Oh, Lord. She’d forgotten about the debacle in the lobby yesterday. Jenkins clearly hadn’t. Office innuendos were beginning. She was so not in the mood.
“No, Stan already had his coffee this morning. In bed.” That ought to shut him up.
It did. Jenkins gaped at her, his hand frozen on his tie where he was adjusting it. Reese dumped coffee in a cup and stomped off towards Chatterton. The executives were chitchatting and she was considering claiming a headache.
She had her interview with Markson. She was of no use here to anyone, as Knight had told her on more than one occasion.
After she passed off the coffee, she sat down again and blinked hard. Her nose was itching and her eyes were watering. It had to be from the ugly flower arrangement sitting next to her on the end table. Why anyone would use gladiolas to fill a vase when there were gobs of gorgeous native flowers right outside, she couldn’t even begin to imagine.
Dammit, her eyes were stinging, welling with tears, in what had to be a sudden allergy to ugly flowers, not any reaction to Knight’s ambivalent behavior that morning. She picked up the vase and crossed the room, sticking it in the corner behind a big blue chair.
“Reese,” Chatterton called to her a minute later. “Your purse is ringing.”
“What the hell is she doing?”Maddock stopped pacing in their surveillance room and stared at the screen in disbelief.
Derek knew the feeling. “I have no goddamn idea.”
After sniping at Jenkins with a comment that had confused the hell out of Derek, Reese had suddenly picked up the vase with the camera hidden in it. Their only view of the room now was of the back of a chair.
He hadn’t told Reese where the camera would be hidden, afraid she would clue in the executives to its presence with her less-than-subtle behavior. But he had never anticipated her moving the camera, for fuck’s sake.
Grabbing the room phone, he took deep breaths and prayed her cell phone was on. He could feel Nordstrom’s hands on his throat already.
“Hello?” she snarled into the phone.
Before the camera had disappeared, he’d noticed her body language was a little tense. He wondered if the tension in the room among the executives was getting to her.
Or maybe she was tired. He hadn’t let her sleep a whole lot the night before. Not that this was a good time to be thinking about that.
“Reese, honey, it’s me.”
There was a long pause. Then she whispered, “Why the hell are you calling me? We’re in the meeting.”
“Well.” He rubbed his eyes and watched the chair on the screen. “Honey, you moved the camera. It was hidden in the flower arrangement. You’ve got to put it back.”
She made a sound of exasperation. “Well, if you had trusted me enough to tell me in the first place, we wouldn’t have this problem.”
Then she hung up.
Derek sank back in his chair and said to Maddock, “I think she’s going to move it.” Not that he could ever be sure with Reese.
Man, he had screwed up last night. Of all times to tell her that he was in love with her, he had picked in the middle of sex. That was a total cop out.
She had probably answered in kind just to get him to hurry up. He’d had her on the edge of an orgasm, she wasn’t going to stop and discuss their relationship.
Not that she had that morning. Instead, she’d shot him wary glances, making him uncomfortable. It was like she was afraid he was going to lose it and blabber out a marriage proposal or something.
Which he wasn’t going to do, because Reese would say no. Hell, he didn’t even know if she was planning to stay in Chicago.
“Hey, you know, Derek, I’ve been debating whether or not I should tell you this.”
Derek snapped his head up. Maddock sounded nervous and was running his hand through his hair.
“What is it, Wyatt?”
“Yesterday I was in the lobby...” Maddock squirmed, shooting uneasy glances toward the technical agent, who had earphones on listening to the executives in the meeting.
“Yeah?”