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I laugh as she leans down and hugs me.
“Thanks, Maddy.”
“Anytime.”
Chloe glances at the literary roundup I’m working on. She’s a features writer. And at two years my senior, her extra experience gets her the juicy stuff like politics, which isn’t my thing. But I’m still jealous that she gets to write full length feature pieces. It’s what I’m working toward. I love the literary column I have control over, where I get to share all the latest book releases. But I want more. I want to interview authors and publishers, and the teams behind the audiobooks that I love listening to. I want to delve deeper into the industry. See behind the scenes. But so far, our editor, Eve, hasn’t given me any more online space, despite lobbying for it at every team meeting.
But I’m not giving up.
“Um, breaking news entering at two o’clock.”
I turn to see what’s gotten Chloe’s expression resembling a dog that’s been thrown a prime rib-eye steak.
“Ugh. You have got to be kidding me!” I drop my head into my hands, raking my fingers back through my hair before raising my eyes and plastering a fake smile onto my face.
“You all right, Mads? Your face looks weird.”
I abandon my forced smile for the glare that comes naturally in his company.
I flick my gaze up and down his immaculate, overpriced, designer suit. “And you look one hundred percent buffoon, as per usual.”
Chloe’s quiet, watching our exchange. This happens whenever Drew’s best friend appears.Logan Rich.Ugh. Even his name gives me the ick. But women get awestruck and silent as is the situation with Chloe right now when he’s around. Or they get all flirty and start swishing their hair around.
Logan smirks, causing two dimples to pop either side of his cosmetically perfect smile. No braces for him as a teen. Logan bypassed teenage awkwardness that every normal person endures. He went straight from cute kid that grandmas would coo over to apparently a devastatingly handsome man, judging by the way even the sanest of women react in his company.
It baffles me. This is the guy who told all the boys in my class at school I had crabs.
I didn’t get asked out for two years… and I had to go to the prom without a date.
He thought it was funny.
I didn’t. I still don’t.
His eyes cast over the piles of wrapped packages on my desk, and I shift in my seat so he can’t read the labels.
He smirks as I narrow my eyes at him. “You checking me out, Mads?”
“As if,” I scoff. “I’m swallowing back my lunch that’s threatening to reappear. And what the hell is with the mud-colored tie?” I study the deep brown fabric against his crisp white shirt. It’s nice. Like the spine of a classic book. But I’d rather eat my own tongue than admit as much to Logan.
He glances down at it, and his green eyes glow with mischief as he brings them back up to meet mine. “I don’t mind a bit of dirt, Mads. Maybe you should try it sometime. Live a little.”
I snort. I’m not falling for it. He does this. Makes little jabs about the fact that I’m not out every night of the week living this extravagant, glamorous lifestyle like him. He thinks I’m boring. But I couldn’t care less.
He’s Drew’s friend, not mine. And since my brother finds it amusing that I hate Logan so much, and he just shakes his head when I ask him why he’s friends with him, I guess I’m stuck with him being around.
“Hang on. Why are you here?” The only other time Logan’s ever been to my workplace is to drop something off from Drew for me. “Is Drew okay? Is he—?”
Drew’s working on some skyscraper project with his business partner, Tanner Grayson, in San Francisco. Together, they run a multi-billion-pound design and building company that has its head office in London. The two are due to land home today. Drew called me before they took off, but I haven’t heard from him since.
“He’s fine. I’m here for a meeting.”
“Oh, thank god.”
I let out the breath I’m holding. Drew might be five years older than me, but we’ve always been close. He's a good guy, despite getting in with a bad crowd and ending up in a juvenile detention center for six months when he was sixteen.
Logan was in that stolen car, joyriding too. But he got off with a slap on the wrist and community service. The benefits of Daddy’s money.
Those were the loneliest months of my life. A prime example of Logan being an asshole. He followed me home from school every day like a creeper. It was enough to scare off the three boys in my class who lived in my road, who I could have befriended and walked with.
