Page 67 of Love.V2
When I peered back at her, she looked the same. Sitting in the same spot, same position, same thoughtful frown on her face. But everything felt weird.
“Are you okay?”
“I’m fine. Reading.” She raised her book and her eyebrows at the same time, the universal 'you're bothering me' face. I held my hands up in surrender.
“Must be good. I want to hear about it later.”
I tried not to take it personally when she didn’t respond. She didn’t look up when I passed through to the kitchen. I stood there, glass of water in hand, looking around my house like it was a strange new planet.
What did I usually do with my free time?
Hell, when was the last time I’d had any?
Fabric rustled as Tess shifted in the other room. I thought about the emails I’d left untouched last night, knowing they could wait until Monday.
I grabbed my briefcase from the chair in the kitchen and made my way to the office. I could work with the window open.
Chapter 19
Tess
“I’m wondering if we could push those timelines up even more.”
My eyes narrowed at Dylan’s question that wasn’t really a question.
“Um.” Noel glanced at me.
“I took another look at that opportunity to pitch the pharmaceutical campaign. That weight loss drug? I think it’s worth a shot. If we can shift some things around, we could free up bandwidth for the pitch. It’s a hot market right now.”
Every red flag, alarm, and shred of intuition in my body began waving, blaring, and pointing straight at Dylan.Something is wrong.
I forced myself to take a breath. It had been a few days since our misunderstanding about California. His pitch had gone well, and all our Jinx projects were on track. Our team usually liked to spend some time on Monday morning celebrating recent wins and debriefing on priorities for the week ahead, but Dylan had hijacked our usually peppy, laid-back touch-base.
I didn’t like it one bit. Just like I hadn’t liked him walking around the office last week, asking people about progress on various projects. Just like I didn’t like how he still slept in my bed, held me close, and brought me coffee, while his mind was clearly somewhere else.
Every cell in my body was alive with warning, along with a healthy dose of déjà vu.
Noel’s face looked panicked. I used my newfound corporate confidence to interject. “We’re at capacity right now. Besides, we all decided that project wasn’t for us. We’d rather work with smaller organizations.”
“That aren’t evil,” Henry muttered, bumping his fist with Chassie. I bit back a grin.
“That aren’t evil. Exactly.” I glanced back at Dylan, who looked deep in thought.
“Weight loss drugs aren’t evil.”
I scoffed. Were we really doing this? “Of course not. Medicines aren’t intrinsically bad. But when the organizations that sell them jack up the prices of things like insulin for no other reason than to turn a profit, one might reasonably say the corporation isn’t squeaky clean.”
“I’m with Dylan on this one.”
I just barely stopped my eyes rolling. Of course, Victoria just had to wade into this. She’d been oddly quiet since I’d taken her off the Botto account. I knew it couldn’t last forever.
“The vision for Jinx before most of you joined was to get bigger and better accounts. I’m in favor of pushing ourselves harder.”
“Bottoisa bigger account, and we’ve almost closed that deal. I don’t want us to take on more than we can chew and get burned out.”
“But if we don’t take on bigger clients, we can’t expand. Hire more people,” Victoria argued. She leaned into the table, looking past me to Dylan. “I’d be happy to take the lead on the pharma pitch. I’m notafraid of a little overtime if it benefits the company.” She speared me with a glance and a raised eyebrow.
She probably wanted this shiny new account all to herself. Something else to lord over me.
