For longer than she’d been Dyer’s Executive Assistant Fletcher, she’d been Kent Redburn’s Girlfriend Fletcher. Always defined by someone else. She thought she’d feel freer, lighter, but instead she felt like a child’s balloon caught in the rafters of a big-box store.
The bell above the door severed her thoughts as they entered Subtext.
Inside, a crackling fire staved off the October chill. Instead of walls, there were only bookshelves, packed with hand-me-down stories inked inside broken spines. Jazz filtered through the malty air, and for a moment, she assumed it was coming from someone’s carefully curated Spotify playlist, but when she peered through an archway toward the back, there was a stage with a quartet playing.
It was sophisticated. Nuanced. Welcoming.
Exactly the last place she expected to see Waylon Cartwright.
“No way,” she said, skidding to a halt.
“No way, what?”
Waylon was too busy flirting with a brunette at the bar to notice Fletcher gawking in the doorway. She’d come out toforgetabout him. Not stare at him while drowning her sorrows in bottom-shelf bourbon.
“Can we go?” she asked.
“Why?” Ford asked, oblivious. He either hadn’t noticed the giant, egotistical elephant in the room or was choosing not to. “This place is amazing.”
Precisely. Waylon was supposed to work at a grungy hole-in-the-wall overrun with rodents and roaches. Not the kind of place with craft cocktails and mood lighting.
Then, of course, Waylon glanced toward the door. His eyes slid away and then snapped right back, registering. His expression situated somewhere between grin and grimace. Like he was both irritated and intrigued at her appearance.
It took all her effort not to snarl in his general direction. Still, the thought of him watching her chicken out of a confrontation had Fletcher saying, “One drink.”
Ford practically cheered. “I’ll find us a table. Grab me another martini, extra olives?”
“How you eat those things, I’ll never understand.” The very thought made her queasy.
Her nuisance of a best friend batted his long lashes. “Pour moi?”
Kent’s gruff tenor echoed through her mind, saying something about how when she wasn’t working, Fletcher still put other people first. She shook it away. All her energy would be needed to avoid throwing up on Waylon when ordering their drinks. Fletcher sucked down a steadying breath and waded through the sea of tables toward the bar.
As soon as she approached, Waylon spun to meet her, like she’d snagged a trip wire. He’d traded this afternoon’s leather jacket for a pressed button-down, the sleeves rolled up his forearms, but Waylon still wore the same slanted smile, the same smug confidence afforded to heirs apparent.
“Two Fletcher sightings in one day? To what god of misery do I owe the displeasure?”
All she did was scoot onto a barstool, but Fletcher’s heart rioted like she was running for her life. “If I didn’t know better, I’d think you were following me.”
“Because I’m here? Atmybar.” His eyes were crystal blue beneath the low light. Too blue for his own good.
“Right.”
Waylon sugared a glass rim, measured cognac, and slid a sidecar to the patron sitting next to Fletcher. “Did you need something?”
Wasting her breath talking to Waylon Cartwright was on the short list of things Fletcher had no desire to do, but it was a necessary evil. It had been three years since Waylon acknowledged the company—or Dyer—existed. Inviting him to Lydell made absolutely no sense, and Fletcher needed to know why.
Straightening her shoulders, she asked, “Have a nice chat with your dad this afternoon?”
“So, that’s why you’re still in your little receptionist outfit at”—he tossed a bottle of Tito’s above his head and checked the silver-plated watch on his wrist while it spun—“nine forty-three p.m. You’re here on business.”
“First of all, I’m not a receptionist. And secondly, these are regular-people clothes.”
“Regular people who are receptionists.” A smirk crept onto his lips. Like he enjoyed this. Riling her up. His hands moved at light speed, swinging glass bottles with the same care he afforded to human emotions. (Which was to say: none.)
Fletcher simmered. “Not the point.”
With a nudge, he sent a vodka cranberry sailing down the bar. “And thirdly?”
