Page 21 of Nailed

My stomach flipped. “Of course I do.” What was he on about? “It was the first time you’d done something nice for me in months.” Just like last night. I’d drawn up the courage to demand he tell me why he’d been such a jerk. But he’d never given me a good answer. Just like he wouldn’t now. Then he’d stormed off, like always.

“You told me you gave it away,” Jamie said stiffly.

“I did.”

I been furious with him. So I told him I’d tossed in the Goodwill bag. It was petty, maybe, but I’d still been reeling from the whiplash of him being kind again, then taking it right back. But I hadn’t thrown the shirt out. I’d kept it.

I wore it all the time, with nothing under it, pretending I was wrapped up in him. I liked to sleep in it—

I sucked in a breath and looked down, my stomach plunging. I was wearing it right now.

When I snapped my head back up, Jamie’s eyes were burning into mine.

“I—” I stammered, but someone down the hall shouted, interrupting me.

“Reilly! If it isn’t the man himself!”

Jamie’s gaze lingered a moment longer.

Blood roared in my ear, humiliation burning. But I wouldn’t look away. Not before him.

Finally Jamie turned. He plastered on a smile. “James.”

Only then did I stumble back into my room. I closed the door with a click. The pathetically soft sound was the perfect punctuation to my utter and total humiliation.

* * *

The crowd murmured among themselves.

“Okay,” I said. “Time’s up. What did you decide?”

I stood in front of the audience, peering at the packed house. While I’d been a little jittery when my presentation started, my heart was now beating at a normal pace. The audience had been rapt through the whole hour-long talk, and the presentation had gone brilliantly.

If only my heart was in it.

I’d asked the crowd to take a minute to think about what they’d be taking away from my talk today.

“Isn’t that kind of self-serving?” I’d asked Jamie last night when he’d suggested it.

“No. It helps cement the key points in. They love it because they get to take ownership of the information.”

I’d loved hearing him say the wordlove.I’d loved the way he leaned forward with his elbows on his knees again when I’d asked him if he’d miss Reilly Contracting when he left.

“I’ll miss some things more than others,” he’d said, his voice low.

I knew in a few moments I’d be mobbed by the several dozen women in the room, both with questions about my presentation and to sign up to join Heartbreaker Trades. Just like Jamie said they would be.

I should have been elated. This was what I wanted.

But all I could think about was Jamie. How he’d given me a taste of the real him last night, the one I’d missed so badly my heart felt like it had been resuscitated. He cared about me, in some small way; I knew he did. And I was pretty sure he was attracted to me, too, at least a little. My stomach swooped as I thought about the moment with the whiskey.

But this morning, it had all fallen apart. It wasn’t just that he’d acted like a grumpy asshole again. It was that him recognizing his shirt on me showed him everything. That I still thought about him. That I wanted him, much more than he wanted me.

It had scared him off. He never showed. I’d scanned every face in the audience, even the people standing at the back—I’d have noticed if a man of his size had been there.

I gripped the whiteboard marker in my hand. It didn’t matter. This presentation had been the point of this weekend. That and the conversations I’d already had this morning with several promising job leads.

Several hands had shot up in response to my question. I pointed to a woman in the middle of the crowd first. “Go ahead.”

---