Page 14 of Stuck

Funny. I take it Bingley is still out with his business peeps if you’ve got time to sit around eroding my self-worth via text?

Due back any minute. Better go. Everything been okay at work though?

I haven’t dropped your man in it yet if that’s what you’re asking. You may both continue distracting each other with impunity

8

DARCY

The end of the week was an exhausting slog of back-to-back meetings with every department head in the company, multiple external stakeholders, and Vertex’s legal department. By six thirty on Friday evening, I was struggling to keep all the stats and reports from so many different sources straight in my head. I said as much to Bingley as we caught up with the week’s events over a quick FaceTime call. His answering grimace didn’t bode well.

“What is it?” I asked, narrowing my eyes.

“I, um… I was going to ask you a favour, but if you’re done in, it doesn’t matter.”

“Spit it out.”

“Well, there’s a tradition of after-work drinks on Fridays. I was going to ask you to show your face, buy a couple of rounds in my absence. As a show of thanks to everyone for their hard work this week.”

I let out a long breath. I wasn’t in the least surprised to hear that Bingley had instigated such a cheery tradition; he was universally liked wherever he went and could work a room better than anyone I’d met. I, on the other hand, tended to either intimidate or alienate people. I’d been told this was because I came across as reserved, but the accusation didn’t particularly bother me. Much as I enjoyed intelligent conversation, I refused to feign interest in the mundanities of the lives of people I had no connection to outside my own circle of friends and family. I didn’t see the point.

This dynamic was precisely why Bingley was in Scotland, wooing investors, and I was here, scaring the lawyers. We made a good team when we worked to our strengths. My strength was not that of company mascot, and Bingley knew it.

“No, you’re right,” he said before I’d uttered a word. I had to assume my expression had spoken for me. “A few other members of the exec team will be there anyway. You should go home and chill out tonight.”

A flash of dismay twisted in my gut. It lasted for less than a second, but it was enough. I didn’t want to be in my flat, because no length of time there could ever be considered chilled.

“It’s okay,” I said reluctantly. “I’ll go.”

“Really?”

I may have curled my lip, because Bingley smirked, hastily told me which pub I’d find everyone in, and ended the call before I could change my mind.

I received more than a few surprised glances from the tables full of Hydro Crops employees when I arrived at the Wig and Gavel, though every face transformed with broad smiles when I told them drinks would be on the company all evening. There was a crowd of people three deep waiting to order at the bar, the stench of excessive aftershave and spilled beer hanging like a fog in the air above them. Cursing Bingley, I joined the back of the mob.

I’d reached the front but still not been served when I spotted Elizabeth at the other end of the bar. Something tightened in me as I looked at her—a small tug of excitement at her being here that I couldn’t ignore, no matter how much I wanted to. I turned away and finally caught the attention of a bartender, ordering myself a pint and requesting that he open a tab.

“This covers their drinks too. They’re in the same group,” I informed him, pointing to Elizabeth and her colleagues. As I did, one of the men she was with waved a shot of something under her nose, obviously trying to persuade her to drink it despite how she shook her head. When he persisted, she took it, only to discard the contents into an empty glass on the bar while the rest of them downed their own.

I clenched my teeth. She shouldn’t have had to do that—I would absolutely be having a word with the idiot who thought it was acceptable to try and coax women into taking drinks they clearly didn’t want—but that was not my biggest problem. It was that, now I’d looked back, I couldn’t drag my eyes away from her.

She’d removed the jacket she’d been wearing in the office and rolled the sleeves of her blouse up to her elbows, revealing toned forearms and a jumble of bangles and braids around one wrist that was inexplicably sexy. Her hair was tied up in a messy bun, and… she’d put on glasses? Had I known she wore glasses? I wished I didn’t know. Same as I wished I didn’t know that she regularly went out into the wild in nothing but a swimming costume, or—as I’d found out via an unsolicited info dump from Nala in the R&D team—that she’d achieved a master’s in engineering by the age of twenty-three.

I didn’t want and absolutely did not need another reason to think admiring thoughts about Bingley’s girlfriend. I’d never been attracted to one of my friends’ partners before, and I didn’t know what to do about it except continue to ignore it and hope it went away. Really soon.

My trance was broken when Liam Wainscot, Bingley’s head of sales, arrived at my side and began talking budgets. He didn’t seem to need me to participate in the conversation, and I still hadn’t offered an opinion on anything he said by the time he’d ordered his own drink, and we’d found seats with the others. I snuck a surreptitious look at my watch to gauge how soon I could politely leave.

“Have you got somewhere else to be?”

I looked up. The woman I’d sat next to was currently leaning into me, trying to peer at my watch face. I moved my arm away and sat up straighter. “Hello… er…”

“Callie. I work in marketing. Have done for several years.”

“That’s right. Apologies.” I wasn’t sorry at all. Hydro Crops employed over a hundred and fifty people, and I was rarely on site. I didn’t even pretend to know everyone who worked there.

“We danced together at last year’s Christmas party,” she said coyly, twisting the stem of her wineglass between her finger and thumb in a way she presumably thought was seductive. “Do you remember?”

I smiled vaguely and took a sip of beer, because no, I did not remember. Neither did I believe her—I rarely danced if I could avoid it. She was probably extrapolating “standing next to each other near the edge of the dance floor” into something more meaningful.