He turned in his seat, watching as I organized, and I
suddenly became very conscious of the fact that the tops of
my stockings and my garter clips were exposed through the
slits at my ridden–up skirt sides. "Bottled water?
Something stronger?"
"Water is fine."
I opened everything and set it out along with some china
and utensils Carl had me schlep over from his kitchen. I
would be schlepping them right back after Christian left and
probably washing them.
"Okay?" I asked after giving him a supply of napkins.
"Yes, thank you."
I scurried as calmly as I could to get away from him
because the longer I stayed in his field of gravity the more
I wanted to do something stupid. Like lick him.
I pulled my seat up as close as I could to my desk,
hiding behind my computer screen and propping my headset
back on my head. While Christian ate, more interested in
roast beef than in my awkwardness at the moment, I pulled up
his info sheet in our database and skimmed it. My phone
beeped and I remembered I'd put Jason on hold all that time ago.
"Shit, I'm sorry, Jason," I whispered, plucking the call
back up. "I forgot you were there."
"That's all right," he said, crunching loudly on whatever
it was he had been eating while I left him dangling. "I'd
rather be on hold than to pick more calls. Besides, you're
easy."
"Um, thanks?"
"You got it." He walked me through a series of things I
needed to do to the server on my end, having me go into the
closet to jiggle this or that or to restart things.
Christian had finished his lunch and was watching the
spectacle with rapt attention. I had to keep going back to
the phone to have Jason explain what things looked like as
my headset cord didn't reach far enough to take him with me.
I didn't like having Christian at my back, but didn't see
where I had any choice besides putting Jason on speaker.
Jason knew I was server–inept. I didn't really want to
broadcast that fact to in–office candidates.
Finally, the laser printer started spitting out the stack
of test pages we'd been trying to send through for the past
day and I let out a hearty "Halleluiah."
"That's why you keep us on retainer," Jason said smugly.
I hung up on him and went back to my file–ogling
just as Carl emerged from his hidey–hole. "Christian!"
he said with more animation than I'd ever heard from him.
"Sorry to keep you waiting. Come on into my office so we
don't disturb Ellen's work."
"No need to apologize. The view has been nice," Christian
said, pushing against the table to stand and glancing in my
direction. I sat up straighter and cleared my throat. I'm
nothing if not confident, but right then I was feeling
pretty "nothing."