Big Dick Energy - Cindi Madsen Page 0,72

skirt and heels.

I glanced toward Archer’s cubicle for the third or fourth time—okay fine, at least the twentieth—since this morning.

While I’d been accused of over-preparing, the meeting was set to start in twenty minutes, and still no Archer. He was up first, too. What was he planning to do? Slide in like a baseball player running for home plate?

Good thing that you’re only worrying about your presentation and what you can control.

With that in mind, I gathered my laptop and notes and strode into the conference room to set up.

One by one, the committee members showed up and took their usual seats. I welcomed Jill, Mario, and Scott, told them to grab water or coffee if needed, and then glanced out of the glass door of the conference room.

At five minutes till, I excused myself and ducked my head into Mr. Bishop’s office. “The meeting’s about to start,” I said, and despite my best earlier circumspection, I couldn’t help adding, “Have you seen or heard from Archer?”

Mr. Bishop had barely glanced up at my mention of the meeting, but that question got his full attention. Panic widened his eyes. “He’s not here yet?”

Thanks for the confidence, jackass. If I succeed, it’ll be no thanks to you. Giving him a piece of my mind would be cathartic but wouldn’t help matters, and since I didn’t want to come across as a snitch, either, I affected my most casual-cool front. “I haven’t seen him, but I’ve also been in the conference room all morning.”

For the last twenty minutes, technically, but still.

After doing a quick walkthrough of the entire office, I fired off a text to Archer’s phone. Since Wednesday night, we’d been busy finetuning and compartmentalizing. At the office we exchanged secretive smiles, and at night we’d send flirty—and occasionally dirty—texts.

There was one teeny tiny thing I’d been obsessing about since Wednesday night, but it boiled down to semantics.

Something I couldn’t clarify later.

Inconsequential, really.

He’d told me he was falling for me, and I’d gone and blurted out the L-word. When push came to shove, it was more or less the same thing, right? No big deal. I’d added the too, though, and he sure hadn’t countered my confession. He’d tossed me over his shoulder, carried me to his room, and made love to me.

Love.

Butterflies erupted, overpowering the nerves that’d been doing jumping jacks in my gut since the moment I woke up. The man I’d despised before I’d even met him had made it safe for me to believe in love again. Safe to have faith in a man again.

Since I’d spent a lot of time analyzing—possibly even overanalyzing—that night, my replay button was locked and loaded.

You’re who I was missing before I knew there was a person who could fill the hole in my heart. Archer had delivered that line with so much passion and certainty that had my heart not already belonged to him, those words would’ve cemented my choice to hand it on over.

The poetic beauty had it ranking right up there with a line from a long song. And because I was in love with Archer, I dialed up his number to see if he was okay, or if he needed me to stall.

Straight to voicemail, damn it.

Unsure of what else to do, I returned to the conference room.

At the motion of the door, my heart skipped a beat. Then Mr. Bishop walked in, frowned at me as though I wasn’t a competent employee he could also rely on, and settled into a seat.

“Good morning, everyone. What an amazing ride we’ve been on the past month. I’ve enjoyed getting a chance to take a closer look at the Pythons and to consider what we at BJB could bring to our beautiful city—”

Archer burst into the conference room, and I gaped at him, relief flooding me in a cooling wave.

After far too many minutes of half breaths, I finally managed a full one. My brain had gone all macabre on me, conjuring up car wreck scenarios or, like, one of those building beams being dropped on him—it happened in once in a TV show I’d watched, and ever since, I went blocks out of my way to avoid construction zones with those crane thingies.

It was far more likely that he’d merely slept through his alarm.

“Oh good, you’re here.” My boss certainty hadn’t aimed that sentiment my way. If his blatant show of favoritism messed with my chances, it’d be difficult to remember I didn’t have any heels that went