Smart Girl (3 page)

A quick glance up at him makes my heart stop. There’s something that looks almost like pride on his face. It’s incredibly sweet but also terrifyingly like the way you might look at your little sister—or your little sister’s friend. The last way I want Liam to be feeling about me is fraternal. Ugh!

I hurry on to describe the rest of it in detail. The large metal pendant lights, the long communal dining tables, even the servers’ uniforms: white button-downs rolled up at the sleeve, a different shade of the hipster aprons we sourced for Max’s bakery. Throughout my description Liam nods politely and asks intelligent questions, but I get the impression that he still can’t visualize most of what I’m describing.

“Would you like me to draw you a picture?”

He nods.

“That would be great. You can send over the information about your retainer, and then maybe you could get me a CAD to show the rest—”

I’m already digging a Sharpie out of my giant shoulder bag.

“Do you have any paper?” I ask him.

He blinks dramatically and holds his arms out to the sides to show that he isn’t actually concealing a drawing pad on his person.

“Smart-ass,” I grumble before dropping my bag onto the dusty floor and pulling a hair tie off my wrist. Once again the mass of blue and black goes into a topknot on my head. As I’m halfway to the ground, Liam realizes what I mean to do.

“You don’t have to get down on the—” Just as my knees hit the ground, he finishes, “Floor. This really isn’t necessary. You could just send me something later, and then you wouldn’t be covered in plaster dust.”

I’m already drawing out the perimeter of the room on the cement floor. I work quickly, and with each passing minute the design I see in my head comes to life on the ground below me. As I’m shading in the tile work, I get dust on my white blouse. My sleeve drags across the edge of the marker while I sketch the floral centerpiece by reception. When I push it up my forearm to keep it from further ruin, I notice that Liam’s gaze isn’t anywhere near my drawing. It’s planted firmly on my butt.

With a gasp, I realize it’s not even his fault either, because I’m on all fours, on the ground, in tight leather pants. I quickly sit back on my calves and cover my face, utterly mortified by how that must have looked. Gods, I’ve been moving around too!

“I wasn’t trying to be provocative,” I whisper through dusty fingers.

I really wasn’t either. I was going for professional and inspired, like Jo in
Little Women
. Not hoochie and obvious, like the cougar with a side pony in
Dirty Dancing
who keeps trying to steal Johnny from Baby.

It takes him a second to respond, and when he does his voice is gruff.

“With you it doesn’t seem to matter.”

I let my hands fall into my lap. His outstretched fingers are already there to help me up.

“Miko.” His voice is strained. “Please get off the floor.”

I let him pull me to my feet, and then go about dusting myself off to try to gain some composure.

“It’s incredible,” he says.

I look up, startled. Is he still talking about my—oh, nope. He’s talking about my drawing on the ground below us. I stare at it along with him. It’s the size of a poster, and since I’ve drawn rooms like this thousands of times, the detail is crystal clear. It looks almost exactly like what I see in my head. Dirty floor or not, if I’d had colored markers, it would have been perfect.

His phone rings again, dissipating most of the emotions in the air around us. He glances at the screen, then back up at me.

“I have a four o’clock.”

I don’t know what I thought he was going to say, but dismissing me for a meeting wasn’t it. How did we go from him checking me out to right back to business? It’s always like this too. One second it’s intense and I can feel the attraction between us like a third person in the room; the next second I worry that I’ve imagined everything. Maybe I have. Maybe I’m just like Peeta in
The Hunger Games
, and I’m going to have to start asking people if things are real or not real. Which sucks, honestly. Who wants to be Josh Hutcherson? At the very least, shouldn’t you get to be the Liam Hemsworth of your own life?

Ugh! I’m sort of ashamed that I’m not better at this. Because surely if I were a practiced flirt, he wouldn’t be able to switch gears so quickly regardless of whether or not he wants to, right? I glance up to find blue-gray eyes burning into mine. Before I even realize what he means to do, he touches my lower lip with his thumb and tugs it out from my teeth.

“That is
exactly
how you’re supposed to bite your lip.” He drops his hand to his side as if just realizing what he’s done. He takes a step back from me, straightening the cuffs on his shirt like the simple act will help reorder his thoughts.

It happened so fast!

I didn’t even have the time to take it in or pay attention to the nuance of having his hands on my face! Gods, if I had known, I would have closed my eyes to memorize the feeling. Or wait, no—I’d keep them open and take in everything. Is his sweater more navy than indigo? Are his hands well manicured? Does his skin smell like anything specific? I’d vote for lemongrass or pine if I got to choose, but I’d be totally fine with any scent if I only knew what it was and could commit it to memory. But now that’s not going to happen, because I wasn’t prepared and I didn’t pay enough attention. This is the worst! Worse than that time I finished all the books that had been published so far in a series a full year before the final book came out. Worse than that time someone suggested that
The Bronze Horseman
was the next
Outlander
. This is even worse than the time I met one of my favorite authors at a signing and she was super rude and I went into an emotional shank spiral for weeks!

Liam breaks into my swirling thoughts with a question. I don’t hear what he says, but I know I should answer him in some way. I want to ask him to put his hands on my face again, but that doesn’t seem appropriate. Quick, Miko, say something!

“Have you ever had a Crunchwrap Supreme?” I don’t know why it comes out as some kind of angry demand.

He takes a step back after my nonsensical reaction.

“Uh—no, I can’t say I have.”

“Well”—I point at nothing in particular—“you should. You’re really missing out.”

On that genius pronouncement, I give up and head towards the front door of the building. Because really, bringing up the Taco Bell menu is a new low in my repertoire, and even I know when to run for cover and regroup.

“So I’ll look for your email this week?” he calls after me.

“Yep!”

I make it all the way to my car before I admit it to myself: OK, not my best work.

Seriously, how many times am I going to trip out and say something insane in front of him? I really need to come up with some kind of plan so I don’t keep finding myself in these situations!

I shake my head in annoyance and turn the key in the ignition. Honestly, not
one
of my favorite book heroines would ever bring up a flattened fried burrito as the follow-up to the hero touching her lips. I mean, jeez, even Cinder acted more natural than that, and she was half cyborg!

Chapter
THREE

“Hey, Casidee,” I call to the open doorway.

“Yes ma’am,” she answers before she’s even all the way inside my office. Taylor’s little sister is almost as tall as he is and certainly way too close to my age to be calling me
ma’am
. But she’s also southern and apparently can’t lose the manners no matter how many times I’ve asked her to. Landon, unsurprisingly, thinks she’s the greatest thing ever.

When Tosh offered to let Landon and me have some office space in Mos Eisley’s massive HQ, I jumped at the chance. Max might feel weird about getting help from her family, but my brother’s company offices are state of the art and utterly gorgeous. There is a full-sized basketball court surrounded by vintage sports memorabilia and a kitchen that
Fast Company
described as “tech geek meets luxury chic” in an article last year. That same kitchen also always has at least ten kinds of cereal in the huge glass jars that line one wall. And each one of the six executive offices has a totally different feel, completely designed around the person who sits within it, but all of them feature the same color scheme—no easy feat. Plus, since I refused to let him pay me when I designed every single detail of the space, getting to use a couple of small offices now for a significant friends-and-family discount feels like a fair trade.

I gesture to the chair in front of my desk.

“Can you close the door? I need your help with a project.” Outside the glass wall of my office, a programmer rides by on a skateboard long enough to hold a family of three. After two months of working here, neither of us pay him or his hipster transportation any attention. We’ve learned to live with the super nerd testosterone that constantly permeates the air and the forty or so computer guys who are ever starstruck by any sort of uterus among them. Casidee, with her kind of alien beauty, her adorkable glasses, and the fact that she understands a lot of their esoteric geek humor, has become a sort of deity here. It was because of that understanding of geek and nerd culture that she’s sitting in front of me now.

I’m ready to move forward with the plan I’ve concocted for Liam, and since it’s extensive, I need a partner in crime. After all, a proper heroine needs a sidekick, and neither Max nor Landon would approve of my idea. Max would have a heart attack for obvious reasons; Landon would worry that I was going about it the wrong way. Neither of them would appreciate the pageantry of the whole thing.

Cas sets a notepad in her lap and pulls a pen out of the knot in her hair. The whole mass of dark-brown locks falls down past her shoulders like a shampoo commercial.

Gods, why can’t I ever pull off anything so graceful?

She looks across the desk at me expectantly as I hand over the Word doc I created. Her expression remains bland while she reads through it. At this point she’s used to oddball event themes or weird directives from me, so there’s no shock—yet.

I wait a minute longer, wondering if my hair looks as excited as I feel, because I’m seriously fighting the urge to fidget. My outfit today says
energized, focused, determined
, which translates to a neon-pink, way-too-big sweater, black cigarette pants, and some kicky boots. I slide on my oversize tortoiseshell reading glasses mostly for dramatic affect.

“Can you tell me what all of those have in common?” I ask.

She looks at the list again.

“They’re all famous literary romances.” Her Oklahoma twang makes the entire sentence more charming than it has a right to be. “The scenes you highlighted are”—she checks the list again—“something iconic the heroine did to garner the hero’s affection.”

I smile happily. I knew she’d be the perfect accomplice.

“Exactly.”

“Are we recreating these for an upcoming event? The scene from
Gone with the Wind
might be difficult, but if we—” She waves the paper at me. “Can I write on this?”

When I nod, she starts making notes in the margin. I heart her enthusiasm.

“It might be hard to recreate the antebellum South but not impossible—”

I pop my knuckles. It’s my office, after all, and nobody is allowed to stop me.

“It’s not for an event.”

She frowns in confusion.

“Is it just some inspiration for a mood then? That seems easy enough—”

“Not per se. It’s for me.”

Seeing that she is still confused, I lay it all out: from the first interaction with Liam to the list in her hands and how I plan to use it to get what I want.

“I’ve put a lot of time into this, Cas. The books are listed out in order of—I think—the most effective moments. Well, some of them got bumped to the top of the list, because I loved them regardless of how well they worked for the character in the book, but still. It’ll be a sort of punch list for things to try. What do you think?”

She’s slowly shaking her head in denial.

“I think this is a really, really bad idea, Miko.”

I deny her denial by stuffing a piece of gum into my mouth.

“This is an excellent idea,” I say around a bubble. “The best I’ve ever had.”

“I don’t think I can—”

“What did you say to me, Casidee Taylor? When you applied to be our part-time, sadly underpaid assistant and I told you I was concerned that you didn’t have enough experience, what did you say?”

“But this is—”

“‘I’ll do anything,’ you said. ‘I’m a hard worker and I want to learn everything you have to teach me and I’ll do anything.’ Those were your exact words, I believe.”

Her shoulders slump in resignation.

“I meant, like, cleaning icing out of a ballroom carpet or helping a bride hold her dress up while she uses the bathroom. I didn’t think it would include something like this. It doesn’t seem right.”

I cross my arms. “Why not? It’s not like it’s underhanded or scheming—”

“It’s a little scheming,” she interrupts.

“But in a totally harmless way,” I argue. “It’s not like any of this will hurt him.”

She can’t be more than twenty-two, but the look she turns on me then is pure disbelieving matriarch, as if she’s already seen way too much in less than a quarter century.

“He’s not the one I’m worried about.”

The statement is foreboding, but I refuse to hear it. I’m only allowing positive thoughts. I’m going to
Secret
this into being, just like Oprah and Rhonda Byrne say to. I point to the paper in her hands.

“Let’s make another list. In
Sense and Sensibility
—”

“Oh Lord,” she groans.

I ignore her.

“In
Sense and Sensibility
, Marianne Dashwood gets desperately sick after wandering the grounds in her melancholy over the loss of Willoughby. Then Colonel Brandon, dashing hero that he is, rushes off to rescue her. This in turn allows them the necessary alone time to realize they’re in love with each other. What does that tell you?”

“That travel during the Regency era took four times as long as it should, and without modern medicine even the common cold could kill you.”

I doff an imaginary cap at her well-placed sarcasm, then carry on in spite of it.

“No. It tells you that taking care of someone who’s sick makes you feel nurturing and powerful.”

My eyes must be alight with mad glee, because she knows to ask the follow-up question.

“And?”

I pop another bubble.

“
And
we need to Google what I can eat to make myself violently ill without inflicting permanent damage!”

Cas drops her head into both her hands.

I smile and add a second piece of gum to my mouth.

“Everything is set for Cora’s bridal shower this weekend,” Landon says around a sip of her hazelnut latte. “Cas is going to meet the rental company there in the morning so we can have a slightly shorter workday.”

We’ve wandered down to our favorite coffee shop to go over the details of this weekend’s celebrity event. Having an office is amazing, but if we didn’t force ourselves to leave, we would spend whole weeks chained to our desks. I stir a bit more sugar into my cappuccino, which effectively destroys the leaf design the barista must have worked so hard on.

“So we’ll work a fourteen-hour day instead of a fifteen-hour day?”

Landon aims a playful smirk my way.

“It’s been six weeks without a Saturday off. I’ll take whatever perks I can get.”

I stab a forkful of lemon cake. We ordered it to share, but I’m basically bogarting the whole thing, since she’s too preoccupied checking the timeline.

“Do you think it should alarm us at all that we’re working, like, a hundred hours a week?”

She looks down at the plate between us with a frown, then swipes a bite with her fork before answering.

“I think that we’ve worked a hundred hours a week for a long time. At least now we’re the ones actually making money off of it. And speaking of all the work, did you finish that CAD for Barker-Ash? I’m dying to see what you’re imagining.”

I actually have finished the design for Liam. In fact, we have a meeting later this afternoon to go over it. But even though Landon has agreed to help me manage this project (since keeping things organized and on time is not my strong suit), I still don’t want her involved just yet. I want Liam to see the design first, and I want us to work alone as long as we can, because it feels more special that way. I look around the crowded café rather than meet her eyes. I’m a pretty terrible liar, and whatever is on my face usually gives me away.

“Not completely.” It’s sort of the truth. I haven’t figured out the perfect oversize plant for the alcove by the women’s restrooms.

“Mm-hmm.” She sounds disbelieving. “And have you finished the outline for your insane scheme to win his love in a plotline straight out of a romantic comedy from the nineties?”

I didn’t know cappuccino foam could actually travel backwards through the trachea until it shoots out my nose in evidence. I grab a napkin off the table in front of me and cough into it a thousand times before I can speak again. Landon looks . . .
concerned
is the most polite description I can give it.

“How did you find out?”

She sighs patiently and pulls a piece of paper out of her events binder.

“If you want to embark on some nefarious plan, it’s probably best not to leave a copy on the printer-copier we share.” She looks down at the list in her hand with a frown. “‘Jo and Laurie—a reverse
Little Women
.’ What does that even mean?”

I eyeball the doc in her hand, noting my list of possible scenarios along with Casidee’s loopy cursive. That particular idea involved a shared hobby and possibly a sibling with some sort of wasting disease—neither of which Liam and I have, so I chose to ignore her question.

“
I
didn’t leave it on the printer. I’m guessing that was the handiwork of our former assistant.”

Landon waves away my comment.

“She’s not a former anything, and I’m sure she’s only trying to help.”

I angle my head to study her better.

“So which is it—you found it on the printer or Casidee is trying to help?”

Landon suddenly becomes way too interested in the chalkboard with today’s specials. I slam my hand on the table.

“Snitch!”

“She’s not a snitch—”

I cut her sentence off with a look.

“OK, well, she is a snitch, but only because she’s worried about you. Miko.” She bites her lip nervously. “This plan is kind of crazy. More than kind of—it is really crazy. As in my aunt Judy dropped her basket and had to move into a special home for people who heard voices—that kind of crazy.”

Ouch.

Hearing it from my assistant was easy enough to brush aside, but hearing it from my best friend definitely stings. My hair is clinging to my neck defensively, and I push it out of the way along with her worry.

“It isn’t crazy. It’s inventive and cute and just as good a means to garner attention as anything else.”

She looks at the paper skeptically.

“You’ve included transmutation as a
viable option
. It’s number three on the list!”

I pop my knuckles.

“It worked in the Guild Hunter series,” I grumble.

“Because she was dying!” Oh man, she’s exasperated now. “And she didn’t even actively
choose
to become an angel; he did it to save her life and—” She cuts herself off and runs her fingers through her perfectly blown-out blonde hair to try to restore order. “My point is—if you like him, why not just go about it like a normal person? Why not ask him out the normal way? Why not invite him on a date or to coffee, or tell him how you feel?”

These are the same questions Casidee asked me the other day, only I don’t feel as comfortable telling Landon the truth. But the reality is, I know exactly why I’m choosing this route, because I’ve thought about it a million times. In life I strive for honesty, most of all from myself. The honest truth is I know what makes me special, and I’m also glaringly aware of what makes me weird.

“Because I’m not a
normal
person. Because I’m not sure what the regular way would be. I’ve had two boyfriends in my whole life, and Liam is utterly different than either one of them. Because I’ve been trying to work up to something for almost a year, and I’m no closer than I was then. Because nobody understood my
Game of Thrones
costume
again
this year, because I didn’t have anyone to dress up as Drogo and carry my dragon eggs! Because at least this feels like a real plan. And because this gives me something fun to focus on, instead of the way I feel when I imagine him never seeing me as an option at all.”