Chapter 116
When walking through the parking lot, I saw Donal again, in his Lexus, pulling up beside me
“Need a lift?” he asked, gloved hands clenched on the steering wheel. His black hair looked a little windblown, which I didn’t think he’d ever allow. Mmm. Okay, enough of that.
“Er, no, I’m fine, thanks, Mr. Soames.” I kept walking, and he kept pace with me in the car. “Something you need?” I said, staring straight ahead.
“Are you always this stubborn, Nye?”
My heart stopped. He knew my first name? Well, of course, he did. I was being silly. But hearing him say it like that…Wait a minute.
I looked at him briefly. “Stubborn? Me? I don’t know what you’re talking about, Mr. Soames.” I kept walking. He followed.
“You can call me Donal, you know? We’re not working right now.”
“What, so we’re friends all of a sudden?” Please say yes.
“I don’t know. You have this prickly shell that makes it hard to tell what you really feel.”
I stopped and faced him, hands clenched with my shopping bags dangling from my fingers. “Excuse me, Mr. Perfect, but you’re not exactly a prime example, are you? You’re so stiff, a block of ice would melt before you ever could.”
His facial expression didn’t change much, but I sensed he was pissed. His eyes went flat. “Well, now I know, don’t I? Have a good afternoon, Mr. Havers.”
He drove off before I could say something worse. Oh, God. Had I just lost us a client? Ingrid would kill me. And forget about a date.
* * * *
“Okay, whatever bug crawled up your butt these past few days, shit it out. You’ve had enough coffee to turn into a Keurig machine and you’re still a bear. What gives?” Ingrid stared me down in my office, hands on her hips.
“Go away.” I kept typing the email message to a client who hadn’t paid his bill in two months.
“No.” She perched on the edge of my desk, smoothing down her plaid skirt. “We haven’t had a call from Mr. Soames all week, and that’s unusual. I was going to call him, but I thought you could do it instead.”
Oh, dear. I might have turned a shade of green that matched my shirt. Or at least my eye color. “Um…”
“Okay, whenever you start a sentence like that, I worry.” She tapped a nail on my desk. “What did you do?”
“Why did I have to do anything?”
Ingrid pounced. “You pissed him off, didn’t you? I don’t know how, but that would be just like you. What the fuck, man?” She threw her hands in the air and stood. “If you’ve lost us a client, I will murder you with your bicycle spokes. Fix. This. Now.” And off she went.
Great. Now I had to figure out how to apologize to our precious client. See what I mean about life not ever doing me any favors? Though perhaps I’d brought a lot of this on myself, but I wasn’t thinking about that.
I took a deep breath, let it out, and picked up the phone. It rang twice before the receptionist at Donal’s firm answered, then transferred me to his line at my request. It went to voicemail immediately. Damn it. When the beep sounded, I didn’t know what to say.
“Um…Mr. Soames? Er, Donal? This is, uh, Nye.” Geez, how articulate. “I was calling to see if, uh, everything is okay, with the contract? We haven’t heard from you and I hoped, well, really, I wanted to, kind of, um, apologize for, you know. So, anyway, uh, bye.” Yeah, I hung up before it could get any worse, and thunked my head on the desk. Twice. And then once more, just for effect. I was an idiot.
I spent the rest of the day enduring Ingrid’s frowns and narrowed eyes whenever we crossed each other’s paths. She would forgive me eventually. Ingrid knew I sometimes couldn’t help myself, though that wasn’t really an excuse, was it?
* * * *
Another week went by without hearing, at least personally, from Donal. He did start ordering couriers again a few days after my call, though whether that was the reason, or something else had happened, I had no idea.
* * * *
On yet another Saturday, while Ingrid and I ate Chinese food as a break from pizza, the door opened and Donal entered, dressed in green and black. Wait, were those jeans? I hadn’t ever seen him in anything but business or dressy attire.
Ingrid discreetly stepped on my foot, threw me a warning glare, and waved at Donal before disappearing in the back with her lunch. Leaving me to finish noodles and wipe my mouth before staring nervously at the man before me.