Love Negotiation

Eric looked sideways at the woman seated beside him. That was definitely Joanna Reeves.

He had known it almost the moment he walked into Chad Holloway’s office, although he had spent the last several minutes trying to convince himself that the recognition was a trick of memory, that there was no way a woman he had not seen in nearly ten years could be so immediately familiar. But now, sitting across from her in Chad’s office, he could see the things time had changed and somehow, the things it hadn’t.

She was older, obviously. They both were. At twenty-one, Joanna had been all long dark hair and tank tops, her beauty something she seemed almost unaware of when her nose was buried in a book.

Now her dark hair fell in a sleek curtain past her shoulders, softened by just enough wave to keep the style from looking severe. A fitted cream blouse disappeared neatly into a pencil skirt, and the precision of her makeup and jewellery suggested that, these days, Joanna knew exactly how the world saw her.

Her eyes were still the same, though. Dark hazel, he remembered, although the colour shifted depending on the light. He had once spent an unreasonable amount of time noticing that.

He dragged his attention away before she could catch him staring.

They were both waiting for Chad to finish whatever apparently urgent conversation was taking place on his phone. Joanna seemed entirely unbothered as she sat with one ankle crossed neatly over the other, scrolling through something on her own phone while Chad murmured into his. Eric wondered if she was actually reading or simply making a point of appearing occupied.

He suspected the latter.

“And I was saying –” Chad finally got off his phone, his attention settling first on Joanna. “We’ve hired Eric Callahan to be our Director of Business Development,” he said, as though he hadn’t just spent the last five minutes ignoring them both. “He’ll be working with you on the Kessler project.” He then turned to Eric, “Eric, this is Joanna, our Director of Strategic Transactions.”

At that exact moment, Joanna tucked a strand of hair behind her ear, lowered her lashes, and gave her lips the faintest little pout.

Eric almost laughed.

“Chad,” she said, in a soft voice that was mildly aggrieved. “You know my team can handle this alone, right? Have we ever disappointed you?”

Some things never changed. Eric had to press his tongue against the inside of his cheek to keep from smiling. Still that wily fox. It was almost impressive how quickly she could become that particular version of herself: pretty, slightly helpless, just a little bit spoiled, the sort of woman who made men feel useful and want to help her.

More importantly, her protest had answered a question he had been carrying since he walked through the office door that morning.

She had recognised him as well.

Eric had thought he’d seen it when he entered the room – the briefest flicker in her eyes, there and gone before he could be certain of it. For a moment, he’d wondered whether he’d imagined the whole thing, whether she really could have looked at him after all these years and simply seen a stranger.

Apparently not. Because the Joanna he knew wouldn’t want to work with him.

He looked back at Chad, curious to see whether his new boss had been taken in by the performance, and he found Chad looking at Joanna with the indulgent expression of a man who had long ago decided that she could get away with almost anything.

Oh, yes, Eric thought. He did. They always did.

“You never do, Jo,” Chad said with a sigh, reaching across the desk to pat her hand in what Eric thought Chad believed was a reassuring manner. He noticed the tiny involuntary flex of Joanna’s fingers beneath Chad’s hand, and he winced internally. Joanna’s smile remained perfectly in place, but Eric had always been unusually good at noticing things Joanna didn’t want people to notice.

“Eric was the one who pitched the Kessler project to our Chairman,” Chad explained, his hand still on Joanna’s. “We hired him specifically to do this, so I need the two of you working together.”

Then he turned toward Eric, finally lifting his hand from Joanna’s. Eric thought he saw Joanna let out a small exhale. “She’s very good,” Chad told him. “Don’t let the pretty act fool you.”

For the second time, Eric nearly laughed. As if he needed the warning. He had known Joanna was brilliant before most of the people in this office had probably learned her name, and if anything, the years had only made her better at disguising it.

“Never,” he said, putting a hand over his heart in mock solemnity before extending the other toward her. “I’m sure we’ll work well together.”

Joanna looked at his hand for a moment, and Eric could almost see the calculation taking place behind her eyes. She had lost this particular argument, and they both knew it. Chad had made the decision, Eric was the person who had originated the Kessler proposal, and there was no graceful way for her to object without explaining why she objected to him specifically, which was clearly something she had no intention of doing.

So she placed her hand in his. Eric felt the leap of his heart as she did so, and immediately mentally kicked his own heart for misbehaving. Her handshake was firm and brief, the sort of perfectly professional gesture, and when she smiled at him, there was nothing flirtatious or familiar in it. “Sure.”

Eric let go of her hand. It was always like this with him. He had seen Joanna charm every other person, watched her soften her voice and tilt her head and allow them to believe they were the cleverest person in the room while she quietly guided the conversation wherever she wanted it to go. With him, however, she had never bothered with quite the same performance. With him, she was a thousand-spined porcupine, he thought. Beautiful, intelligent, and apparently prepared to impale him if he came too close.

But somehow, he found that version of her more interesting than the version she presented to everyone else.

“All right,” Chad said, already reaching for his phone again. “If there’s nothing else, I’ll leave you both to it. Perhaps come back with a proposal and all the figures by the end of the month?”

“Of course,” Joanna said. She gathered her iPad and phone, rose from her chair, and walked toward the door without giving Eric so much as a second glance.

Eric watched her go for a second before standing and following her out.

Outside Chad’s office, Eric lengthened his stride to keep up with Joanna’s brisk pace, wondering how she managed to move that quickly in a skirt that narrow and heels that high without either losing her balance or tripping over herself. She was running away from him. He was almost certain of it.

“So,” he said when he caught up with her, matching her pace easily now. “You haven’t changed much.”

The transformation was immediate. Whatever soft, mild version of Joanna had been sitting in Chad’s office disappeared so completely that Eric admired the efficiency of it. She didn’t even bother pretending she didn’t know what he meant, which was another thing he remembered about her; with everyone else, Joanna could be as indirect as she pleased, but with him she had always been startlingly straightforward, sometimes to the point of being downright curt.

“Can’t say the same about you, though.” She turned her head just enough to look at him, her gaze travelling briefly over his face before settling, with suspicious precision, on his hairline. “I think that might have moved up an inch or two.”

Eric grinned. That was bullshit, and she knew it was bullshit, which made it considerably more satisfying than if she’d actually meant it. His hair had never looked better. He’d worn it longer at college, thick and slightly unruly, the sides brushing his ears and the front forever falling into his eyes after hockey practice. Now it was cut close around the sides and back, longer on top and swept neatly away from his forehead, the kind of haircut that required considerably more maintenance than he would ever admit but made him look exactly as polished as Sterling & Rowe expected its executives to look.

“Didn’t think you noticed me that much back then,” he said, unable to keep the pleased note from his voice.

Joanna didn’t answer. She kept walking, her expression composed, as though he hadn’t said anything worth acknowledging.

“So how do you want to take this?” he asked, deciding to give her a moment before he annoyed her again. “Shall we have a session this afternoon to touch base between our two teams?”

Joanna sighed, the sound carrying just enough exasperation to tell him she had been hoping he would eventually just leave on his own.

“How about you take this afternoon to settle in and get to know your own team?” she said. “Then send me a draft of your proposal. I’ll look through and come up with a rough budget, which I will send to you for your review before we talk about a meeting. Efficient use of time and all that, you know.”

Eric’s grin widened. “So you want to minimize your interactions with me. Got it.”

They had reached Joanna’s office. She opened the door, then finally turned to him. “Not everything is about you, Eric,” she said sweetly, with the calm certainty of someone who knew she had the last word. “But continue to think so if it pleases you." Then she disappeared into her office and closed the door behind her.

Eric stood in the corridor for a moment, looking at the closed door. He smiled.

This is going to be interesting, he thought.