Page 5 of Isolated (Harper Security Ops #21)

Iris

“Jeez, Iris. Did you not eat today? Try to breathe in between bites.”

I sent a sheepish look across the table to Steph as I lifted my shoulders toward my ears.

Taking a few seconds to finish chewing what was in my mouth, I set my food down in front of me and realized what I’d done.

I’d spent the first ten minutes of lunch shoveling the food into my mouth, barely able or willing to take in anything or anyone around me. “I’m sorry.”

Kasey appeared to be just as concerned as Steph. “Are you okay? I mean, everyone is looking at you.”

My eyes darted around the room, confirming that Kasey wasn’t exaggerating in the least. I offered a reassuring smile to those who were still looking my way.

While there were a few people who hadn’t bothered to pay any attention to me, it seemed there were some who couldn’t help but look in my direction to gawk .

Nova and Madison, who were the office gossips, sat across the room, staring at me with nothing but pure disgust. I didn’t allow that to bother me, though. Those two would find anything to blather on about, even something as ridiculous as a woman being eager to eat her lunch.

Then again, considering I didn’t exactly have any issues with Georgia and Anthony, a pair that rarely took time to notice anyone but each other, and even they were staring at me with disbelief from the table beside mine, I had to accept that perhaps I’d accidentally drawn some attention to myself.

My eyes continued to drift around the room.

Only a few seats away from where my friends and I were seated were Warren, Brett, and Tanner.

Brett was the sweetest, kindest soul at Mono Mark Solutions, and he blushed any time a girl looked at him.

Of course, that meant the second I made eye contact with him, his face flushed with embarrassment, and he looked away.

Warren and Tanner, the male versions of Nova and Madison, smirked and whispered. Brett clearly needed new work friends.

I returned my attention to Steph and Kasey, apologizing once again. “I’m sorry. I normally would have grabbed a snack mid-morning today, but I didn’t have a chance. Now, I’m starved.”

“In all the years you’ve been working here, you’ve never missed having a mid-morning snack?” Steph questioned me.

She didn’t need an answer, knowing full well that precisely that had happened before. “Okay, you’ve got me. The problem is that I decided to take things up a notch at the gym this morning, and I think it’s kicked my metabolism into overdrive.”

I was met with silence as my friends looked at me like I’d grown three heads.

Kasey was the one who finally broke that silence.

“I’m not sure there will ever be anything you can say to me that’ll convince me to drag myself out of bed early enough to be able to go to the gym first thing in the morning when I need to leave my place by no later than 8:30 a.m. to get here with a few minutes to spare. ”

Laughter spilled out of me. Kasey was a lot like my sister, Eleni.

But where my sister was rather mindful of how she ate, Kasey was the opposite.

She ate anything and everything, and despite never going to the gym, she managed to maintain a beautiful figure.

She was a stunning woman, with her long blonde hair, blue eyes, pale skin, and perfect body.

Add in her wonderful personality, and she was the complete package.

After sipping from my water and giving myself some time to breathe between bites of my lunch, I teased, “That’s the reason you need to go to the gym.

It might be tough at first, but if you give it two or three weeks, you’ll be practically jumping out of bed.

I woke up this morning before my alarm even went off. ”

“That’s insane,” Steph muttered, shoving her fork into her chicken salad. “Didn’t you spend time celebrating your birthday this weekend? I thought you went home to visit with your family for the occasion.”

Steph was very much the opposite of Kasey, particularly when it came to meals and physical appearance.

She counted calories and avoided carbs like the plague, granting herself a cheat meal and a dessert only once a week.

Of course, her healthy lifestyle led to her brown skin being utterly flawless.

Her hairstyle changed frequently, and this week she had a tight coil afro bob.

It was my favorite way she wore her hair.

And although Steph didn’t like going to the gym, she was very much into keeping herself fit and healthy.

So, she played pickleball all the time, having once convinced Kasey and me to join her.

That had been an absolute disaster, and she never asked us again.

“I did go home to celebrate. I had a great time.”

“So, you should be exhausted. Or, at the very least, you should have needed several cups of coffee to get through the morning.”

In an instant, my thoughts drifted back to my morning with Landen.

Even he thought I was crazy for not needing caffeine to fuel myself each day.

The way he often teased me about it, believing I was making it all up, warmed my heart.

Maybe that was why he’d tossed out a few additional motivational comments during this morning’s workout.

Even when I had moved on to exercises that didn’t require him to spot me, he pushed me to go harder.

And like a love-struck fool, I allowed it to push me into doing an extra round of walking lunges.

I didn’t doubt I’d need to wheel myself into the gym tomorrow morning as a result.

With a smile tugging at one corner of my mouth, I said, “You sound just like Landen.”

“Landen? Who’s that?”

I beamed at them. “The guy I work out with at the gym. He can’t seem to wrap his head around the idea that I’m this energetic without a drop of coffee.”

Kasey’s mouth fell open as Steph spoke. “The guy you work out with at the gym? How long have you been doing that?”

I shrugged. “I don’t know. Almost as long as I’ve been going there.”

“And why haven’t you ever told us about him?”

My eyes darted between the two of them as I took another bite of my food.

I knew exactly why I hadn’t brought him up to them.

Steph and Kasey weren’t exactly interested in hearing about my time at the gym—at least as much as it pertained to the exercising I did—and I felt no need to share details about the guy who put a bit of a pep in my step every one of those mornings.

If they knew how I crushed on him, they’d encourage me to go after him.

I’d never be able to bring myself to do it, and then I’d spend the rest of my life simply pining away for a guy who didn’t want me.

“There’s nothing to tell. He’s just a guy who works out as early as I do, so we take advantage of that and spot each other whenever needed. It’s not a big deal.”

“It could be a big deal,” Steph insisted. “Don’t forget that I met Sam on the pickleball court.”

She did have a point. Steph met Sam about a year ago while they were both playing pickleball. He’d swept her off her feet, and they’d been playing together—in more ways than one—ever since.

“This isn’t like that. Landen isn’t interested in me the way Sam was interested in you. We’re just…” I didn’t even want to say the words. “We’re just gym buddies.”

Steph shot me an unimpressed look.

Kasey let out a sigh of exasperation. “Well, I’ll take anything I can get. It has to be better than what I dealt with this weekend on my date. What a disaster! ”

“Oh, no. It didn’t go well?”

Kasey was a woman on a mission. She had recently decided that any time someone asked her out, she would agree to at least one date with them, even if she didn’t feel that initial physical attraction.

She’d been feeling frustrated for a while now, wanting to meet her special guy, and nothing had worked out lately.

The way she saw it, she couldn’t continue to turn men down that didn’t fit the image she had in her head of what that perfect guy would look like.

So, while I was celebrating my birthday with my family on Saturday, Kasey was out on her second of these dates, the first with this particular guy.

“It was awful.” Her voice was so downtrodden.

“What happened?” Steph asked.

Kasey pulled out a pack of cookies—a full-sized pack meant for eating two or three at a time and having them in your kitchen cupboard for a week or two.

She held one up in front of her. “Enough to make me want to drown my sorrows in Oreos. I don’t understand what I’m doing wrong. Maybe I’m putting out the wrong vibe.”

It figured that I’d be the one who was eating a normal lunch and got all the odd looks, but when one of my closest friends pulled out a package of Oreos, not one person batted an eyelash.

Maybe it was that my actions weren’t typical for me, whereas Kasey doing something like she had was completely normal for her.

A few days before her period, it wasn’t unheard of to see her walk in with a huge family-sized bag of salt and vinegar potato chips.

Feeling alarmed at how her date had gone, I pressed for more information. “Did the guy do something? ”

Laughter spilled out of her, and she bit another cookie in half. “If only that had been the case.”

“I don’t understand. Did you two have nothing to talk about?”

She considered my question, her eyes darting to the ceiling as though recalling her night with the guy.

“I guess that depends on how you look at it. He talked, alright. It’s just that he didn’t really have anything great to say.

He spent the first half of dinner whining about everything that had gone wrong in his life that led to him losing his job instead of him just sucking it up and doing something about it. ”

“Well, isn’t he doing something about it? How recently did he lose his job?”

Kasey popped a third cookie in her mouth. “Five months ago.”

Steph and I exchanged concerned looks. “And he asked you out on a date? How is he earning any money?”

She shrugged. “I guess he’s currently still living off his unemployment income, hoping it leads him to his ultimate plan.”

“Well, that sounds promising.” I lifted my sandwich to my mouth and prepared to take a bite. “What’s his plan?”

“To find a sugar mama,” Kasey deadpanned, another whole cookie landing in her mouth.

I gasped as Steph’s eyes nearly fell out of her head. “He told you that?”

If I hadn’t been so shocked by what Kasey had just shared, I might have confessed my concern for the fact she’d just nearly annihilated half a row of Oreos.

She shook her head. “Of course not. But it wasn’t difficult to figure out when he began his line of questioning.

At first, he asked about what I did for a living.

But after I told him, he went on to ask how well it paid and whether I owned my own home, or if I rented.

As soon as he learned that I had my own home, that was it.

The questions kicked up another notch, him prying for more information about my financial status.

I could only imagine what he would have thought if I were like you, Iris.

Think about it, you got the promotion to marketing director not even a year ago, and you learned on Friday that Robert intends to promote you to VP of Marketing at the start of the year.

You would have been this guy’s absolute dream. ”

I could think of nothing I wanted less than someone like Kasey had suffered through this horrible date with showing interest in me. “Oh, that’s awful, Kasey. I’m sorry it didn’t go well,” I lamented.

Again, she shook her head, this time with frustration, the disappointment plain as day.

“Thanks. I mean, I get that you won’t catch me at the gym first thing in the morning like you, but I have some ambition in my life.

This guy seemed to have not an ounce of it.

I think my plan to accept dates from anyone who asks is a bad one.

Maybe I need to have some standards before accepting. ”

“It’s not a bad idea,” Steph reasoned. “What are you thinking?”

Kasey finally stopped reaching for more cookies.

“Uh, well, for starters, I think they’re going to need to have a job.

It doesn’t necessarily need to be anything fancy, but the guy’s got to have some ambition.

Some drive. I want a man who’s successful in his own right and can take charge.

He can’t just sit around all the time feeling bad for himself or the position that he’s allowed himself to be in for far too long. ”

She was close to spiraling out of control completely. I reached across the table and squeezed her hand. “I’m sure you’re going to find him. There’s nothing wrong with anything that you said. In fact, I think that’s the least that anyone should expect in a partner.”

Kasey groaned and dropped her head to the table. “Ugh, where is he?”

My eyes met Steph’s, and both of us laughed. Steph placed her hand on Kasey’s back. “I’m sure he’s out there. Maybe he’s waiting for you in the cookie aisle.”

Our friend lifted her head and sent a pained expression our way. “I don’t feel so good now.”

“I had a feeling that was coming.”

“Tell me about your weekend, Steph,” Kasey begged. “I need something that makes me feel happy. Did you and Sam spend all your time playing pickleball?”

Steph’s face lit up. “Well, not all of our time.”

Kasey and I both groaned, our eyes filled with longing.

Steph went on to tell us about her weekend with her guy, and I had to admit I felt some small pangs of jealousy.

Though I hadn’t quite reached the same level as Kasey had over it, I could understand where she was coming from when it came to the desire for a romantic relationship.

I couldn’t stop thinking about how great it would be to have a guy like Landen to spend some time with outside of the gym.

By the time Steph had finished, I glanced at the clock on the wall and noted the time. There were less than ten minutes remaining for our lunch break. “I’ve got to go.”

“Lunch isn’t over yet, though,” Steph noted.

I nodded and stood. “I know. But Robert came into my office this morning. They’re having a meeting this afternoon with a consultant, and he wants me in on that. I guess as part of my preparation for the promotion, I need to start sitting in on this kind of stuff.”

“Oh, that sounds thrilling.”

“Ah, I don’t think it’ll be so bad.” I reached out, opened Kasey’s package of cookies, and pulled out two of them. “I’ll talk to you both later.”

As they said goodbye, I strode out of the room and back to my office to prepare for the meeting, doing it while feeling frustrated for my friend and myself at the same time.