Handle With Care (Shacking Up 5)

“Look at me. Not my chin or cheeks or my forehead—my eyes, meet them, please.”

She exhales slowly. Her breath smells sweet, like something fruity, citrus maybe. Those gray eyes finally lock on mine. Some kind of weird energy seems to pass between us. Wren rarely, if ever, makes direct eye contact with me. I don’t know why. But now that I have her full attention, I don’t want to let it go. God, she’s beautiful. Why am I focusing on this now?

“I’ve spent a lot of time in fairly isolated environments over the past five years. Interacting with people on a daily basis who need me to fix problems I didn’t create is new and difficult. I don’t love this job. I don’t think I even like it, if I’m going to be honest, but you, your presence makes it bearable, even if it seems the opposite.” As I tell her this, I realize it’s not a load of BS meant to make her feel better and prevent her from being pissed at me for the rest of the day. I don’t know when it happened, or how it happened, but it’s not just that I’m used to her. I think I actually might like her. I drop my hands and step away from the door. “I’m sorry I touched you. Please don’t put me in a headlock.”

Wren chuckles. “Don’t worry. I won’t invoke my self-defense clause.”

“It’s kind of messed up that you have one at all.” I motion between us. “Are we okay?”

“We’re fine. You’re fine.”

“Are you fine? I mean, look at you, obviously you’re fine.” It would be fantastic if I could stop digging myself into a verbal hole. I’ve been out of the game for far too long. “I mean, in the emotional sense of the word. I really can’t have you pissed off at me for like, longer than an hour max, otherwise shit goes downhill fast around here.”

The last time I really made her angry, which was two days ago when I showed up at the office in jeans and a suit jacket—I figured if I was sitting down, no one would see the jeans, so it wouldn’t matter—she rescheduled all my meetings and made me sit with Armstrong to review paperwork as punishment. At least it felt a lot like a punishment.

“I’m fine.” She picks some lint off her skirt. “Is there anything you need to review before the meeting? It’s pretty straightforward. You’ll have to listen to Easton Davidson talk about how big his balls are for a good hour, but you’re adept at tuning people out. I’ll sit beside you and give you a nudge whenever you need to respond.”

“Wait, are you serious?”

“About?” Wren’s still picking at imaginary lint.

“He’s really going to talk about…” I motion to my crotch, which isn’t a great idea since for some reason, today my body’s response to bickering with Wren is to get excited about it. Thankfully, she doesn’t look where I’m pointing.

“Oh!” She laughs and waves a hand in the air, embarrassed maybe. “That was a figure of speech. All of these men do the same thing every time we have a meeting. It’s like a measuring contest. Half the time I expect them all to whip their pant pencils out and set them on the table so we can see whose is the biggest. He’s going to talk about how amazing he is, and you have to pretend to care. It’ll be fine.”

Her phone buzzes from somewhere in her dress, and she slips her hand into the skirt to retrieve it. “It’s ten to; we should head to the boardroom unless you have any other questions.”

She slips the phone back into her pocket and straightens my tie, as is her habit. She moves on to my hair, fingertips grazing the shell of my ears before her palms glide along the sides of my neck so she can adjust my collar. And then she’s back to my hair. Her nose wrinkles, and she licks her thumb then reaches up.

I catch her by the wrist before she can make contact.

“Your left eyebrow is wonky,” she explains.

“You can’t lick your thumb and touch my face. I’m not a toddler, Wren. How would you like it if I did that to you?” I lick my own thumb and swipe it across her eyebrow before she has a chance to duck out of the way. The pad comes away with a brown streak.

I hold up my thumb. “What the hell is this?”

Her cheeks flush an even deeper pink, and she smacks my hand away. “It’s eyebrow pencil; something you wouldn’t know anything about since you’re a man and you don’t have to manage this kind of thing.” She gestures to her face and then to mine. “You style your hair and shave your face, and you’re good to go. It’s a lot more work for me.”