hung untied and loose down the sides of his open shirt collar.

Hunter sure did know how to wear a suit – he was as knock-out as Sinatra or Martin.

‘Shouldn’t you be getting dressed?’ he asked with a familiar hunger in his eyes that was a match for her own feelings.

‘I should,’ she replied, gathering herself before she could form a coherent sentence that wasn’t a lust-fuelled torrent of rubbish.

Hunter nodded, his gaze growing heavier and the focus moving down to the bottom-most unbuttoned fastening of Andrea’s blouse.

‘The presentation tomorrow?’ he asked.

‘A catastrophic fuck-up by Hannah.’

He turned his back on her and she watched him cross the room toward her vinyl player. He ran a finger along the LPs neatly lining her shelf stack and pulled out John Coltrane –a classic.

She didn’t have time for this, but suddenly time had no meaning. She had forgotten why she was mad and at whom. As Hunter set the music to play, Andrea drew her office blinds and locked the door.

* * *

Whilst they dressed, the infamous post-coital vulnerability that attacked all women – stoics and home-wreckers included – began to creep into Andrea’s mind. As if he knew, intuitively, Hunter unprecedentedly approached her from behind and pressed his lips to her neck, running his hands down her arms.

‘Hunter? Do you think we’ll ever…?’

How did she ask if he thought they could ever be a couple? How did she ask him to leave his wife for her? How did she do anything without becoming what she promised she wouldn’t become?

‘Shhh… Don’t spoil it.’ He kissed her temple and backed away, ending the conversation that never got started.

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