Before Will, this job would have rolled off my back. Now it feels like a cruel joke. My old agency, the one that paired me with Will’s company, had the good jobs. That’s why I wanted to work for them in the first place. They had legit temporary positions, the kind that happen when a permanent employee has to take a leave of absence or quits without notice. Not the kind of job that’s only available so the boss can leer and poke and prod at a new random woman.
The old agency won’t send me out. I started calling as soon as Will broke up with me. Until he sold Summit, I mean. We never really broke up, because he was never my boyfriend.
He was more.
“Shut up,” I murmur to that little voice.
The new agency was desperate enough to hire me over the weekend, which was good, because I couldn’t spend another minute thinking about him. I keep trying with the old agency, but all they’ll offer is sick pay. It’s not part of the benefits package. I know where the money is really from.
It’s a payoff from Will, to keep me away from him.
A man jostles me on my way off the subway. He doesn’t bother to apologize. Doesn’t even see me.
I don’t want Will’s money. I don’t want his hush money. What I want right now is to go into his old office at Summit, close the door, and climb into his lap. And the worst part? I don’t even want sex. Not right away. What I really want is for him to hold me. How sad is that?
I know it was wrong. I know there were some tangled ethics going on. An executive and a temp—practically a cliché. But he didn’t feel like a cliché to me. He felt like a secret stretch of sand by the ocean. Beautiful and rocky and wild. The kind of place you have to work for.
I would have worked for him, both as his secretary and as…
Whatever we might have been, if he hadn’t walked away.
I would have worked for it. I don’t want his money for nothing. That’s my dad. He’s the con artist and the swindler. It’ll never be me.
After the train, I catch the bus. It’s packed tighter than the subway. Cool breezes filter through the summery air that hangs over the city, but none of it reaches us inside.
The bus rattles to a stop, and I ignore the hollow feeling in my gut.
There’s that green Ford again.
I will accept the newly refurbished apartment on behalf of my siblings, Mia and Ben. I will accept that Will paid off my dad’s debt for them, too. I won’t take his money, and I won’t pretend I can’t see the green Ford.
“Why didn’t you just talk to me?” It’s a relief to ask out loud when the question has been banging around in my head all day, even though he’s not here to answer.
At the hot dog stand by the bus stop, I buy a chili cheese dog and a Coke. The can feels frosty, almost biting, in my palm. It’s not for me. I have something in the slow cooker for dinner.
This is for the guy in the green Ford.
It almost fits in. The tiny parking lot across from the apartment complex is always overflowing, and so is the street parking. A ’98 Ford with a ton of dents isn’t out of character.
It’s the tires that give it away. Nobody has tread that deep in this part of town.
This particular car, with its too-new tires, has been here every night. It’s here when I get home from work, and it’s still here in the morning when the twins leave for school. It’s here all weekend. Once last week I had to run back to bring field trip money for Mia and Ben, and it was gone. That’s the only time.
I knock on the window with my knuckles and hold up the chili cheese dog and Coke.
There’s a brief pause.
Then the window rolls down, revealing a man who has ex-military written all over him. Broad. Muscular. Black T-shirt. To top it off, he’s got dark eyes and a carved face. He is objectively hot.
Not Will.
No. And it’ll never be Will.
I hold out the hot dog and the Coke.
He looks, but doesn’t touch. It’s probably against his orders to accept food from me. It would be tacit acknowledgment that he’s spying on me on behalf of one Will Leblanc.
Also, he’s hungry. He has to be. Men like this are always hungry. My older brother Sean is black ops, and he’s always hungry, too. This man’s job probably doesn’t involve as much adrenaline as Sean’s, but he is going to be sitting here all night making sure nothing untoward happens in the apartment complex.
At least not near Building C.
Why? I want to ask. Why hire you to be here when he doesn’t want anything to do with me? Is this some grown-man version of pulling my hair on the playground, or is he doing this out of some misguided sense of obligation?
“Take it,” I say instead.
My personal security guard-slash-spy blinks. One big hand wraps around the can of Coke, and he accepts the chili cheese dog into his other palm.
“Thanks.”
“You’re welcome.”
He rolls up the window.
I can feel him watching while I cross the street and head for Building C.
I’m going home to the twins, back from school. To dinner in the slow cooker.
To everything except for Will Leblanc.
2
WILL
The new offices are in the Hughes Industries headquarters.
Hughes has fuckloads of properties all over Manhattan and probably all over the world, but this one’s home court. A shining skyscraper on some of the most expensive real estate in existence. It’s a monument to all the money and power the family has been able to gather over the years.
And now it’s my office, too.
It’s not what I expected when I signed Summit over to them.
New office space in a building owned by Hughes? Yes. That would make sense. Why pay rent when you own the damn thing? Headquarters is a different story.
A week settling in, and I don’t feel settled. It’s been the longest week of my life. I shift the Aeron chair underneath me and click through emails.
It’s the desk. Or maybe the office itself. It’s three times the size of my old one, which was fine, thank you. I made plenty of money at the old place. It’s not comfortable here.
It’s too nice.
Reminds me of the first apartment we lived in after Dad went to jail. It wasn’t luxury, like Emerson’s beach house or my place now, but it was a palace compared to the house we left.
This office is closer to a goddamn mansion than it is to that perfectly nice apartment.
It’s a sign that Hughes is taking the acquisition seriously, which should be a good sign. That’s what Christa says, anyway. Christa Hong is my former CFO. Now she’s a director, with a pay raise and a hefty bonus. Along with her payout from her stake in the company. She doesn’t mind the move at all. It’s not just the money, either. She likes the gorgeous gym and the lap pool. She likes the ice cream sundae bar in the lobby and the chair massages and all the corporate amenities that I couldn’t care less about.
Voices pick up outside my empty anteroom.
Bristol’s almost here.
My heart is a fool. It beats faster, like she’s going to breeze through the door with her citrus scent and her big green eyes and everything I need.
Everything I wanted. I don’t need her. She doesn’t need me. In fact, she needs to stay as far away as possible. I didn’t leave her with nothing. I paid off her father’s debts and made sure her apartment isn’t a piece of shit and then I removed the rest of the danger.