“Well, you need to think about MM because once I heard that a man named Hawk claimed you as his own last night, I asked some questions about him and found out a lot and the lot I found out means you need to cut him loose.”
Oh boy. That didn’t sound good.
“I don’t want to know about him either. After a year and a half I’m learning fast and the more interaction I have with Hawk, the more the threat that I’ll be the first victim of spontaneous head explosion becomes imminent.”
“You don’t like him?”
“I don’t have time to explain the complexity of everything I feel about Hawk right now. I have three hours to do ten hours of work and then I have to be at my parents’ house. They know Ginger’s in trouble and they may have disowned her but she’s their daughter and she’s my sister and they’re going to worry. I know that because, it sucks and I want to wash it away, but I’m worried. I have to gear up for facing that. I’m taking this all one step at a time.”
There was more silence then, “You don’t sound too good.”
I closed my eyes, leaned forward and my head collided with my desk.
Why was no one paying attention to me?
“Was that your head hitting your desk?” Cam asked in my ear.
“Yes,” I whispered into the phone, keeping my eyes closed.
“All right, babe, I’ll leave you alone but we need cosmos, soon. I’ll talk to Leo about a double date. Maybe since you aren’t a major player in this case Mitch’ll be able to do dinner. Or maybe we can just plan a get together at our house and no one will be the wiser.”
I opened my eyes and stared at my lap. “This isn’t letting me go, Cam, this is planning my romantic future with a man I barely know while I’m freaking out about how I’m going to get the man I also barely know but have been sleeping with for months to agree we’re over when his ideas on that subject violently clash with mine.”
Silence then, “Really? You told him it was over?”
I shot up in my chair and cried, “Cam!”
“All right! All right, I’ll let you go.”
“Call Tracy, brief her with the limited intel you have, it’ll save me time,” I ordered.
“Gotcha.”
“No double dates.”
“We’ll just get something in the calendar.”
“Cam!”
“Later, babe.”
Then I was listening to dead air.
I beeped the phone off and put it on its base. Then I got up and went downstairs because I was pretty certain I had frozen Twix bars and I was pretty certain about this because I always had frozen Twix bars but it wasn’t unheard of for me accidentally to eat my way through my stash while, say, watching a movie or just getting the munchies. Through copious experimentation I’d discovered that frozen Twix bars were proven to intensify focus. I needed my focus intensified so I was going to pull out the big guns.
I found I had frozen Twix bars.
Upon offering, I also found that commandos didn’t eat frozen Twix bars.
This was good. More for me.
I grabbed a twin pack, straightened my shoulders, with effort cleared my head and determinedly walked back up the stairs to my office.
Chapter Eight
How We Met
As I headed to Dad and Meredith’s house I was feeling pretty good. I’d managed to make some headway on work and load up my files on my laptop before leaving my house.