AllFreeNovel
Share Us
By the time Brick showed up forty minutes later, I had a steaming cup of coffee ready for him, all the dates that were scribbled on Post-it notes and stuck to the outside of his planner penciled into his planner, and the scattered pages that had been left lying haphazardly around the room organized into three neat piles.
He slowed to a stop in the doorway, blinking at me in surprise. “Oh,” he said. “You’re here already.”
“Oh,” I answered back, taking in the cup in his hand that advertised the name brand brew he held. “You brought your own coffee.”
He glanced at the cup in his hand, shrugged, and stepped into the room, sipping as he came closer. “My last secretary made horrendous, teeth-grating shit, and I never learned how to work the coffee maker myself.”
“Well, that makes my job easier then.” I removed the steaming mugful I had sitting on his desk and brought it to my own lips for a sip, but he held up a hand.
“Now, wait a second here. I want to taste that. See which is better.”
I rolled my eyes because it was so typical of him to want to taste test everything first to make sure he had the best. When I handed the mug over to my stepbrother, I pressed my lips together, waiting eagerly for his verdict as he took his first sip of the coffee I’d made.
“Mmm.” He lifted his eyebrows and then lifted the cup I’d made. “We have a winner.” He handed the store-bought cup to me to drink from and then settled himself in his chair only to stop drinking when he realized his desktop was clear and tidy. “Whoa. What happened?”
“First of all, I also brought cookies.” I slid his bagful acr
oss the surface of his desk to him, and then while he drank and polished off the food, spreading crumbs everywhere, I explained what I’d done before he’d arrived.
When I was finished talking, I swiped all his cookie crumbs off the desk and into my palm before tossing them in the trash. Then I sent my brother an eager expectant look. “Well?”
I bit the inside of my lip, hoping I hadn’t overstepped my boundaries with anything, but all he said was, “Damn. I don’t know what my mother was smoking when she let you go, but I am never firing you.”
I laughed out my relief. “You won’t have to. I plan to advance before your true secretary even thinks about returning from her maternity leave.”
Brick merely sniffed. “We’ll see if I let you go.” But a telling grin wavered at the corners of his lips. He nodded respectfully. “I think you’ll do just fine here, sis.”
An hour later, I was standing at his four-drawer filing cabinet, trying to organize three weeks of papers while Brick chatted on his phone with… Sabella, I’m guessing. Or maybe it was her coworker, Adelyn. It was hard to tell from what he said, but it was definitely a woman on the other end of the line, and he was definitely interested in her.
When he’d driven me home on Saturday, I hadn’t asked him what his deal had been with Sabella at the party. We hadn’t talked at all, in fact—both of us lost in our own thoughts. I just thanked him for the ride and hopped out, hurrying up to my apartment, as soon as he’d stopped at the curb.
I hadn’t told him about catching Hayden riffling through their mother’s office drawers or running into Ezra in the courtyard, and I certainly didn’t tell him who I’d spent a portion of the night kissing. Glancing at him now, I hoped he never got it into his brain to actually wonder and ask where I’d disappeared to for nearly an hour. But he seemed suitably distracted on the phone by Sabella… Or Adelyn, so I figured I was safe on that front.
My own brain began to roam as I searched for a file under the Rs, my thoughts drifting toward Ezra land. I wondered what he was doing, what he thought about everything that had happened Saturday night, if he’d arrived yet to see the cookies and shoes I’d left him. He would know as soon as he saw them that I worked here, that was a given, but he’d have no idea where in the building to look for me. He’d probably just think—
Oh hell!
I looked up in time to glance out the glass windows of Brick’s office and see him—Ezra Nash, decked out in his suit and tie—striding determinedly down the hallway straight toward this very office. And he had one of his black high-heeled shoes clutched in his hand.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
“Oh my God,” I gasped, my eyes widening. How the hell had he known where to look for me?
Brick glanced up curiously from his phone conversation to meet my gaze across the room. I gaped at him a moment, too frozen to move, before my limbs went haywire and I suddenly dove unplanned behind the filing cabinet where there was a scant foot of space between it and the wall. Perfect for me to hide in.
“What in the…?” Brick started to ask as I crouched down out of sight, a split second before a knock rapped against the open doorframe of his office. “Uh, I’ll have to call you back, babe,” he said, and then I heard the squeak of his chair as he must’ve sat forward. “Hey. Come on in.”
“Carmichael.” Ezra’s voice was pure Nash: clipped and to the point with his usual CEO tone. It sounded nothing like his Ezra voice he used on me. And yet, I still shivered with the good kind of goose bumps when I heard it, because, yeah, it was him out there, only ten feet away.
Risking a peek from my hiding spot, I peered up at his back. His suit jacket was a dark charcoal gray and the tail barely covered his ass, so I couldn’t return the favor and check his butt out, though I had a feeling it was no doubt as perfect as the rest of him.
“What can I do for you?” Brick was asking him, scowling past Ezra to me in confusion before he slid his gaze to the single pump clutched in Ezra’s hand. “Nice shoe. Though, I recommend you go all out and get something bold—maybe leopard skinned—instead of that dull black if you’re going to start wearing high heels around the office. Make as big a statement as you can, you know.”
“I’m not—” Ezra cut himself off, sounding harassed before he heaved out a long sigh. Then, sounding calmer, he said, “I’m not going to start wearing high heels.”
I shimmied back into my crawl space because looking up at him was making my breathing come a little too fast and loud. I didn’t want him to hear me.
“Oh,” Brick answered with a voice that told me he was probably shrugging. “Well, then… Shoes are Hayden’s department. Not mine.”
