Chapter 1
Natalie
There are a lot of ways a woman can embarrass herself at work.
She can spill coffee on an expense report right before an important meeting.
She can answer the phone with, “Richmond Corp, how can I help you fall in love?” because her brain snatches words from the romance novel she read over breakfast and throws them into business hours without permission.
She can spend twelve full seconds staring at her boss’s hands while he signs paperwork, then pretend she was admiring the pen.
Not that I’ve done all three.
This week.
Arriving early helps. The office is quiet before everyone else gets here. Still and soft around the edges in a way that letsme pretend I am the sort of woman who belongs behind the executive desk outside Jordan Richmond’s office.
I unlock the executive suite at six seventeen in the morning, flick on the lights, and breathe.
“Okay,” I whisper to myself. “You are a professional.”
The glass walls do not argue.
The polished dark floors do not laugh.
The giant framed photograph of Winterglow Heights Lodge at sunrise does not say,Natalie, you once tripped over a decorative fern because your boss rolled up his sleeves.
Very kind of it.
I set my tote behind my desk and smooth both hands down my yellow dress. It is soft, summery, and maybe a little too cheerful for the executive floor of Richmond Corp, which is all stone, wood, mountain views, and expensive silence. Everyone up here looks put together in a way I have never managed. Sleek hair. Tailored pants. Shoes that do not squeak when they panic-walk across marble.
Then there is me.
Curvy and soft, with honey-blonde hair that has opinions and baby-blue eyes that make people call me sweet even when I am thinking things that would get me escorted out of church.
And right now, most of those thoughts involve Jordan Richmond.
Unfortunately for my last remaining professional brain cell, my boss is thirty-eight, ex-military, dark-haired, green-silver-eyed, and built like a mountain learned to brood. He is also tattooed, which I know because last week I spilled coffee on his shirt, made a sound normally reserved for wildlife emergencies, and watched him remove the ruined button-down in his office like it was not the beginning of my personal destruction.
He keeps clothes pressed and ready in the tall cabinet beside his private bathroom, because Jordan Richmond seems like thekind of man whose backup plans have backup plans, and all of them probably have labeled folders.
I still haven’t recovered from the tattoos curling over his shoulder and down his arm, or from the fact that he looked more annoyed by my panic than by the coffee soaking into his ruined shirt.
Richmond Corp sounds enormous and terrifying, but it is really a small, powerful collection of resorts and lodge retreats scattered across Blissmont County. Lovestone Ridge. Swoon Peaks. Winterglow Heights. A few cabins tucked deeper into the mountains where rich people come to breathe pine air and complain about cell service.
He also does a lot of charity work, though not the shiny, gala-smile kind where men pose with big checks and pretend to care. His is quiet work that gives women housing, jobs, training, and somewhere safe to start over when their old lives have teeth.
I learned that during my first week, when Maribel from accounting found me staring at a staff photo near the break room. Half the women in it were smiling like they had been handed a second chance.
“He doesn’t talk about it,” she told me, lowering her voice like the walls might snitch. “But Mr. Richmond helps people. Especially women who have nowhere else to go.”
Then she patted my arm and added, “Don’t let the grunting scare you.”
Which is easy advice from a woman who does not sit six feet from his office door.
I turn on my computer and pull up his schedule.
At nine, he has a call with the Winterglow Heights manager.
