“Don’t make me change my mind.”
His grin widens. “I’ll pick you up tomorrow at seven.”
We spend another hour working, then I head back downstairs to my office. For some reason, whenever I’m upstairs talking to Luke, I feel a little giddy afterward. I don’t know why. But I do know it’s always hard to concentrate for a while after I see him.
When I see Nathan standing in front of my office door, I stop short. What is he doing here? Moreover, why does he look so irritated?
“Ellie,” he says. “Where have you been?”
I stick up my chin. “Lunch.”
“It’s two-thirty. You’re just getting back from lunch now?”
Is he planning to report me to Luke for taking a long lunch break? Well, good luck with that. “It was a working lunch.”
“With Luke Thayer?”
My breath catches in my throat. I don’t like the sneer on his face. Apparently, I haven’t been as subtle about my lunches with Luke as I tried to be. “We were talking about my app.”
“Oh, is that what you were doing.”
I stare at him. “What are you implying?”
Nathan shrugs. “I think it’s interesting, that’s all. You disappear into the big boss’s office and then come out three hours later with your face flushed and your hair all disheveled…”
My hand quickly goes to my hair. I pat the strands to reassure myself that I haven’t metamorphosed back into Rosanna Rosannadanna. Thankfully, my hair still feels silky and straight. As for my flushed face…
“That’s really insulting,” I say.
“Oh please,” Nathan snorts. “You want to get ahead. I get it. And Thayer probably can’t get anyone to fuck him the old-fashioned way. I mean, look at the guy.”
My right hand balls into a fist. I want so badly to hit him. “You have no idea what you’re talking about.”
I really think I might have hit the guy, but unexpectedly, his face softens. “I’m sorry,” he says. “I shouldn’t have said that. It was uncalled for. I’m just under a lot of stress and worried about my job.”
“It’s okay,” I mumble. I still hate him, but at least he apologized.
“Anyway,” he says, “I know you wouldn’t fuck a cripple just to get ahead. That would be really low.
I flinch at his words, but before I can say anything, he’s already walking away. My head is spinning. Everybody thinks I’m hooking up with Luke—there are probably rumors about it all over the company.
And the worst part is, I wish the rumors were true.
Chapter 10
I go out to dinner with Jenna that night, mostly to reassure her that her job is safe and the sky isn’t going to come crashing down on her any time soon—although the truth is, if it wasn’t for my efforts, she probably would have been out on the street by now. We get dinner at a local bar and Jenna bemoans the fact that men never buy her drinks anymore.
“I’m getting too old,” she sniffles.
“Oh, stop it,” I say. Jenna is five years younger than me. I don’t get bought drinks either, although I was never really the type of girl that men hit on in bars.
“So,” she says, “how is Luke Thayer in bed?”
“Jenna!” I roll my eyes. “Come on…”
“Well, I don’t mean ‘in bed,’” she corrects herself, grinning. “Because obviously it happens in his office. But you know what I mean.”
“Nothing happens,” I insist. “And nothing’s going to happen. Luke just wants my help with the company.”
“Look, you don’t need to be embarrassed,” Jenna says. “I mean, I know he’s in the wheelchair, but he’s still hot. Really hot.”
“Jenna,” I groan.
“How does that work anyway?” she asks. “Do you guys do it in his chair? Can he get it up?”
“Jenna!” I cry. “We don’t do it anywhere! I repeat, I’m not having sex with him.” Unfortunately. “Come on—you know me.”
Jenna blinks. “Yeah, you’re right. You’re way too square to sleep with the boss.” She runs a hand through her hair. Jenna has pretty blond hair and she’s slim but stacked—she’s much more Luke’s type than I am. Maybe I should’ve suggested her as a date for the art gallery—except that’s not what I want at all. “So what are you up to tomorrow? Do you want to catch a movie?”
“I can’t,” I mumble. “I’m going to this… art… thing.”
Jenna’s eyes widen. “Oh my God, are you going to the opening of the new exhibit at the Kimball Gallery?”
How the hell does she know about these things? “Um, yeah.”
“Who are you going with?” Her eyes narrow. “You’re not seeing anyone, right?”
She’s got me. My face is scarlet. “Luke.” I quickly add, “As friends.”
Jenna looks at me for a long time. She takes a sip of her beer. “Really, Ellie, what’s going on? I believe you’re not sleeping with him, but… well, your face is like a beet. I’ve never seen you like this before. Do you like him… you know, that way?”
No. I don’t. I don’t like Luke. He’s disagreeable, to put it mildly. He’s a rich, arrogant, cold, heartless businessman. The only reason I’m spending any time with him at all is for the good of the company. I certainly am not thinking about him at all in a romantic way. Even if I were looking for a boyfriend now, which I’m not, the last person I would pick would be Luke.
Right. I just have to keep telling myself that.
“You do!” Jenna cries, her eyes widening. “You do! You like him!”
“No, I don’t,” I mumble. “I just… think he’s sort of interesting. That’s all.”
“Well, he’s available, right?” she asks. “I mean, he’s got to be single.”
Everybody seems to make that assumption about Luke. And I suppose they’re right—he is single. “Yeah, he is,” I confirm. “But he’s not for me. He’s not my type at all.”
“Hey, it can’t be too bad having a rich boyfriend,” she points out. “I bet he’d buy you lots of expensive things.”
“Because I love expensive things, right?” I laugh. I’m the kind of girl who buys most of my furniture at Ikea. Expensive things make me uncomfortable.
Jenna brushes a strand of blond hair from her face, and I can’t help but think again that she’s so much more Luke’s type than I am. By the end of freshman year, I had a very good idea of the sort of girl he liked, and I wasn’t it. I was a fluke. A drunken mistake.
The first time I ever saw Luke with one of his Barbie dolls was in the middle of the first semester. Delia and I were celebrating that night. I had worked so hard studying the stories in expository writing to come up with the perfect arguments to shoot Luke down that I earned an easy A on my next paper.
Delia was celebrating too, because she brought up her tragic C on the first paper to a solid B+. We decided to rent a movie to watch in the common room of our dorm together. We lived in Weld, a dorm once inhabited by none other than John F. Kennedy himself. It seemed a bit of a travesty that a nerdy computer science girl and a nerdy pre-med should occupy the same space as such a great man, but as I said to Luke that day, at least we got in here fair and square. Even JFK probably got in at least partially because of nepotism.