Page 92 of Off Her Game
“What’s more of a problem is you and Noah roadblocking me from doing my job.”
Jake combed a hand threw his hair and stared at his ceiling for a moment. “I owe you for getting Noah beyond his media paranoia. Not sure what you did, but he did a magazine interview yesterday that included photos. Two months ago, before you, that never would’ve happened. The company needs him to be more out front like this. I’ll also grant you that the work you and the team have been doing has been great. But Josh says you’ve been making waves. I don’t want you losing momentum because you feel the need to have some sort of come to Jesus confrontation with Noah. What you two had wasn’t real. You fake dated. I’ll give you twenty-four hours to tell me who gave you the code. If you don’t, I’m afraid we’ll have to let you take the fall.”
She tried to rationalize the emotional avalanche clenching her mind and rolling her stomach. Caring about her job should be her top priority. She should be agonizing over tattling, but her mind wouldn’t quit hashing out the details of Noah and the blonde. Maybe he’d not only turned over a new leaf with regard to the media, but also with getting out there and dating.
Then it hit her like a ton of bricks. She was miserable without him, drowning herself in work and avoiding communication with anyone that mattered. She’d been dodging her sister all week, which wasn’t easy since Emma emailed, texted, and called almost hourly. She’d also missed the past two Sunday nights at her brother’s, where all the siblings converged for dinner.
Love sucked.
Noah didn’t want her. He’d moved on.
That’s what she needed to do. Love was for losers. But she wanted to wallow. For the first time ever she believed a man wasn’t in her life just to fuck her or use her skills, but because he’d liked her for who she was.
She shoved all the self-realizations way. “My team needs Sam to do his security coding before it can become virtual reality compatible. The only one who can redirect Sam’s efforts to accomplish this is Noah, or so I’ve been told. I might’ve been rough on Josh, but he’s been…” She pasted on a smile. If she finished the statement she’d call Josh something far more than a prick, which she considered generous.
“I’ll look into it. Let me make myself perfectly clear.” He paused to glower straight into her eyes. “Stay away from Noah. Twenty-four hours.”
“When can I expect Sam to help us?”
Unease skittered through Jake’s gaze. Maybe he didn’t have the ability to move Sam off whatever he was doing. “I’ll let you know. Maybe later in the week.”
“As I told Josh, waiting doesn’t work for me. I need to know now. We need to get the game through some trials before moving it to the next phase. You were the one who said we had to get this done fast. Not doing this may put us way behind. Sounds like Noah really is the person who controls Sam’s schedule.”
Jake shot to a stand. His mouth opened and shut. His placed his closed fists on the desk. “I will handle it.”
After shooting him a squinty eye she had no doubt conveyed the skepticism and annoyance burning her from the inside out, she left. Staying with NJ Legacy now was about her game, not the long term. She didn’t want anyone else messing with what she’d slaved over for years.
She marched down the hall, feeling like a building whose basement had just been dynamited. Taking a sharp right she pushed into her sister’s office. She closed the door behind her, leaned back against the door for support.
“Tori?” Emma jumped up from behind her desk. “What’s wrong?”
“I can’t do this anymore, Em. I can’t work here under this kind of stress. All I want is to do my job and get this game ready.” She swiped the back of her hand across her eyes.
“Stop it. Now your makeup is smeary. I didn’t even think you wore mascara.” Emma held out a box of tissues. “Here.”
“I am not a crier. Damn all of this.” She took the whole box of tissues and sat on her sister’s “emergency” futon. Even though Emma claimed the college-esque futon ruined the ambiance of her office, Emma sometimes crashed here after a long day or had a nap after an intense workout.
Emma said, “Start from the beginning. What happened?”
“You already know what happened with Noah. I wish to hell I could make these tears stop leaking. So freaking embarrassing.”
“What happened today?”
“I need to ask Noah if he’d be willing to reassign Sam to my project for a short while. That little jerk, Josh, seems to take great joy in blocking me. Josh told me, well implied, Noah doesn’t want to see me. Later in the week is too long to wait.”
“I know you get impatient when you need something done. Maybe it could wait a bit?”
“Stop being the personal assistant and be on my side.”
“I am on your side. Just trying tone the drama down a level.” Emma held out a bottled water.
Tori shook her head to decline. “This can’t wait. Leo thinks Sam could do this in a few hours. We need it virtual reality ready to test run the game and problem shoot, but it can’t go to the gurus for virtual reality until Sam does his thing. We have to remain on pause until this happens. That’s wasted time.” She used a tissue to dab moisture from the corners of her eyes.
“Did you try sending someone else on your team to see if it was just you Josh was blocking?”
“No. I hadn’t thought of that. I thought it was my problem to deal with. I’m in charge.”
“Ask Leo to do it. He can be pretty tough. If he comes back with the same blowoff, then you’ll know it’s not you.”
