Counting On You (Counting the Billions 2)

Chapter 27

Daniel

I WOKE UP BEFORE ABBY on Tuesday morning, but not by much. I stared at the soft expression on her sleeping face, noting how sweet she looked like this. Her bare skin was pressed up against mine, and it was almost too warm there beneath the covers. I didn’t want to move, afraid that I would disturb her into wakefulness. But I wouldn’t have changed a thing.

It wasn’t long before Abby’s alarm went off, birds chirping in a sweet melody. She wrinkled her nose as she reached over to shut it off. Then, she looked over at me, yawning hugely. I laughed. “Good morning to yourself,” I said, unable to keep the amusement from my voice.

Abby gave my shoulder a light push and then rolled away from me. “You know I’m not a morning person,” she reminded me.

“Oh, I know,” I said. “Not until you’ve got your coffee in you, anyway. And I would have made you coffee, but I didn’t want to wake you up any earlier than I had to.”

Abby sighed. “And I appreciate that,” she said. “But I would also appreciate coffee. I’ll be right back.”

I laughed, listening as she padded to the kitchen and got the machine going. I made a mental note of a gift idea: one of those coffee machines that she could program to start itself at whatever time she wanted. Of course, that was assuming that we continued living in separate houses for long enough for that not to be redundant, since I already had one of those.

I smiled at the thought of us living together, and the thought only sweetened as we both got ready for work. I was in the bathroom brushing my teeth when Abby finished making the coffee. She leaned against the counter watching me.

“Is something wrong?” I asked, a little unnerved by her gazing at me while I did my morning’s dental duty.

“Just, we’re not in a hurry. You don’t have to brush like that,” she said, miming the quick brush motions I was using.

I rolled my eyes and spat into the sink. “Thank you, but I’m not brushing like that because I’m in a hurry. I usually use an electric toothbrush, and I just want to make sure that I use the same vigor.”

Abby burst out laughing. Then, she shook her head. “You know, if you wanted, you could have an electric toothbrush in here. There’s plenty of space in the cabinet.”

“I’ll think about it,” I told her, already making a mental note to buy another one. I hadn’t wanted to take that step before, sure that it would make her feel uncomfortable since I would basically have my appliances there. But it was good to know she supported that.

I really preferred the feel of my teeth after the electric brush, I had to admit.

Abby brushed her own teeth while I fixed my hair, sleeking it back into its normal style. Then, she splashed me in the face with water. I shook my head and gave her a push. “Troublemaker,” I muttered under my breath, and she laughed.

I called my driver and told him to pick us both up at Abby’s that morning. We headed to the office as we normally did, together. And once there, it was time to put on our professional personas.

I still sort of hated how far we had gone to ensure that our personal lives and our work lives were two separate things. Of course, I understood the logic behind it. In fact, I was even more a proponent than Abby was of keeping things strictly professional around the office, because it was a lot more awkward if a guy got suddenly interested in someone around the office. The last thing I needed was to start thinking of Abby bent over that table, or her spread out on the couch in my office.

Or rather, I could think of it all I wanted. So long as I didn’t have the mental images to go along with it.

So it was a good thing. I kept telling myself that. But at the same time, it was definitely a little weird to pretend, for the most part, as though we never saw one another outside the office. Pretty much everything we did outside of work, even things like dinner with her brother and his family, were off-limits. I had a feeling that to the casual observer, we didn’t even really act like we were friends.

Then again, for me, that was the same sort of line that I had pretty much always tried to draw with my employees. In a sense. I interacted, chatted and stayed up-to-day with them. But I steered clear of the office parties, for the most part, and I didn’t go out for drinks with them. I was the boss and had to keep a decent working relationship.

Things had just been different when my advisor had been Gerrard. And it was a mistake I’d learned from. He and I had been close. And Abby and I of course were close, but there was just a different air to the meetings that we had together. I sometimes wished that she weren’t my advisor anymore, or that we had drawn the lines somehow differently.

But this was just the way it had to be for now. Things would change, no doubt, as we and everyone around us got more comfortable with the idea that we were together.

I was surprised, though, to see an email from Abby in my inbox. She had sent it from her home email address that morning, probably from her phone while she was waiting for the coffee to be ready, and I had to smile when I saw it. Thanks for being fun with me, it said, with a little smiley emoji.

I responded with a message to Abby’s work email: You’re the best, with a heart emoji at the end.

So maybe the lines would blur more and more as we continued to figure this thing out. There was no harm in sending a few cutesy emails to each other was there? No one would ever see them except for us, and maybe the poor IT guy who managed the servers. And it wasn’t like our relationship was a secret around the office.

I didn’t get a message back from Abby just then, but I couldn’t keep the smile off my face as I continued to go through my morning routine.

Abby knocked on the door just as I was finishing responding to the most pressing of the emails. “Hey, I got all your stuff about the meeting with Aaron,” she said, giving no sign that she had received the email from me. It felt nice to have a little office secret to share with her, if I was being honest.

“What did you think about his proposal?”

“I think there are a lot of solid points there,” Abby said, taking that as a sign to come farther into my office and have a seat. “But I think we could do better. Here’s my counter-proposal.” She slid the paper across the desk toward me, with her comments marked in bright green ink. I nodded as I read through her points.