Page 5 of Ruled By Rivalry

Fuck. The room was spinning even before Rachel confirmed my panic. “There are two of you in the fashion department this year. In three months, one will be offered a full-time position at Adeline Ashwood. The other . . .” I could guess her next words. “Will not.”

I wasn’t sure if Rachel was still talking or if it was the voice in my head telling me how fucked I was over and over and over again. Elliot looked unsurprised, of course. He’d known who I was the second he’d laid eyes on me, assessing said competition and deeming himself completely safe despite the coffee I’d covered him in seconds later.

“Let me make this clear.” I could finally discern Rachel’s firm voice from the panicked one inside my head again. “Two of you, and only one open position. You will have to work together, but you’re not allies. At the end of the program, only one of you will be able to call themselves a junior employee at Adeline—”

There was no need to spell it out more clearly. We all got it.

“Excuse me. Sorry. I just—” I had no idea what I was going to say when my mouth opened. I glanced at Elliot. “Is that . . . fair?”

Rachel’s perfectly shaped brows furrowed around the same time I realized questioning my boss on the first day probably wasn’t smart. But it had to be said. He was the elephant in the room, managing to stay unaddressed so far. “Seeing as I’m just a recent grad and he’s . . .” I hesitated. “Well, he’s Elliot Ashwood. It doesn’t seem fair.”

“Kind of you to think so highly of me, Maeve.”

I wished I could blame the fact he knew my name on the fact I’d been addressed with it in his presence, but I was pretty sure he’d known it before a single drop of coffee had made it onto his shirt. Before he’d even walked into this building, Elliot knew who he was competing against, and he didn’t seem like a person to come unprepared.

My stomach sank further. There was nothing left of that polite smile I’d been trying to hold on to. Elliot Ashwood was entitlement personified.

Mom would roll in her grave if I told her a man had ruined my shot at our dream. A man who didn’t even deserve to be here.

Rachel’s sharp voice reminded me that no, I shouldn’t jump him at our place of work on the first day. If things kept going the way they were, I couldn’t guarantee anyone’s safety going forward, though. I already had two assault cases under my belt. “None of that will matter. You’re Maeve Peterson. He’s Elliot Ashwood.” Her narrowed eyes lingered on him, like the words were a friendly reminder of a monologue he’d already heard. “You’re just a recent grad, and he’s a guy who doesn’t have an ounce of experience in this industry.”

The smug smirk on his lips fell, but from the way he dressed and held himself, inexperience didn’t seem to matter. Luxury was his thing. Just like the hallways and offices, he exuded it, breathed and bled it.

I wasn’t sure four years of an undergraduate program could hold up to that.

Chapter 3

Six foot two. Born in New York. Leo. Son of Mariette Ashwood and Lucas Carrington. Attended NYU, graduated top of his class in Party Hosting and Underaged Drinking, apparently.

Wikipedia article, social media sweep, and a keyword search of a gossip site or two later, every single fact I’d found burned itself into a corner of my mind with his name on it. I knew about his past relationship with Allegra Amato, socialite and fellow nepo baby of two Hollywood starlets, and just how amicable their split had been. Pictures of him and his brothers at last year’s Ashwood Annual. Videos of him in South America, Europe, and around the US doing God knows what. Allegra had still made it into recent posts on his social media, smiling, rolling her eyes, holding a middle finger up at the camera.

His broad shoulders must’ve been a recent development. Same with the messy-but-not hair because, back then, it had still been neatly styled. A little too much so. I’d reached photos from over three years ago, so maybe my research wasn’t as surface-level as I had intended.

Unfortunately, it confirmed what I’d feared: His sense of fashion had always been alive and well. Elliot accessorized perfectly, wore the right colors for his skin tone, and somehow managed to never look washed out despite the blond hair. He utilized accent colors, matched his ties to Allegra’s dresses, and hadn’t touched a pair of skinny jeans in his life.

I had yet to find a single flaw in the guy. Apart from his unbearable arrogance.

“Maeve?”

Her voice drew me back into the present. Back into a chair, at a desk in Camila Rodriguez’s office, where I was meant to scan the onboarding sheet somewhere in a forgotten tab by now. I was here to work, not research my new . . . colleague.

Horrified, my gaze trailed away from Elliot’s naked upper body. Getting distracted on the most important day of my life wasn’t like me at all. By a man, of all things. I couldn’t afford to slip up when Camila sat on the other side of her desk, watching me. Waiting for me to acknowledge whatever words I hadn’t acknowledged because I hadn’t been listening.

Fuck.

She blinked at me, brows raised in expectation and confusion, and well . . . I couldn’t blame her. She’d probably never had an intern lose interest on their first day. While that’s not what was happening here, she couldn’t possibly know that.

There was no good way to explain, No, don’t worry, I was just online-stalking the guy sitting one office over. “I’m sorry. God, this is going terribly. I—” My face disappeared in my hands. “It doesn’t matter,” I muffled. “What did you say?”

For the remainder of my two months, thirty days, and four hours at Adeline Ashwood, I was Camila Rodriguez’s plaything—at her mercy for coffee runs, boring administrative tasks, and whatever else she needed at every moment of every day we were together. Fucking things up with her this early on wasn’t in my best interest, not just because she was my immediate boss, but because I’d admired her since I’d been old enough to admire.

The way she played with shapes made it seem like every single one of her designs was its own entity, alive and breathing. It bordered on magic.

Turns out, she was also the sweetest woman alive. Instead of repeating herself, Camila lifted the glasses from the tip of her nose to the top of her head, dropped the pencil between her teeth, and abandoned the sketch she’d been leaning over.

It didn’t make me feel better about my lack of attention.

“It’s a lot to take in, I get that,” she said. “When I started twenty years ago, as an intern, by the way”—a wink—“I stepped off that plane from Barcelona nervous. Got to the studio nervous. Didn’t eat or sleep because I didn’t know what to do with all my nerves. For three months, I was an anxious mess—I’m still not sure how this thing worked out so well after that.”