“I’m sorry. I’ll make sure they understand what’s going on. I guess they are a little protective.”

“They’re good friends.” He stroked her hair. “And they care about you. That’s nice.”

“Yeah. You’re right. Sometimes they annoy me, but I love them. Anyway, that’s why it’s so important to me that I keep this job. I don’t want to piss my boss off, though. I just want to keep my job.”

“Just do a good job,” he said, stroking a hand down the curve of her back. “You’ll be okay if you just do a good job.”

“That’s not true.” She lifted her head and gave him a wry smile. “I was doing a good job at RBM and look what happened. There’s more to the business world than doing a good job, and sometimes I think I suck at all that political shit.”

He smiled up at her. “That political shit is one of my strengths.”

Her answering smile eased the burning pain in his chest. “I believe that, you charming devil, you.”

And he rolled her beneath him again, his mouth on hers, his hands on her sweet body, wanting to make her forget any other man, wanting to make her feel so good.

Jake spent the whole weekend with her, not just having sex, although they passed a good part of the time in bed. She’d never had so much fun in bed, making love slow and lazy, talking and laughing, even eating, then making love again, faster, hotter, rougher. But they did things out of bed too, like going shopping for food at the farmers’ market just outside town, walking on the beach, stopping to buy wine and coming across a new little antique store Shelby’d never seen and browsing through it. He’d even installed her new chandelier.

The thought crossed her mind that maybe this was a bit more than they needed to do to convince Andrew, since Andrew never actually saw them. But then, she wasn’t a very good liar and this way, when Andrew asked Monday morning how her weekend was, it would certainly be sincere and convincing when she told him it was the best weekend she’d ever had.

Monday morning was back to reality though, with project meetings and much work to be done on her project plan. She had a team to assemble, deliverables to nail down, and a communications strategy to plan. And that was just a start.

When Andrew called her to his office, she hesitated. What was this meeting going to be like? Another casual chat about anything and everything? Or was he still annoyed about all the invitations she’d turned down last week?

She smoothed her skirt down as she walked along the carpeted corridor between gray fabric panels dividing the cubicles, through the hum of computers, tap of keyboards and low voices discussing business. She smiled at Susan, who waved her into Andrew’s office with a brief smile and not even a bit of attitude.

“Good morning.” She smiled at Andrew too.

“Morning, Shelby. Come on in. Shut the door.”

Oookay. It was going to be a closed-door meeting. Her stomach tightened as she shut the office door and sat in a chair. He moved around from behind his desk and also sat.

“How was your weekend?”

Fanfreakingtastic. She nibbled her bottom lip briefly. “It was good,” she said, unable to stop her smile from breaking free. “Nothing exciting. Jake and I did a little shopping, a little cooking. Went for a walk.” She lifted one shoulder, trying to downplay the amazing time she’d had with Jake, her insides doing a little flip of excitement thinking about him again. “How about you?”

“It was okay.” He paused, watching her. Normally, he’d invite her to go for coffee, tell her about the chick flick Gianna had dragged him to and how bad it was, or how she’d made him have dinner with her parents who he always called the “outlaws”. He hated Gianna’s family and that apparently caused conflict between them. She’d heard it more than once. But he said nothing like that.

“Last week you met with Davis and Bram.”

Okay. On to business. “Yes. Twice.”

He nodded, his face serious as he took a chair. “How did that go?”

“Well, I mentioned to you earlier in the week that there seems to be conflict between their divisions. But I think after Friday’s meeting, I’ve gotten them more or less on board. Why?”

“Davis came to see me first thing this morning. Both he and Bram are questioning your ability to manage the project, given how short a time you’ve worked here.”

Her mouth fell open and her stomach swooped. Heat swept over her, burning her face. “You’re kidding.”

He leaned back in his chair. “No.”

“Well.” She searched for something to say. “They did mention that in our meeting, but I thought I’d addressed it.” She frowned at Andrew. “Are you concerned about that?”

Geez. He wasn’t going to take this project away from her now, was he? Was this all because she’d turned down his invitations last week?

The heat sliding over her intensified and a flare of anger burned inside her. If that’s what this was about…oh, man. This could not be happening to her. Not again.

“No,” he said, putting his fingertips together. “I chose you to lead this project and I have confidence in your abilities.”

Relief filtered through her, but even so her stomach was still knotted and tight. “Thank you.”

“They also weren’t happy because they think the whole intake process needs to be revised.”

“They mentioned that.” She gazed across the table at him. “That’s not in the scope of this project, though. I told them that, and I told them if there are processes that need to be reviewed, we would make note of them and I can make recommendations for future changes. They seemed fine with that.”

The fact that the two men had gone to her boss behind her back was starting to piss her off. Heat slid through her veins. She felt like slamming her leather portfolio on the table. Repeatedly.

Andrew nodded thoughtfully.

“You don’t think I should include that, do you?” She leaned forward. “You know how scope creep can destroy a project.”

“Yeah. I know. But the intake process is critical. What if it compromises the success of this project because it wasn’t included?”

She gritted her teeth. “Fine. I’ll look at it. But I’m not committing to including it in this project.”

“That’s okay. If you look at it, hopefully it will satisfy them.”

Shelby inhaled a deep breath and met Andrew’s eyes. “What about the bigger problem here?”

“What’s that?”

“The fact that they came to you behind my back, instead of coming to me.”

Andrew’s eyes narrowed and his chin lowered. “Oh. Yeah.”

She shook her head, her mouth twisting. “I wish you had told them to come to me if they have concerns, Andrew.”

His eyes widened and he sat back a little in his chair. He gazed back at her. “I…”

“That’s okay.” She waved a hand and stood, trembling on the inside but wanting to appear confident and in control. She smiled. “I’ll go talk to them about it.”

She walked out of his office, fury boiling inside her, both at Andrew and at the other two men. What kind of bullshit was this?

She wanted to walk straight to Bram’s office while she still had the momentum, but paused outside her own cubicle. Maybe she should let the emotion die down a little and plan what she wanted to say to him before she went storming in there. Yeah.

So she sat at her desk and stared at the dark computer monitor for long moments.

It wasn’t as if she’d never encountered this kind of problem before. In her years at RBM she’d dealt with a whole lot of problems on various projects. She knew what she had to do. Why was she second-guessing herself?

She picked up three squares of sticky notes and stacked them one on top of another in a perfect neat pile. Straightened some files into an equally neat pile. Smoothed some dust particles off the corner of the desk. Replaced a paper clip in the holder.

Was it just because of Andrew and her worries that he was giving her too much responsibility? Or was it her past coming back to haunt her, making her doubt her abilities? Making her too sensitive to things she should be able to easily deal with.