“What should I do next? Anything more you need?” she asks, and I bite the inside of my lip, considering.
“Not sure. Er… do you have the time to help? I don’t want to keep you, if you have other duties…”
She shrugs and spreads her hands wide with a what can you do sort of laugh. “I’m not sure yet. Mr. Walloway is supposed to be giving me an assignment, but he told me he wouldn’t have anything put together until tomorrow, so he just said to help out for now…”
The sound of John’s last name makes my heart skitter in my chest all over again. How could I be this stupid? I’d googled John Walloway a thousand times before now, obviously. But I only ever read his work profiles, interviews about how he started this company and why. Those interviews, in magazines like the New Yorker and Economist almost never included photos—or if they did, they were moody Steve Jobs-esque photos in profile, where you could hardly make out John’s face, let alone any identifying features. It never even occurred to me to google pictures of the guy himself. Why would I? I figured he’d be some higher up I’d see but never actually speak to around the office.
Someone I’d eventually want to get to know, to have know me, but not… Not in the way you did, you idiot. My inner critic hasn’t stopped lambasting me all day. Of all the guys I could choose for a random Vegas hook up—let alone marriage….
But I force those thoughts from my head, hoping that Bianca won’t read too much into the extremely pregnant pause hovering in the air between us now. “Hmm, well, I don’t have too many more jobs around here, unless you want to help me melt down that clay and start reshaping a new set of antler designs—”
“Sure!” Bianca perks up right away, which makes my eyebrows rise.
“You really don’t have to.”
“Don’t be silly.” She elbows me. “I’d love to help. Sounds more fun than all the desk work I’ll be doing soon anyway, right?” Her smile is so open and earnest, I can’t bring myself to question it.
So together we cross over to the ovens and set about putting together some new clay molds that I can shape into the huge antler sets we’ll need. As we work, we chat about our backgrounds and how we got started at Pitfire. Unlike me, Bianca comes from a marketing background, so she’s not interested in the actual set design part of what we’re doing here. But she talks a lot about how much she admires “Mr. Walloway”’s business strategies, and how she really wanted the assistant job so she could learn from him about getting ahead at work.
“If there’s anyone who can teach a girl how to rise up through the world with the cards stacked against us ladies, it’s him, right?”
I stifle a smirk. “Why, because he had so many cards stacked against him?” I roll my eyes. “Isn’t his whole family wealthy?”
“You didn’t read the profile they did of him in Vogue?” Bianca’s gaze sharpens, then widens in disbelief when I shake my head. “Well, his family lost all their money when he was young. He’s the one who pulled them all out of borderline poverty—paid for his younger sister to go to college and bailed out his parents from huge debt, too.”
My eyebrows go up. I can’t help but feel a tiny pang in my chest, a shift, as I realign my opinions of the man I mistakenly married, just a little. Maybe he’s not entirely the rich cocky businessman he seems. Okay, no, he’s definitely still cocky. But maybe there’s more to him than just that.
Maybe you haven’t given him a real chance.
But even that thought is insane. How can I give a guy I accidentally eloped with a chance at marriage, when I barely know him? Much less when he’s my boss, and as he himself pointed out, we’re going to have to work in close proximity for… well, hopefully for a very long time, if my career plans pan out.
“You really don’t know much about him?” Bianca’s brow furrows, and I shake my head with a shrug.
“What can I say? We don’t talk much.” I pull off my gloves absently, about to go and wash my hands at the sink, having finished sculpting one half of the antlers we’ll need, and figuring now will be as good a time as any to call a lunch break for the shop.
But Bianca stops me with a single question. “How long have you been married?”
My heart jump starts in my chest. My veins turn to ice. How does she know? I think, my pulse racing, afraid she’ll use this against me, or spread rumors around the water cooler…