Fletcher deserved a spot. She’d earned it.
Maybe she should have waited before peeking, but she’d done so much waiting already. Skimming through the paperwork, she searched for her name among the candidates.
Then, she searched again.
A third time.
The list was only fourteen people long, so she would have seen her name.Shouldhave seen her name. But there was no sign of Fletcher Spence.
She didn’t make the cut.
“Sir, I—” But Fletcher’s voice cracked, so she swallowed the words like the Zoloft she’d started taking since she accepted this position.
Even if it offered her negligibly more than a living wage, being Dyer’s assistant had been her tether to New York City, the reason she’d managed not to be dragged back to Nebraska by only-daughter guilt and Kent’s peer pressure. It was her foot in the door, a necessary stepping stone to her dream job.
She’d given it everything she had for years.
And in her place were two horrifying words:
Waylon Cartwright.
2
“He doesn’t evenworkhere,” Fletcher was whining as she and Ford took the elevator downstairs that evening. Ordinarily, she had a strict no-shit-talking-at-work policy, but today was the exception. What did she have to lose?
“When have the rules ever mattered to people like him?” Ford asked. “He’s hot, he’s rich, he gets everything handed to him. I’m surprised he even showed his face here. I haven’t seen him around the office since that night—”
“That we swore to never speak of?”
“—where absolutely nothing noteworthy occurred in a coat closet and no one nearly lost their job,” Ford finished tightly.
“Exactly.” Fletcher shook the memory out of her stiff shoulders as the elevatordinged, doors opening. She’d rather fling herself off the Empire State Building than relive a single second from that night. Especially within earshot of her colleagues. “Anyway, aren’t you at least a little bit bummed I’m not going to mail one of these beautifully thick cardstock envelopes to your apartment?”
Ford laughed. “You sending me one of those invitations would be the worst thing that ever happened to me.”
“Worse than that time you drank a triple espresso before the production meeting?”
A pause. “Second-worst thing,” he amended. “Point is, my PTO is already approved. My flights are booked. Slater from IT could accidentally delete InDesign off all our computers, and my Slack notifications would stay snoozed.”
Fletcher groaned as they wove around the reception desk. “Do you have to go?”
Ford pivoted hard on the heels of his boots. Two firm palms planted on Fletcher’s shoulders, and she tried not to wince, thinking of the creases. “I would sooner gouge out my eyes than spend a single extra second staring at those spreads. I cannot set my out-of-office autoresponder fast enough. Seychelles is calling, and I must answer.”
“Your vacation doesn’t start until halfway through the retreat. And Lydell is only a few miles away. If you’d gotten invited, you could still catch the tail end of your trip. Get a promotionanddrink piña coladas off of someone’s stomach.”
Ford shook his head. “Nope. It’s called boundaries. Say it with me.Bound-a-ries.”
The thought of a week alone in the office should have thrilled Fletcher. Except she knew Dyer was going to call asking questions at odd hours. She had never touched her PTO because even if she wanted to take a day off, she couldn’t. Dyer rang when he needed something—no matter what the calendar said.
“Taking some time off isn’t a crime punishable by death, you know?” Had she said that out loud, or had Ford developed rapid-onset telepathic powers? “You don’t have to kill yourself for this job.Shouldn’t, even.”
Fletcher mustered a small smile. “I’ve got to get home.”
Ford caught up to her in a few quick strides. “Hey, I’m going out tonight, and you should join me.”
“It’s a Tuesday.”
Ford’s eyebrows wagged. “And?”
