Butterflies in Honey (Growing Pains #3) (43 page)

Krista listened in fascination. Like the last
time she spoke with him, the job was exactly what she was after. It
was everything she liked about her job now with the power to do
more. Plus, she had always wanted to learn more about Operations.
She had been reading up on it, and she had some ideas already. With
Sean’s help, she could definitely make some improvements.

“Yes, I can see that has sparked your
interest,” Tory said with a twinkle in his eyes. “And now we come
to how much I will have to pay out to get you to stay.”

Krista half smiled, looking down at her
half-eaten steak. “Do you know what I have been offered thus
far?”

“I have a fair idea. Marcus loves to talk
about you and Ben doesn’t understand which things need to remain
secrets.”

“Ah, yes.”

“But those positions can’t offer you what I
am offering you. You would not be challenged. You would not be
working with your friends. You would not get to dabble in fields
you currently have no access to.”

“But I would have my own home and a car that
didn’t have the engine light on. And who knows, they might.”

Tory leaned back and studied Krista. “You are
better at negotiation, I see.”

Krista smiled. “I now know what I want. More
importantly, what I
need
to make this decision. Unless you
give it to me, I will have to move on. I need to go where I am
valued the highest.”

“That is wise.” Tory leaned forward again. “I
will offer you $100,000 a year, plus an advantageous bonus based
off of your results. I will also move you to a fully vested status
with your retirement package once you sign a year contract with
your new position.”

“That is $20,000 less a year than my highest
offer.”

Tory’s eyes widened briefly. “What of the
other perks?”

“Bonus would work out to another five or so,
no benefit perks.”

“The question becomes, how much could you
make off of a bonus based on results?”

Krista leaned back. “I would have to see the
bonus structure. I will also not settle for less than one-hundred
and ten.”

Tory stared at her. “I liked negotiating with
you better when you were lamb eyed.”

Krista laughed. “Those were the days. I
wouldn’t be such a stickler, but it isn’t fun working with most of
the upper management in your company, Tory.”

“Yes, that is changing, but slowly.”

“What did Sean say about all this?”

“I blindsided him. On purpose, I must admit.
He comes up with remarkable things when he feels overwhelmed.
Hopefully when you step into place—“

“
If.”

“—it will take some of the pressure off of
him. At this rate, he will burn himself out.”

“He has always been ambitious.”

“So have you, but you have a more level head
on your shoulders to deal with it. Sean has yet to learn about
limitations.”

Krista nodded. So true.

Chapter Thirty

Sean and Krista had been dating for five
months and she spent four or five nights a week with him. The sex
was better than fantastic. Waking up and going surfing with him was
a dream. Waiting at her house until late to meet him at his house
sucked. He still worked all the time. Even with Krista stepping in
to a Junior VP role, taking the weight off of him for day-to-day
grievances, Sean was stretched thin. He and Krista had only gone
out for a total of three dinners. In all those months, they went
out a miserable three times.

He had met her at happy hour a handful of
times, but it was usually only for a brief few hours before he went
home to bed. He had less than a handful of days off, and for those
he was always distracted. It was exactly what Krista didn’t want
for them. Sean kept trying to push his key on her so she could just
head to his house after work, but she kept saying no—at least
Jasmine was at her house. No one was at his.

She decided that she needed to get away for
the weekend. It was going to be her ultimatum to Sean. He would
either take the weekend off and go with her, or he would find
himself a new fuck-buddy. She couldn’t even call herself a
girlfriend—she didn’t see him enough for that. He didn’t even see
her enough with all her clothes on to call her a
friend
.

As Krista entered the code to gain access to
Sean’s driveway, her heart was aflutter. She’d spent two solid
hours talking with Kate and Jasmine about what she would say. They
all chose dates for the getaway, and decided San Diego was a good
place to head. It was close, it had some good surf coming up if the
weather and currents and all that panned out, and it would only
take a couple days of their time. Sean just had to agree to it,
then pick the date that worked best with him. Krista was basically
hand-wrapping a vacation for him, hoping he would agree.

She walked through Sean’s quiet and darkened
house. It was eerie that a place so big was so empty. It was like a
museum after closing. All the money Sean spent on the new digs was
wasted, except for two rooms—the kitchen and the bedroom. No other
room saw activity other than the monthly cleaning lady, who merely
dusted and wiped away cobwebs.

Krista made her way to the kitchen and found
him where she knew she would—at the kitchen shoving something into
his face. He was staring out into space, not tasting what was on
his fork, nor caring. Krista stopped to observe him before she made
herself known.

He looked tired and drawn. His shoulders were
slumped, his head hung, and he wasn’t enjoying the food that was
unceremoniously shoveled into his mouth. He looked like a man with
nothing to live for, which was the opposite of why he was working
this hard in the first place. It was not the Sean Krista knew and
loved. The problem was, it wasn’t a stranger, either. It was the
guy that would let her go, again. The one she was afraid of.

“Hey,” Krista said as she walked toward the
small table in the corner of the kitchen.

Sean looked up and his eyes lit up. “Hey
baby. How was your day?”

Krista noticed he was eating a frozen dinner.
It looked like a dog took a crap in a plastic tub. She went and sat
on his lap, deciding she would make him some real food after she
talked to him—small price to pay to seem like less of a bitch.

He leaned back to welcome her choice of seat.
As soon as her butt hit his legs Sean leaned into her and put his
weary head to her chest. There was nothing remotely sexual about
it. He wrapped her in his arms like he might a teddy bear, and
sighed contentedly when she answered by putting her arms around
him. He truly did love her, which made it all seem unrealistically
unfair.

“You saw me for a good chunk of the day. You
remember—first you gave the happy news of Bob moving on, then you
told us you weren’t planning to replace him, then you gave us a
bunch more work to do.”

“Oh yeah. That’s right. You are all doing so
well. Things are really coming along.”

“Sean, speaking of, I want us to go away.
Take a Friday off and spend the weekend away in San Diego. We’ll
surf, check out the zoo, and just hang out together. I need more of
your time. And our company needs less. Far less. You are working
way too hard. No one else in the company works this hard; the
whole
company—Tory included.”

Sean leaned back and looked at her with
bleary eyes. She got the feeling she just turned from a good guy to
a bad guy. She wanted something and he didn’t have anything left to
give.

“When?”

“Well, you have a choice between the next
four weekends. Any one of them.”

Sean closed his eyes and shook his head. “I
can’t, Krissy. I have so much to do.”

“This isn’t a race, Sean. You need to live
your life. Work to live, you know? Not live to work. You have
someone that wants to spend time with you. That loves you. Work
doesn’t love you. You are already kicking so much ass in so short a
time—you don’t need to over-do it, you know?”

“I know, Krista. I just hoped to get a little
farther toward my goal before I slacked off.”

“It isn’t
slacking off
Sean, it is
being normal.”

Sean sighed again. “Okay. Send me the dates
and I’ll pick one. Will that make you happy?”

“Not only will it make me happy, it will make
you
happy. Now, I’ll cook you something better to eat.”

“The critic making the cook something to
eat,” Sean said as he pushed away his half eaten frozen dinner.

“I have a feeling that anything I make will
taste better than what you have there.”

“True words.”

Sean fell asleep as Krista whipped up some
baked chicken and a steamer bag of rice. It wasn’t much, but when
she woke him up to eat it, he raved about how good it tasted. She
wondered when about the last time he ate a real meal.

That night, she pleasured him as he lay back
on the bed with his hands behind his head. She started with a
little tease, but when she saw his eyes start to droop, she sped
things up.

As soon as he finished, he had time to smile
in relaxation before he drifted off to sleep. Krista turned off all
the lights and curled up next to him. It was sad when your best
efforts were nothing more than the effect of a glass of wine. This
was no life they were living. This was a bookmark in the life they
wished they had.

It was three days until Sean and Krista left
for their trip. She was beyond excited. Sean had kept up his long
hours and was letting things slip. They went from having sex once
or twice daily to a few times a week, to a quick once a week. He
was skipping surfing and getting home in time to eat a quick meal
and fall asleep with his clothes on as soon as he hit the mattress.
Krista wanted some time alone with him without the pressing demands
of work.

From what Marcus said, Sean was well beyond
Tory’s wildest expectations, and still reaching for more. It was at
a steep price, though. It broke Krista’s heart to see Sean wasting
away. He wasn’t eating well, he wasn’t working out any more, he
wasn’t sleeping as much as he should, and his stress level was
through the roof. Nothing anyone said got through to him. Nothing
would make him slow down.

The final straw would be if he flaked on
Krista that weekend. If he did, she would cut him off. She would
walk away. She was dating a shell of a man and it wasn’t fair to
either of them.

As she always did, she made her way into the
kitchen. And as he had every other day, he was sitting at the small
round table in the corner, in the dark, eating a tub of heated-up
freezer food that looked terrible, and tasted worse. He was staring
straight ahead, not noticing anything around him. If he was a
robot, he would be in sleep mode. When he wasn’t at work, this was
his default setting, even when making love. The man was continually
shut off.

Krista sighed before she summoned up her
happy face. Marcus told her she had to always present a happy,
upbeat self around him these days, so he’d know what he was
missing. It seemed like Marcus was trying to mend the relationship
through his advice—he strangely wanted them to succeed as much as
she did. Every time she reported back that Sean didn’t miss her any
more with an upbeat self as with a mad, cranky self, Marcus sighed
and came up with another tactic. So far, no luck.

“Hey you,” Krista said, slinging her hand bag
over the opposite chair.

Sean glanced up and his brow furrowed. Lately
he didn’t smile all that much, not even when he hadn’t seen her all
day. He wasn’t even as popular among the girls at the office
anymore. They weren’t chasing him all that hard, or gossiping about
him hardly at all. And
that
was saying something.

“Hey baby,” he said, his brow still furrowed.
“Look, I’ll just come out with it. I won’t be able to go this
weekend after all.”

Krista’s heart fell out of her chest and
flopped along the floor. After it wedged itself under the kitchen
cabinets with all the moldy and forgotten food, she blinked a
couple times. She sat down slowly, a million words she wanted to
say on the tip of her tongue, and taking a deep breath so she
didn’t. Call her a fool, but she didn’t see this coming. Usually
Sean was a man of his word. And he promised her several times that
the trip was for sure. Several times, through all forms of
communication. Krista honest-to-god thought he would go. That
they’d talk and hang out, and they’d get back on the right
path.

Fool me once…

“Why?” She maintained a level voice. She
wouldn’t get mad yet. Maybe someone was dying.

“There is going to be a convention this
weekend and it would be beneficial for me to attend. There are a
lot of connections I would like to make.”

“Can’t you make those connections another
time?”

“I’d have to do it piecemeal. This way, they
are all in the one location.”

“Okay, but, you have plans this weekend.”

“I know, Krista, and I’m sorry. But this is
really important.”

“Sean,
I
am really important. Your
promises to
me
are really important. You always talk about
what a fool you are for letting me go. Well, here you are, letting
me go again.”

“Yes, but, you’re coming back.” He had his
patient voice on. He used that voice when dealing with people like
Bob. Basically, he thought she was being a small minded idiot for
not seeing things his way.

“Are you sure?”

Sean’s eyes narrowed. “What’s that supposed
to mean?”

“What do you think it means, Sean? This is
the very reason why I
still,
to this
day,
have
misgivings about us. You are never around. I barely see you
anymore. You are less than a shell of a person. This was exactly
what I said I didn’t want.”

“Krista,” Sean pinched the bridge of his
nose. His tolerance of their discussion was over before it began.
“I told you that I wanted to hit a goal before I relaxed. I haven’t
hit the goal yet. As soon as I do, I’ll calm down. If you would
just move in, it wouldn’t be such a big deal. You could see more of
me.”