Page 31 of Wicked Fortune

I hold my breath as he stays silent, listening.

“Fine,” he says after a significant pause. “Tell Joel to get his ass up here tomorrow. And, yes, I know he’s new here, but that’s not an excuse for unilaterally deciding that budgetary restrictions don’t apply to him. He can call Lila in the morning and she’ll squeeze him in. No excuses.”

He ends the call abruptly, then turns around, his attention going right to me.

I freeze, only relaxing when a flicker of amusement crosses his face. “Damn windows are like mirrors,” he says. “And now you’re wondering if that was one of my intentional design choices or just a happy coincidence.”

“You don’t seem to be a man who lives by coincidence, Mr. Holt.”

“If there are no guests in the office, then ‘Matthew’ is fine,” he says, motioning for me to enter.

“Sure, um, Matthew,” I say, surprised by how much I like the feel of his name on my tongue.

His desk is littered with dozens of file folders labeled with films and shows in various stages of development or production. But what really catches my attention are the booklets of word games—everything from Wordle to crosswords to Jumble. Bree and Jenny and I were anagram fiends back in high school, and this tiny little connection to Matthew leaves a surprisingly warm feeling in my belly.

I try to act casual as I stack and shuffle, as if tidying is the reason he’d beckoned for me. It wasn’t, of course. But I’m not sure if I’m about to be chastised for eavesdropping or if he’s finally going to acknowledge what I’m wearing under my suit.

The thought of the first rattles me, but the second rattles me even more. I’ve been waiting all day, and if his goal was to have me spend the day half-lost in sensual anticipation, he has very much achieved that objective.

“Trouble with the press?” I ask, my voice carefully neutral. “I didn’t mean to eavesdrop, but I heard you mention PR.”

He waves it off. “There’s always trouble, Ms. Parker. It’s the way of the world.” He gives me a smile that feels half genuine, half predatory. “The business world, at any rate.”

He stands for a moment, watching me work. There’s something oddly intimate about having his attention like that, and it’s making me more than a little fidgety. I’m about to pretend that my phone’s buzzed in my pocket when I notice the yellow pad on the corner of his desk blotter. His handwriting covers it, mostly scribbled words and numbers. But in the bottom right, I see the letters JG. They’ve been overwritten with multiple pens, and circled, too. As if JG were something weighing on his mind.

My stomach goes tight, and I force myself to continue stacking papers, putting several other pads on top of that one.

If he’s noticed my reaction he doesn’t show it. On the contrary, he waves a hand to indicate the couch. “Come sit and tell me about your first day.”

I comply, telling myself that JG could mean anything. He was talking on the phone with someone named Joel, after all. For all I know, Joel’s last name is Gotlieb.

It’s a valid point, and I cram it through my thick, suspicious head as I take a seat.

“Drink?” he asks, so casually, I have to assume the note meant nothing. Otherwise, wouldn’t he have told me to ignore the desk in the first place?

“I’d love a drink,” I say, which right then is so very true. I look around for a bar, and since I don’t see one, I expect him to pull a bottle of bourbon from a drawer in his desk.

Instead, he moves across the room and opens the top hemisphere of an antique globe to reveal a small bar.

I clap my hand over my mouth to muffle my little squeak of surprise and delight.

He turns to me, brows raised in question.

“The bar,” I explain. “I’ve wanted one of those since I was a kid and my parents showed me⁠—”

“Dr. No,” we say in unison, then laugh.

He holds up a bottle of Glenfiddich 50-Year-Old, a seriously impressive bottle, but I just shrug. “What? No vodka martini, shaken not stirred?”

“I can do that if you’d rather,” he says, calling my bluff.

“No, no. I give up. I want the Glenfiddich.”

“I don’t know. We shared a Bond moment. Maybe⁠—”

“Give me the damn whisky,” I say, making him laugh.

“Neat?”