She shared a saucy wink. “So long as he’s worth it, and I have a feeling that I’ll know if he is. Maybe...through the chaos of my past, he’ll be waiting in the mellow depths of a possible future.” Yancey waved toward the canvas again.
Vectra parroted the move. “You’ve just made your first sale. Let’s go up to my office so I can cut you a check.”
“Quittin’ time?” Will called out to Minka as he approached her desk.
Minka grinned. “Just about. If you’re looking for Qasim, he’s still in his office.”
“We already talked earlier today.” Will presented a folder. “I only came by the drop off these copies for the foundation files.”
“Thanks,” Minka drawled, satisfied as she accepted the folder secured by a large binder clip.
Will was looking toward the corridor beyond the sun-drenched lobby that led to the president’s office. “So...Sim and Vectra Bauer, huh? I didn’t know ’til today how caught up he was over her. Did you see that coming?”
“Saw it coming a long time ago.”
Will whistled, impressed. “On that note,” he tipped an imaginary cap, “have a good night, Ms. Gerald.”
Minka reciprocated in kind, and once Will had gone, she debated on whether to crack into the folder before heading home for the day.
“Ahh...what the hell...” she decided to get the lingering work out of the way in order to start her morning with a clear desk. Besides, the folder may not have been as formidable as it looked.
To Minka’s delight, the file mostly consisted of invoices. She made note of every sort of paper document that went into the president’s library. Invoices were the easiest to note for her electronic records. Other items required not only a document name, but also a brief overview of its contents.
Minka kicked off her pumps and settled in behind her computer. She’d cleared a quarter of the invoices when she came to a stack from Dazzles. She smiled, recalling the dinner meeting the night before. It had been work that felt like a party, and she’d had a great time.
The reminiscent smile lost some of its illumination, though, when she shuffled the invoices. Her brows drew close, faintly marring the delicate skin between them. Maybe she did need to head home because what she was looking at made no sense.
She was stunned, but not relatively so by the spike in the hotel price quotes. The economy had sent so much off kilter. But this? She stood, moving to another section of her gargantuan desk.
The purposely uncluttered area allowed Minka to spread out material for detailed projects. She used the space to spread out all the invoices and review them for pricing and services rendered. Taking her diligence a step further, she pulled invoices specific to Dazzles for the previous year’s event.
“What the hell...?” she breathed.
Vectra was still padding around barefoot in her office by the time the gallery closed for the evening. The Croachman team had left around 8:15 p.m. Yancey was riding another high cloud because of the unexpected sale she made that afternoon thanks to Vectra. The young artist and her team were eager to head out for a bit of celebrating.
Vectra left her staff to handle the closing of the gallery while she returned to her office. The day had been a productive one. She’d even had the chance to settle on a date for a tasting with the Dazzles chef staff in preparation for the Wilder Warriors Foundation event.
She wondered if anyone noticed how excited she was over the event—over any event that involved Qasim. Vectra wouldn’t admit she was favoring his gatherings over any others she might be involved with. Yet she couldn’t deny that it did crazy things to her heart to know she could be a help to the man she was falling in love with.
In love? Where did that revelation come from?
Can it, Vectra.
It hadn’t come out of nowhere. It was, after all, why she’d been so upset by his sudden retreat from their friendship, right?
She shook her head, raking her nails through the elegant, clipped locks of her pixie style. She needed to back off that train of thought. She didn’t even know the man, for goodness’ sake! They had been friends in the truest sense of the word. Nothing romantic had reared its head before.
But that wasn’t true, was it?
Qasim had admitted to backing away and that wanting her had a lot to do with it. She’d already confessed that her attraction had gone beyond the platonic level.
Attraction and want—that had been the extent of it. No one had said a thing about love.
“And no one’s about to start.” With a wave, she filed the decision to a far corner of her mind and fixed her attention on her latest acquisition.