Hannah’s searching fingers. “What the hell are you doing?”
“I’m just trying to… Aha!” Hannah pulled out Noah’s keys, looking pleased with herself.
Noah eyed Hannah as she maneuvered two keys out of the key ring and handed them back to Noah.
“Here you go,” she said with a sweet smile as she stuffed the rest of them in her jacket pocket.
Noah stared at the two lone keys in his palm. “Umm… what just happened?”
“I confiscated your keys for the next week.”
“Ha! Good one. Now give them back.”
“Nope. You have your apartment keys, and those are all you need. Keys to the clinic will stay with me until next Monday. Think of it as a vacation. Oh, wait…” She smiled like the cat that ate the canary.
Okay. That was fine. A bit inconvenient, since he now had to go to his mother’s place and get the spare set he’d given her for emergencies, but it was doable.
“And I already called Helen, so don’t even think about getting the spares from her.”
“But…” The whole week loomed in front of Noah. A week of nothing but endless stretches of time that he could not fill with work. Nine days if he counted the weekend days. Noah swallowed hard. No work meant too much time to think. That was not good.
“Come on, Hannah. Let’s be serious for a moment. You can’t take my keys. That’s ridiculous. I’ve got too much stuff to do around here. Let’s talk about it reasonably. Give me back my keys, and I promise I’ll get out of here every day by five o’clock. No late nights, no early mornings.”
Noah was definitely going to take some work home with him, but he didn’t think Hannah needed to know that.
“No,” Hannah said. “Now get out of here, and if you even think about touching that laptop bag, you’re going to see the self-defense moves Sean has been teaching me. I’m a freaking whiz at jamming my keys into eyeballs, and I can aim a hard kick in the balls like nobody’s business.”
“But—” Noah tried to argue as Hannah grabbed the laptop bag and hiked it over her shoulder.
“Out.” Hannah pointed her finger to the door.
“I can’t just—”
“Yes you can. I have a bunch of people hired for the next week to take care of everything, so stop trying to come up with reasons to stay here because you won’t find any.”
“I—”
“Off you go,” Hannah said cheerfully as she herded Noah out the door.
Noah was starting to panic now at the idea of all that… nothingness in front of him. A week. Nine days. Two hundred and sixteen hours. Twelve thousand, nine hundred and sixty minutes. Oh fuck.
“Just leave me the laptop, Hannah,” he pleaded. “I’ll stay away from the office, and I’ll sleep a full eight hours every day. I’ll even cook a bunch of super-healthy meals and send you pictures of them every day, but please, just leave me my laptop.”
“No.” Hannah smiled, serene and merciless as she threw the laptop case in the back seat of her car. For a second, Noah actually thought about tackling her.
Yeah, he might have had a tiny problem.
Noah took a deep breath. It was fine. He’d just buy a new computer. He wouldn’t have access to a lot of programs and files, but…
He stopped and blinked. Holy shit. He actually was out of control. He took a big step back from Hannah and the car and the laptop and his keys.
A vacation. He tested the word out in his head. Let it roll through his mind, trying to adjust to it. Get used to the idea.
Noah straightened his shoulders. He could do it. Nine days. Piece of cake. Hell, he was so sleep deprived that it was highly likely he’d spend that week in his bed. It was definitely going to be all right. Before he knew it, he’d be back in the clinic.
13
Alex liked the early morning. At 5:30 a.m., the city was still asleep, the hour too early for even the most dedicated of employees and too late for the most avid partygoers. The air smelled of dew and last night’s rain. Seattle morning had a freshness to it that Alex would miss once he headed back to New York.
His head ached a bit from the champagne he’d downed as he’d wooed another new client to join the folds of Ellison Group. Calvin Jackson, the rising star of the NFL, had seemed uninterested a few weeks ago, but once again, Alex had worked