You should try it sometime. Of everything Asa had said, that had hurt the most. It hurt mostly because he wasn’t wrong—she didn’t really have friends. At work, she basically had Kiki, and even then it wasn’t like they were besties telling each other all their secrets. At home, she had no one. Sometimes she was scared she’d signed up to be a guardian ad litem just to have people to see, something to do.
Again, she couldn’t get the machine to actually brew the coffee once she’d put her K-cup in, and again Asa had to put down his own coffee to help her. This time she tried to hold her breath, to not even be tempted to take a deep inhale of that cedar-citrus scent of his. But she found herself staring at his arms instead, at the tree that she’d now seen in full on his bicep. The roots flexed now as he lowered the top of the machine until the whirring sound began. He finally leaned back against the wall with his coffee, and she let out her breath.
“Thanks,” she said.
“I did have an idea last night,” he said. “For a way to improve this place. You gave it to me, actually.”
She had no clue if this was another trick, where he laid out some elaborate fake idea that was all for fun. She stayed silent, setting her coffee mug back down on the counter until it cooled a little.
“And?” she said finally, when he didn’t appear inclined to go on. “What is it?”
He smiled at her over his coffee. “Oh, I have no intention of sharing it. I just wanted to let you know that yesterday, after a long day at the beach with my friends, I was in the shower washing off all that sand and salt and bam. It hit me. Don’t you love when that happens?”
She knew her mind shouldn’t catch on the word shower, but she couldn’t help the image that immediately popped into her head. Now that she’d seen his bare chest, it wasn’t hard to picture water sluicing down his arms, his hard, flat stomach, spiking his eyelashes as he looked down at her . . .
Lauren put the brakes on that train of thought. She had no idea how she’d ended up in this shower fantasy all of a sudden.
Or maybe she did. She was so lonely that sleeping next to a pile of clothing felt comforting, that she was having inappropriate thoughts about a coworker she didn’t even know that she liked that much.
“You okay?” he asked.
She took a quick gulp of her coffee, wincing a little when it burned her tongue. “Of course,” she said. “Fine. Great. I just have a lot of work to do, so I should probably . . .”
She didn’t bother finishing that sentence before she turned and left. After the holiday season was over, she was going to figure out a way to try to meet more people. She’d try dating apps, she’d join a book club, she had no idea. She just clearly needed to get out of the house more.
It wasn’t lost on her that it was the exact point Asa had been making at the beach.
* * *
? ? ?
Lauren really did have a lot to do to prepare for her meeting with Daniel. She compiled all the annual numbers for income and expenses for Cold World, which was something she’d been working on as the end-of-year approached in general. But since this meeting was focused on Dolores’ challenge, she wanted to specifically highlight opportunities to raise income or lower expenses in a few particular areas.
She couldn’t help but wonder what idea Asa could’ve come up with—especially one supposedly inspired by her. She cast her mind on the various things they’d talked about in the past few days, trying to find a nugget of something he could’ve taken and run with. Had she unknowingly given away an idea that could’ve formed the basis for her own proposal?
But he wasn’t going to have the benefit of information like what she was compiling right now. For example, he wouldn’t have crunched the numbers on Wonderland Walk to know if they were making more on vendor rent than they might make if they just sold their own wares directly. He wouldn’t know why they didn’t work with Groupon yet and what it would take to make that profitable.
It did almost seem unfair, that she and Daniel would have this advantage. But it made sense for them to know the financial ins and outs of the company. Asa was . . . whatever he was. A jack-of-all-trades. He didn’t necessarily need to add this arrow to his quiver.
There was a light rap on her door, and she looked up to see Daniel in her doorway. “Come on in,” she said. “I was just printing out the last spreadsheet.”
“Actually,” he said, giving her his megawatt smile, “could we move this to my mother’s office? She’s out until after lunch.”
It would make things a lot less convenient, because Lauren had wanted to stay near her computer in case she had to look anything up or make an adjustment. But she’d printed two copies of everything, so she supposed there was no reason why they couldn’t meet in Dolores’ office. “Sure,” she said. “Let me just gather everything up.”
Even a week ago, she would’ve had a much harder time staying chill this close to Daniel. Having his attention on her—her!—would’ve scrambled her brain. She was proud of herself for maintaining her cool. What had Asa accused her of, when he’d called her out for sloshing coffee on herself? Being stricken by Daniel’s macho charisma?
Well, she was one hundred percent in control. If only he could see her now.
She reached the door to Dolores’ office first, but she had her hands full with the folders of paperwork, and anyway, it felt weird to open someone else’s office. She stepped to the side, but Daniel was busy typing something into his phone. He gave a nod down at the doorknob. “It’s open,” he said.
She shifted the folders to one arm so she could bend down to turn the knob, but she misjudged which side of the folder was the open side, and ended up sending a sheaf of papers floating to the ground. So much for being cool.
“You can put those on the desk,” Daniel said, stepping around her. “I had something I wanted to run by you first.”
She slid the last of the papers back in their folder, hoping they were still in the order she’d arranged them in. She wondered what he had to run by her—was it something work-related? Or was he maybe going to renew his invitation to dinner?
This time, she’d take him up on it.
He took Dolores’ seat behind her desk, steepling his fingers together in a way that really did make him look like his mother’s son. She took the same seat where she’d been sitting just a few days ago, getting in trouble with Asa for the snowball fight.
She kept one folder on her lap, sliding the other one across to Daniel. He didn’t even glance down at it. Instead, he held up his hands, almost like he was quieting a crowd of adoring fans.
“Picture this,” he said. “Snowboarding. Sledding. The Winter X Games right here in Orlando.”
“Oh, cool,” she said. She had only a vague idea of what the Winter X Games were, but from context she assumed winter sports. “When is that supposed to be?”
“Whenever we make it happen,” Daniel said, leaning forward, his eyes bright. “Don’t you see? If we build it, they will come. This is the future of Cold World.”
“Snowboarding.”
“In Florida.” He smiled up at the ceiling, as if he was thanking the lord above for all the cash that was about to come pouring in. “The novelty alone will have people beating down our door. We’ll need to completely revamp the place, obviously. If we build over the back parking lot, we can put the slopes there, and then—”
Lauren almost couldn’t believe what she was hearing. “Where would people park?”
He waved his hand, as if it was no concern of his. “Where do they ever park in Orlando? At the Waffle House down the street and they can walk over. One of the garages downtown and then they can Uber. I don’t care.”
She pressed her fingertips to her temples. She felt a headache coming on, and she had a feeling it was the word slopes that had done it. He wanted to build actual snow slopes? Outside? In Florida? Was he absolutely off his rocker?
He picked up the folder in front of him, leafing through it quickly before closing it again. “So you’re the numbers girl,” he said. “You tell me how we can make this happen. I have a guy who says he’ll put up three hundred thousand, but we’ll probably need at least another one point two, something like that.”
“Hundred thousand?”