Page 76 of Enemies to French Kisses
Silence envelops the room yet again.
How long can we stand here, looking at each other but saying nothing? We’re about to find out.
My stomach rumbles.
She looks at the clock and my eyes follow hers.
“I’m hungry,” she says.
“Me too.”
Silence broken, I open the door for her and she marches through it, neither of us addressing the truth grenade that Vincent just threw at us.
CHAPTER30
Laura
“And…”Marc taps the final figure on the presentation and with a flourish hits save. “Done.”
Just like that, my shoulders relax, my spine relaxes, my neck relaxes and I could fall asleep right here, right now.
The relief feels so good.
“That’s it.” I turn to Vincent. “Good job on the…”
He’s fast asleep, head on his hands. Poor guy, Marc and I really gave him a tough run today, finally getting to a scale-up plan that we could all be happy with. Byall, I mean Marc and me, because we left Vincent with barely a day to pull all the last pieces together.
And he did it. Albeit a bit begrudgingly, mumbling about how it was about time. As Marc and I drew up the presentation slides, he tapped on his laptop like a mad scientist, his normally well-coiffed hair flying in every direction as if each tap on the keyboard was an electric shock.
But now that I’ve seen the other side of Vincent, I can’t unsee it. He’s been hiding some kind of superhero behind that geeky exterior. I wish I’d caught it on camera, but I was too busy having my professional pride being flung on the floor in front of me. How did Vincent read us so well?
It’s thanks to him that we were able to land this in the end. Once Marc and I realized the heart of our problem was a question of process and not of perspective, we could start to find common ground. I’d always assumed that everyone started a project by looking at where they wanted to get to in the end, not only what the next step in a process needed to be. Vincent's insight broke the problem wide open.
Marc and I could then break it down, mapping out the actual milestones the Dutch had spelled out, and not our personal interpretation of them.
That changed everything.
“Done,” Marc whispers. “I never would have imagined.” He looks at me, his eyes tired but warm. “And it’s better than I could have guessed.”
“Me too,” I admit. “And that’s saying a lot.”
Marc scratches the back of his head. “What do we do now? High five? Go for drinks?”
“Go to bed.” I yawn and stretch. “I haven’t slept properly in…” I stop. Not since Marc went flying down the steps. But I don’t want to bring all that up now. “A while.”
Something in the air changes. I feel it, and I feel it coming from him. He looks at his feet and stuffs his hands in his pockets. “Laura—”
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
“We have to.”
“We don’t.” He meets my eyes, but I’ll remain strong. It doesn’t matter that the man I see in front of me now isn’t the man I thought he was two weeks ago. “We’ve just had a big success in getting to this point. The next step is the massive presentation next week. I’m the one who has to be focused as I stand in front of a room of Dutch Health Ministry reps who will look for any crack in our project. I can’t deal with anything else, not yet, not now.”
He licks his lips again and my resolve is melting.
Be strong, Laura. You’re a Texan girl, and we do not give in.
Oh, but I want to.I want to understand exactly what’s happening and whether what’s been rushing through me is real, or was everything between us a lie. A wild ride following an out-of-this-world and unbelievable turn of events in Paris, of all places.
