Dangerous Play

20 » better late than never

Finn ran a hand through his hair and groaned in frustration. He had been staring at this damn spreadsheet for so long that the numbers were beginning to blur on the screen. And yet he still couldn't figure out how to make Sayed Atlantic's proposed acquisition fit logistically with the resources the company had allocated to the merger.

"Having fun?" Eden slid into the seat beside him, and he caught a whiff of her floral perfume. He couldn't quite tell what it was—lily? frangipani?—but then he realized that she was still waiting for an answer.

"Yeah, tons," he said. She raised an eyebrow at his unenthusiastic tone.

"What are you working on, anyway?"

Finn turned his laptop screen around to show her. Sayed Atlantic wanted to absorb Capstone Energy and create a new, clean-energy division of the company. Part of the project he'd taken on was to figure out the logistics of the merger, but he couldn't figure out how to make the different puzzle pieces of each company fit together.

He thought coming into work early would help, or at least give him a few Seth-free minutes, but all it had done was make him more frustrated.

The laptop squeaked across the glass table as Eden pulled it closer to her. Finn blinked. "Okay, sure, you can commandeer my laptop."

She waved him off and narrowed her eyes at the screen. Her fingers flew across the keys, typing furiously.

Finn frowned in confusion. A few minutes later, she spun the device back around to face him. "Here, take a look."

He glanced over the edits she'd made. What had taken him hours of head-scratching and pencil-chewing only took Eden a fraction of that time. And she'd made more progress just now than he would have over the next week.

"You know, for someone who claims to hate this internship, you really have a knack for this kind of thing," Finn remarked casually.

Eden tensed. Finn could practically feel her closing off, the careful camaraderie they'd established vanishing right in front of him. Then she sighed. "I don't."

"Uh, you just figured out the problem I've been working on for days now in like, 2 minutes. I'd say you're pretty good."

She rolled her eyes. "No, genius, I was talking about the internship."

Finn blinked. "You don't hate working here?" Eden always acted like she would rather walk barefoot across a path of Legos than be at Sayed Atlantic on any given day. Also, if her attitude here was fake, then he couldn't help but wonder how much of her initial animosity toward him was just as much an act.

"Can I be honest with you?" Eden's golden gaze drilled into his green eyes, pinning him with their intensity. She leaned in conspiratorially. Finn noticed that there was a darker ring around the outer edges of her irises, where the tawny color faded into a near-black.

Before he could respond, the door to the office swung open. Seth strode in like he owned the room—or, more accurately, like his father owned the room, which could become a reality if the SA/Capstone Energy merger was successful. He set his things down and pulled out a chair opposite Eden and Finn.

Finn pulled back from Eden, but Seth didn't seem to notice. One glance at Eden told him that she had reverted back to her usual prickly self. He knew that whatever she had been about to tell him would have to wait... if she was even willing to continue this conversation later.

"Glad to see you're putting in extra work," Seth remarked. "Though, an extra hour or so isn't going to do much against years of experience."

Finn didn't bother to respond to the obvious taunt. He was here to do his job, not engage in a verbal smackdown with someone who clearly wanted him to mess up and get fired. Beside him, Eden crossed her arms.