Page 5 of The Focal Point

I could hear Kristen typing in the background as she answered her phone. Music played in the background, some '90s playlist.

“You know those curtains that came in on Monday? The ones Jerry installed yesterday?”

“For Thomas’s office?” Her gum snapped before she resumed chewing.

“Yes, those curtains. They’re too short—about a foot short.” I sighed, rubbing at the bridge of my nose with my thumb and index fingers. I could feel a headache building behind my eyes.

“No way.” Kristen stopped snapping her gum, and the music quieted. “Seriously?”

“Yes, seriously. I’ve remeasured three times, and they look wrong. It throws the whole room off. I already called the company, and they’re insisting I’m the one who mismeasured—”

“You don’t mismeasure,” Kristen interjected.

“Exactly. I know I didn’t send the wrong measurements, but I can’t find the stupid things. Can you check your sent mail and find the form you sent them? Then send it to me.”

“Sure thing. I’ll get it to you in a few,” Kristen replied, and the call cut off.

I shook my head, sighing. What an annoying mess.

Kristen would get me the file sooner than a few minutes, I knew that, but I still flipped back through my tablet out of annoyance. Where had those stupid measurements gone? It was like they had disappeared into thin air.

The floor creaked, sending a shock of surprise up my spine, and I snapped my head up to find a man hovering in the doorway.

Our eyes met for a moment as we both froze, and the moment of silence stretched.

“Sorry,” the guy finally managed, his brown eyes not moving. Even though I quickly recovered from my alarm, I couldn’t look away for a moment, either.

The man was tall and slim in a way that didn’t diminish the breadth of his shoulders under the white button-down he wore. Nor did his glasses take away from the strong line of his jaw or the appeal in the way a lock of his sandy hair, tousled like he hadn’t quite had time to run a brush through it that morning, hung over his forehead.

I shook my head, turning back to my screen with difficulty. “No worries.”

A thought popped into my mind, and my head jerked up again, my hand pointing at the door. “Close it before—”

The sound of a freight train coming down the hallway told me it was too late, and an enormous half-grown puppy burst into the room with a rush of sound and noise and joy, straight toward me.

“Scout!” I protested, laughing as the enormous paws landed on my shoulders. I managed to extract myself and let him gently down into the floor. He immediately rolled over onto his back, legs in the air, tongue lolling out of the side of his mouth, asking for a belly rub. The only thing I could do was indulge him, kneeling to scratch at the soft fur there.

“You stinker,” I told him, grinning. “Why am I giving you a belly rub when you ate some of my paperwork this morning?”

“Sorry. I didn’t realize that would happen.”

The guy was suddenly kneeling on Scout’s other side, startlingly close. Startingly handsome. And smelling of some woodsy-sandalwood-type scent, either cologne or soap or something.

“No worries,” I said again, trying to tamp down on the flutter in the center of my chest. “He finds any excuse to come in here.”

“He must really like you,” the guy offered, his long-fingered hands scratching the puppy’s proffered tummy.

“He seems to like everyone.” I shrugged. “No discrimination—anyone who will give him attention, and he’s happy.”

“I’m Liam, by the way.” He offered his hand, and after a moment’s hesitation, I took it.

“Bailey.”

His handshake was firm but not crushing, warm and enveloping. It took a lot of willpower not to look at my hand or squeeze it or something once he had released it.

“Nice to meet you, Bailey.” Liam returned to petting Scout’s belly at the German shepherd’s wiggling insistence, and so did I.

“Likewise.”