He hadn’t meant to ask the question. It had just popped out. For one thing, he adamantly didn’t care to hear her extol his virtues. For another, he already had a fair idea of what they were—Daniel was conventionally handsome and had all the outward markers of success. He was a businessman. He’d probably never had a single job that restricted when he could use the bathroom, for christ’s sake, whereas Asa had spent the last ten years counting out his federally mandated fifteen-minute breaks.
She’d finished her sandwich, the cling wrap folded into a neat square on the table in front of her. “He’s close with his mom, for one thing,” she said. “And I love Dolores.”
Daniel worked for his mom—that didn’t necessarily mean he was close with her. Asa got the impression that Daniel’s main connection in life was to himself. But maybe he was being unnecessarily harsh, given that if one of Lauren’s key attributes in a potential partner was close with family, that would eliminate Asa from the running.
Not that he wanted to be in the running.
“That’s it?” Asa prompted. “He has a good relationship with his mother?”
She shot him a glare. “No,” she said. “He also happens to be extremely . . .”
She appeared to be struggling to come up with the word, so he tried to help her out. “Boring? Arrogant? Dismissive? Rude?”
“You don’t even know him!”
“And you do?”
She opened her mouth but shut it again, and he couldn’t hide his satisfied smirk.
“He also happens to be extremely sexy!” she burst out. “I’m not oblivious, okay? I know a guy like that would never look at someone like me. I know we’re not going to get married and have kids and live in a big house with a mother-in-law apartment for Dolores. But he’s an attractive guy who was finally paying me some attention, so sue me if I wanted to just see where it could go.”
Her eyes were bright, and he had the uncomfortable feeling she was close to tears. When he’d started down this line of questioning, he hadn’t thought she’d take it as an attack. He’d thought it was clear that his issues were with Daniel, and nothing to do with her. But then, maybe that was the problem—he hadn’t really thought this through at all.
“Lauren—” he said.
She stood up, pushing her chair back, and gathered the remnants of her dinner. “Thanks for the sandwich,” she said. “I’ll pay you back tomorrow.”
She chucked her folded cling wrap and crumpled napkin into the nearest garbage can and headed in the direction of the front office.
If he’d needed a reminder that what they were doing was not a date, he guessed he’d gotten it.
Chapter
Eleven
Normally spreadsheets were Lauren’s happy place. She loved formatting the columns to right-align all the numbers, loved dragging the cursor down to copy a formula to each cell, loved sorting the data in different permutations and seeing how it looked. She wouldn’t have necessarily chosen to be at work at eleven o’clock at night playing with Excel, but it was far from the worst time she could come up with.
Now, she wasn’t even finding comfort in work routines. She was tired, and saying all the wrong things, and forced to confront what had to be obvious to everyone else. It was definitely obvious to Asa.
Daniel wasn’t coming. Tonight hadn’t been a date—it had barely been a dinner between colleagues. He’d wanted her to bring him some paperwork like she was his secretary, and then she would’ve sat awkwardly around a table with a bunch of strangers who were eager to catch up with each other, not her.
Ugh. And she’d called Daniel sexy in front of Asa. She felt like she could burst into flames of embarrassment.
She wondered how she was going to sleep tonight. Maybe if she folded her arms on her desk and laid her head down on top of them . . .
She was trying it out when a soft knock came at the door, and she jerked up straight so fast she sent her chair rolling backward.
“You look like me in high school,” Asa said, the corner of his mouth quirking up. “Always sleeping in class.”
He set a lidded paper cup on her desk. “Truce hot chocolate,” he said. “I didn’t know if you drank caffeine this late, or I would’ve made you your usual black battery acid.”
She reached for the cup. It was warm under her fingertips, and that alone was surprisingly comforting. She took a tentative sip, trying not to grimace. She didn’t normally like hot chocolate, but it was such a surprisingly sweet gesture, she didn’t want to ruin the moment.