Читать книгу Pregnant By The Billionaire - Karen Booth, Karen Booth - Страница 11

Four

“What time is Locke coming in?” Kendall’s work nemesis, Wes, sauntered into the conference room and snatched a cookie from the tray she’d set out for Sawyer.

Kendall smacked his hand. “It’s Mr. Locke. And those cookies aren’t for you.”

Wes shrugged and plopped down in one of the conference room chairs. Everything about him screamed arrogance—his unmoving hair, the shine of his shoes, even the way he rocked in the chair. “I still don’t understand why Jillian gave you first shot at this account. She’s going to end up regretting it.”

Kendall fought the urge to scream at him to leave her alone. Some day he would be her subordinate. Then she could yell if she wanted to. For now, best behavior. “I’m standing right here.”

“And your point would be what?”

“I swear to God, you are the only person on the planet who bad-mouths someone to their face. Can’t you be civilized and go gossip about me in the break room like a normal person?”

He wagged a finger at her. “I do not sugarcoat. You should know that by now.”

“We’re in PR. The whole job is sugarcoating and creating illusions.”

“Is that what you’re doing with that ring? Creating illusions?”

When Wes had first asked about the ring, she’d simply told him to butt out of her personal life. The next twenty times he’d asked, she’d ignored him. Apparently that wasn’t a strong enough signal. “I told you before. It’s none of your business.”

“You’re only saying that because you don’t want to tell the truth. You aren’t engaged. You’re only letting people think that you are. I can’t decide if it’s smart or incredibly sad. Care to weigh in on it?”

The blood drained from Kendall’s face, but she did her best to overlook her body’s traitorous response. She wasn’t going to dignify his question with an answer.

“Look. I get it,” he continued. “We work for a woman who is very clear about where the lines are. I’ve seen clients flirt with you. So you want to send everyone a polite warning to stay away. With the VP job in play, it might be genius. If it helps you stay out of trouble and get the job.”

It was one thing to have her close friends at work know the truth. She couldn’t lie to them. Wes? His personality, and his agenda, made it easy to keep everything from him. “It’s a lovely theory, Wes. Truly lovely. Now please leave. I have to finish preparing. You’re distracting me.”

“Let me stay for a few minutes. I think you should introduce me to Locke. He’s our newest and biggest client. I should at least be up to speed on this project. You’re not the only one with a shot at VP.”

“No. You are not meeting Sawyer Locke.”

“Why not?”

Kendall had had enough. “Because you’re annoying the hell out of me and I have work to do.” She marched over to Wes’s chair and began pushing him out of the conference room, but he was much heavier than she’d guessed. She only got a few inches before he stopped her by digging his heels into the carpet.

He stood and turned, jabbing a finger at her face. “You are ridiculously territorial, Ross. I won’t forget this.”

Kendall shook her head. “Of course you won’t. I expect nothing less of you.”

Wes took a cookie, stuck it in his mouth, holding it in his teeth while he grabbed another and left.

Kendall blew out a long breath. She wasn’t about to let Wes get to her any more than he already had. She took her seat and reviewed her notes. She had to focus. Everything was perfect right now. Sawyer was a very happy client, she had a brilliant PR plan and her ring had done its job. Wes wasn’t going to mess that up.

Today’s schedule included three different phone interviews for Sawyer to do over the next two hours. Normally, she might have a client do them on their own, but Kendall wanted to be in the room. With his dad doing suspect things and with so little time until the grand reopening of the hotel—they couldn’t afford mistakes. This way, if Sawyer was unsure of something or someone asked him a leading question, Kendall could slip him a note and keep them on message.

She glanced at her watch. But where was he? Five minutes late. Not enough to make her truly nervous, but he didn’t strike her as the guy who’d be anything less than punctual.

A few minutes later, Sawyer walked through the door. She looked up, noting how her immunity to his appearance still hadn’t kicked in. Perhaps there was a vaccine somewhere in the world, something to prevent the shortness of breath and palpitations that came from merely looking at him. She popped up out of her seat and shook his hand, unable to ignore his steely demeanor. He was often serious, but this was something different.

“Sorry I’m late. I got waylaid in the hall by one of your coworkers. A guy named Wes?” Sawyer removed his suit jacket and tossed it over one of the chairs. “He was asking me all sorts of questions.”

Oh no. “Sorry about that. Was he bothering you?” Kendall just narrowly avoided squeaking her reply.

“He had some interesting information about you.” He sat in his seat and looked right at her while he rolled up his shirtsleeves, amping up her nervousness while distracting her with his forearms.

“He’s the office gossip.” Kendall said it as nonchalantly as possible, scribbling nonsense on her legal pad. “You’ll have to tell me about it later. I think we’re all ready to call in for your first interview. I’ve got water for you and I brought in some cookies. I don’t know about you, but I can always use an afternoon pick-me-up.”

“Yeah. Great. Thanks.” He eyed her as he opened a bottle of water and took a swig.

One-syllable answers and a glare. Not good. “Shall we go ahead and get started? This first writer is a notorious stickler for schedules.”

Sawyer nodded. “Of course. Whatever we need to do. You’re in charge.”

“Great.” Kendall punched the number into the conference phone, still feeling like something was very, very wrong.

“I just want one thing,” he said as the phone rang. “When we’re done with these interviews, I want you to tell me why you lied about the ring.”

The writer picked up on the line. “Hello?”

Kendall almost didn’t hear what she said. She was too busy panicking over Sawyer’s request.

* * *

Sawyer didn’t relish the role of putting Kendall on the spot. It made the crease between her eyebrows deeper and she’d lost the warm smile she’d been wearing when he first arrived.

But he’d been lied to, and that didn’t sit well with him, especially not when it came to a lie about an engagement ring. If anyone wanted to know how he became the guy who doesn’t get involved, it all boiled down to an engagement ring.

Unfortunately, there was no time between interviews to talk to her about it. Each went beyond the time they’d allotted, which Sawyer wanted to take as a good sign. The writers seemed genuinely interested in the project. If only he’d shared information about it earlier, he might not be in this situation right now. Except then he also wouldn’t have had a second chance to spend time with Kendall. And now that he knew the ring was a fake, he could stop tiptoeing around a few subjects.

Kendall punched the button on the speakerphone at the end of the third interview. “That went really well. You did a fantastic job. You didn’t need my help at all.”

“It’s not hard to talk about the hotel. I could do it for hours.” He’d gotten on a roll during the calls, even forgetting the topic of Kendall and the ring a few times. Now he could feel himself floating back down to earth. He couldn’t work with her if he didn’t know why she’d lied.

“I have a few more interviews for you to do later this week, but after seeing you in action today, I don’t think we have anything to worry about. I’m working on an interview with Margaret Sharp for a week from today. She’ll bring her own photographer. You might want to clear your schedule.”

“The Margaret Sharp?” Sawyer was impressed. She wrote for dozens of high-profile magazines.

“Uh-huh. That’s the one.” Kendall collected her things in a hurry, like she was ready to walk out, but he couldn’t let her leave.

“Don’t go, Kendall. We need to talk about the ring. Wes told me it’s a fake. He said he heard women in the office talking about it. He told me he even spoke to you about it.” The memories of his fiancée’s betrayal were right there in his head, tangled up with his anger over Kendall misleading him. And to think he’d given himself a hard time about not calling her—all of that self-torture for nothing.

“You’d believe someone you just met in the hallway over me?”

He didn’t really have an answer to that. “I thought the ring was suspicious from the beginning.”

“Suspicious? Why? Because it’s hard to believe someone would want to marry a woman you couldn’t be bothered to call?”

She was fighting back a little too hard now. “Look. I need to know that I can trust you. I can’t work with someone who lies to me. So tell me now. Are you really engaged to be married?” Even though he was fairly certain the engagement wasn’t real, the wait for the answer seemed unnecessarily painful. He wasn’t sure what answer he was supposed to want. Either she was engaged, Wes was an imbecile and Sawyer needed to drop it. Or she’d lied and was single—a deal breaker delivered with good news.