Flirting With Disaster (Camelot 3)

“He’s still not talking to you?”

“Not a word.”

/> Caleb frowned. “You know, Sean’s a great guy.”

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

“I really think if you got to know him—”

“He kissed me.”

Caleb went perfectly still.

“Not like you’re thinking,” she clarified. “He kissed me in front of Judah. It was part of this pissing contest they were having, and he went all ‘Me Tarzan, you Jane’ and grabbed me and kissed me. It was entirely for Judah’s benefit.”

Not a word from Caleb. Maybe he didn’t get it. “It was the single most chauvinistic, jerk-ass thing anybody’s ever done to me,” she added.

And oh, man, was she ever having trouble forgetting about it. Every lustful thought she’d had for Judah had evaporated in the wake of the pathetic groping session in his room, replaced by an exasperated fondness that gained a bit more traction every time he called or emailed or sent her a silly text. Whereas she hadn’t heard a word from Sean, and she couldn’t stop thinking about that kiss.

Caleb was staring at her. Staring and staring and staring.

“What?”

He lowered his head, but not before she caught the faint smile. “Nothing, Katelet. Not a thing.”

Reaching down, he grabbed the mug and carried it into his office just as the phone started to ring.

It wasn’t until she’d picked up the receiver and said, “Camelot Security, this is Katie speaking” that she realized he’d stolen her coffee.

Chapter Ten

“So we’re bleeding money,” Sean said.

His CFO nodded. “That’s about the size of it.”

“What’s the bank saying? Can we get an extension on the loan?” He stabbed his finger at the spreadsheet in front of him, pointing at the date Kelly had boldfaced and printed in red ink.

“They don’t want to take the risk. We have to start paying them back or they start grabbing assets.”

He picked up the silver Mont Blanc pen off his desk and flipped it end over end, tapping it on the blotter. Kelly began to look worried, and he put the pen down. Laurie, his PA, had told him once that everybody said when he started flipping the pen, the shit was about to hit the fan. “All right. Thanks.”

She wrung her hands in her lap. “Could you call a meeting, do you think? Because there are a lot of rumors flying around, and with you still on leave and Mike in charge, people are kind of … squirrelly.”

Sean frowned. He wouldn’t be around to call a meeting. This visit had already kept him in California two days longer than he’d planned. Two days of meetings and arguments and phone conferences, a lot of it so tedious, he’d wanted to scream.

“I’ll send a memo,” he said.

“Oh. Okay.”

He could tell it wasn’t good enough. His decision to take a leave of absence had been fine for a while, but now Anderson Owens needed him, and he couldn’t stay. He couldn’t even say when he was coming back.

“I’ll do a videoconference tomorrow after I get to Camelot,” he said. “Ask Laurie to set it up, will you?”

“Sure,” she said. “I’d better get back to it.” She stood and started for his office door.

“Thanks for the update,” he called as she disappeared down the hall.

He owed these people an explanation for his absence, but he didn’t know what to tell them. That there was an urn on the kitchen counter at his mother’s house with her ashes in it? That she’d left the attic full of a lifetime’s worth of junk?