“Wow,” he chastised, “if you put that much thought into your daily work, you would be an unstoppable force at Danvers.”
“You know, it’s funny. I seem to get a lot accomplished when I don’t have someone interrupting me with stuff like ‘can you get me some lunch’ or ‘did you steal my number two pencils again?’ Stuff like that tends to suck the motivation right out of you.”
Brant couldn’t hold back a grin. Sometimes he thought that sparring with her was better than sex. That would explain the wood that he sported at the office when she was around for any length of time. He was a competitive man by nature and succumbing to blackmail over the calendar was not an easy thing for him. On the other hand, he didn’t want people at the office laughing over something he did back in college for his fraternity either. How bad could it be? He would stay at a hotel and she could stay with her family. They would really need to see each other only during their travel time and for a few hours at the reunion. If she weren’t so damn difficult most of the time, he would have offered to help her out anyway. This didn’t have to be a big deal. Knowing her, she would book them seats on the plane as far away from each other as possible. You had to love how predictable she was sometimes.
Chapter Five
Most people might be able to leave on a trip without having a root canal first, but Emma should have learned by now that she wasn’t most people. They had been putting in some long hours over the past couple of weeks to prepare for being away from the office for a few days. Now their flight was scheduled for this afternoon and she’d discovered she needed an emergency root canal just hours before they left for the airport.
The nagging discomfort that she had been feeling on and off for a month had turned into a full-fledged throbbing, at which point she finally broke down and went to her dentist. They had scheduled her procedure for today and she had little choice but to keep it. She couldn’t risk going out of town and having the pain become unbearable. She might have bent the truth a bit when she assured them that her traveling companion would be taking care of her. But she had already arranged for a car to pick her up at her apartment and drop her at the airport. She knew her mouth would probably be numb for the entire flight. After they arrived in Miami, she would crash for the evening and sleep in the next day while Brant went to his meeting. No problem, right?
Hours later, she knew she might have underestimated the whole thing. Despite the Novocain, her mouth was throbbing when she left the dentist’s office. They had given her a prescription for pain medication and advised her to take a pill as soon as possible. Maybe someone with a better pain tolerance could have avoided it altogether; unfortunately, she wasn’t that person, so she stumbled into the pharmacy before heading home. She had never taken any prescription pain medication before, but she assumed that if she took a pill right before she left for the airport, it would kick in during the flight and give her a pain-free trip.
Damn it—of course she should have packed earlier, but as usual she had left it to the last minute. She was forced to grab a suitcase and fill it with whatever was clean. It also occurred to her that she should probably change into a pair of jeans, but her short skirt would have to do. She couldn’t seem to remove the hand that cradled her jaw for more than a few seconds. Maybe she was a baby, but it hurt like hell.
Five minutes before her taxi was due, she poured a glass of water and took the white pill from the dentist, cursing as she tossed the medication bottle in her carry-on bag and the pills inside spilled out everywhere. She had just grabbed the bottle intending to put them back in when a horn sounded. Shit. Throwing the bottle in the cabinet, she grabbed her bags and was hurrying to the door when it hit her. She had forgotten to pack underwear; she debated just buying some in Miami, but knowing her luck, she would never get away from Brant to do it. Running back into the bedroom as the taxi horn sounded again, she pulled her lingerie drawer completely out and dumped it in the top of her bag—no time to pick out her favorites today. The last thing she needed was to miss her ride to the airport. She could just imagine the smirk on Brant’s face if she missed the plane she was blackmailing him into taking. Not going to happen.