Inhale, Exhale - By Sarah M. Ross Page 0,14
the disaster that just happened over and over in my head.
“Thank you for calling the Allegro Corporation. This is Jillian in sales, how can I direct your call?”
By the time I dared a glance behind me, he was gone.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Boyfriend.
She had a boyfriend. This was good news, right? I didn’t want to be with her. I didn’t have the time; she wasn’t part of my plan.
So why did it feel like I’d gotten sucker punched?
And why did she have to be smart on top of everything? It would be so much easier to forget she ever existed if she couldn’t string two sentences together. No, this girl could string them—in multiple languages! It made me wonder what else she was good at, what she liked, if she ever traveled to the places she studied.
I accomplished next to nothing for the rest of the day. Or the following day. I couldn’t seem to concentrate on any of my current projects and instead filled my time doing mindless tasks. I kept hoping I’d run into her in the halls, making extra trips to the bathroom or break room for coffee. Even rowing didn’t take my mind off of her. It was pathetic. I was pathetic.
JT had been right, and I could see why so many of the guys in the office had been talking about her all week. She was—I couldn’t even put it in words. She had what the French called “je ne sais quoi”—that certain something.
I laughed at the irony that out of all the people in this office, she was probably one of the few who would even know what the phrase meant. I hadn’t expected her to have the intelligence that matched her beauty. It made it that much harder to forget about her. And I wanted to forget about her. I tried to forget about her.
I couldn’t forget about her. Her beauty, wit, and charm wormed its way into me like a virus.
Late the following morning, my office line lit up, indicating an incoming call. The caller ID revealed it was Jillian. Hesitant to pick up, I let it go to voicemail. As soon as my phone blinked red, indicating I had a message, I quickly snatched up the headset and listened to the message. Twice.
“Um, hi. Grant? Did I call the right extension? God, I hope I’m not accidentally calling the CEO or something. Anyway, this is Jillian, the new girl you helped yesterday? I seemed to have screwed something up and was hoping you could come over for a few minutes and take a look at it. Unless this is the CEO, in which case this is Temperance. Um, yeah. Okay. I’m hanging up now.”
I don’t think I ever made the conscious decision to move, but I found myself standing beside her cubicle within five minutes of her voicemail, excited for the chance to talk to her again. I needed to punch myself in the face.
“Hi there,” I greeted.
Jillian hadn’t heard me approach. She sat chewing on a pen cap, obviously daydreaming. A blush crept up her face when she turned to talk to me. Now what was that thought, I wondered. Was she thinking about me?
“Hi, yourself. I guess you got my voicemail.” She bit the hangnail on the side of her thumb again. I wanted to rip that thumb out of her mouth and suck on it myself. Watch her pupils dilate as I bit down a little.
I am so screwed.
“I did. How can I satisfy your needs today?” She drew a shaky breath at my double entendre, and my smile deepened.
“I, um, well,” she stumbled, before pausing and taking a deep breath. I knelt, dropping my desktop repair kit on the floor and getting out a few tools. I doubted I’d need them, but it gave me a chance to move closer to her for a second. She smelled like the beach, coconut and salt air. I breathed in deep, holding it in my lungs for a long minute. I wondered if it was some sort of lotion or shampoo. It didn’t matter; either way I wanted to rub her up and down with that scent.
She slowly removed her headset and swiveled her chair toward me, causing her legs to brush up against my own. I could have sworn I heard her mumbling “boyfriend” a few times under her breath, but couldn’t be sure.
“It froze. The computer. I tried restarting, but nothing happened.”
I stood, much closer to her than was necessary, but