My heart started pounding in my chest, and I was absolutely torn. If I spoke now, it would seem strange. Why hadn’t I answered her in the first place?
I could just hang up. Pretend like it was an accidental dial. Or use Javier’s phone to call her back when I was a bit more prepared.
That was it. That was the plan of action I should take. I was just getting ready to hang up the line when Sarah spoke again.
“Rhett? Is that you?”
Crap.
She did know I was supposed to call. And she was smart enough to figure out that it was me on the line.
I sucked in a breath and came up with the quickest, easiest excuse I could possibly find.
“Yeah, that mock-up will be just fine,” I announced to my empty living room. “I just want to make sure the decor portrays exactly the mood we’re going for. Remember, a huge part of what sells our homes is the furniture we stage it with. Okay, team, be off.”
Be off? Be off? I could not believe myself at that moment. But I glossed right over my personal disgust at my lame little cover story and spoke into the receiver.
“Hey, Sarah, sorry about that,” I told her casually. “Just had something to take care of. It’s Rhett Thompson. How are you doing?”
It was a good cover. I knew as soon as the words were out of my mouth that it would work. I seemed now like the cool, easy guy with a great job. I was large and in charge. All of the things a woman wanted in a guy.
“I’m fine,” she replied. I could hear the slight annoyance in her tone and had that sinking feeling that what I had hoped was a very suave introduction to the conversation was deemed much less so by the person I was talking to.
“Good, good,” I said quickly.
Why was I so nervous? I couldn’t put my finger on it in the slightest. I mean, sure, there was my image in the media to contend with, but Sarah didn’t strike me as the type of woman to put much thought into that sort of thing. I just didn’t think she would judge me on one of those he said-she said stories that were always running rampant in glossy magazines and on flashy social media sites.
“So that sounded important.”
It was probably the only thing she could think to say, but it was the last thing I wanted her to. Mostly because the important thing she was talking about was completely made up by me, and I had no idea how to cover it up.
“You know, just a day in the life,” I said casually. “People always need some sort of direction, and I’m great at that kind of thing. It’s how I built this whole business from the ground up in my twenties. Just give them direction and make sure they follow through. Sometimes they don’t, and you have to let them go. I had to do that the other day, actually.”
“Oh, really?” She asked, and I couldn’t tell whether the slight intrigue in her tone was genuine or contrived to make me feel like less of a psycho.
“Yeah,” I replied with a nod that she couldn’t even see. “One of my accountants. She just wasn’t doing such a great job, you know? Messing up my taxes and such. So I said, thanks for your work, but I have to find someone else.”
“And did you find someone?” Her reply was unexpected, but I had to be a little proud of myself. Clearly, she was interested in me.
“Not yet,” I replied. “It’s hard to find a talented accountant around here. Google and Facebook snatched them all up.”
“It’s a hard job,” she chuckled. “People want the benefits those companies offer.”
My heart probably could have burst right out of my chest and soared into the air at that moment. She was actually interested in me.
“They do,” I sighed. “I think that what people don’t realize is that all of those perks are really just a ploy to get you to work longer hours and devote your entire life to the company.”
“Tell me about it,” she groaned. “It’s why I didn’t go into finance right out of college. Even though my last job wasn’t all that much better, at least I got clear time off. I didn’t feel like it was a sin to leave the office.”
“What was your last job?” I asked curiously.
The conversation was flowing so smoothly now I could hardly believe I’d ever been nervous about speaking with her. She was just as calm and relaxed as she’d seemed the other day outside of the corner store.
“I worked for a real estate agent,” she replied. “Henrietta Lin? You might know her, since you’re in the business, too. I was her personal assistant, which was really just code for picking up her dry cleaning and making sure her bratty kids didn’t murder each other after school got out.”
“You worked for Henrietta Lin?” I gasped, faking complete outrage. “She is my mortal enemy!”
“Oh, really?” Sarah laughed. “Well, then, I guess this conversation is over then. I can’t be seen fraternizing with you.”
“Hold on, hold on,” I replied quickly, a tiny bit afraid that she actually meant it. “You said you’re not working for her anymore, right? So, then what’s the harm in a little conversation?”
There was a long pause on the other end of the phone, and I couldn’t figure out whether or not she was debating if she wanted to hang up on me.
“Well, you do have a fair point,” she finally said. “Although admittedly, since I was fired from my last job, I can’t keep talking to you without saying that I absolutely have to feel empathy for the poor employee you fired.”
“Don’t,” I chuckled. “I may have exaggerated how much of a hand I had in that. She may have announced she was quitting before I could get the words out, but I’d been thinking about letting her go anyways.”
“Uh-huh, sure,” Sarah responded sarcastically. “That’s just what you tell yourself.”
“Maybe, maybe not,” I shrugged. “So, what happened to your job with Henrietta? I’m just gathering intel on the enemy, of course.”
“Of course,” she giggled. “Well, it turns out that when you’re a college dropout, even the woman you’ve worked for six years can one day turn around and decide that she wants someone with a higher education to pick up her little brats from their expensive private school.”
“Wait,” I paused, making sure I remembered her earlier words correctly, “you said you had a degree in finance.”
“No, I said I was in college for finance,” she replied, and even though I didn’t know her all that well, I could just tell that she was grinning behind the phone. “Big difference. I dropped out when I realized that my life was going to be a living hell if I kept going. I have never wanted to work seven days a week and be on call at all hours. It’s just not my thing.”
There was a long pause, during which my stomach did about three thousand backflips.
Was I really about to ask her what I thought I was?
She might not have a degree in finance, but so what? Leslie had a finance degree from Berkley and she’d still turned out to be absolutely awful at her job.
Besides, there was something I liked about Sarah. Something new and different… refreshing.
I was pretty sure it was because she just didn’t care what anyone thought about her. She’d made that abundantly clear when I’d seen her the other day, but it had also been obvious at Bella and Logan’s party.