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Sipping her wine, Caroline pondered the situation. It was Friday night, and she was sitting in a multimillion-dollar loft, having pizza and watching a movie with the most gorgeous man in the western hemisphere.
She felt the corner of her mouth twitch as her thoughts shifted to Mel and Mark and the dinner disaster that she’d escaped.
This was so much better.
There were a few minutes of silence while he consumed his second piece of pizza and she nibbled on hers. He started going for a third piece and stopped, glancing in her direction, his look positively sheepish. He must have been an adorable kid.
“You probably think I’m the biggest pig on the planet.”
“I think you’re hungry. Did you eat today?”
“I had a sandwich at my desk around noon. I’ve been working on this project with my father and it’s a train wreck waiting to happen.”
“What kind of project?”
“It’s a development project. We’re new in real estate and I’m not feeling right about this. I understand there’s always risk when you develop a site, but this one is problem after problem.”
Caroline didn’t hesitate. This was totally her thing, even with a glass of wine in her, she could make sure he wasn’t getting bad advice from anyone. “Anything I can help you with?”
“Do you know anything about site assessments?”
She grinned and nodded. “I write them all the time. Need help with one?” His eyes opened wide as relief washed over his face. “It was done recently, but I’d relax a little if someone I trusted went over it.”
He trusted her? That was something. She didn’t think he knew anything about her.
“What does your father think?” Will Campbell was a horse’s ass, and completely amoral, but Josh was part of the family firm, so his father’s opinion mattered. Quite frankly, Caroline couldn’t understand why Josh was still associating with him, but if she’d learned anything about Josh over the past hour, it was that he was full of surprises and he probably had his reasons.
“My father thinks this project is all sunshine and rainbows. Which is why I’m worried. I don’t trust him. At all.”
He poured himself another glass of wine and topped hers off. She reminded herself not to drink too much because she was so tired she’d probably fall asleep.
“I’ll look at it for you.” She’d know in the first two minutes if the site was fit for development, and she couldn’t understand why his consultant hadn’t discussed this with him. The technical part of the report should come with some kind of narrative explaining the findings.
“I appreciate it.” He finally took a bite of his third slice. “So, you like your job?”
“Nope.” She took a healthy swallow of her wine. “I hate it. Well, I hate the firm I’m with, but I’m good at it, and it pays the bills.”
He sat back, resting his ankle on his knee. “If you hate it why are you doing it?”
Such an easy question for a person who’d always had choices.
“Money. It’s a stable profession, and I’m well paid. I was a math and science whiz; the courses were hard, but I didn’t have any trouble maintaining a 4.0.” She refilled her glass, caution be damned. “I had a big job offer before graduation and my mother was thrilled. I got a master’s and passed my licensing exam last year, so I’m in a really good place.”
“So what’s the problem?”
“Don’t get me wrong; I respect the work. It’s important, but it’s hard to work up any enthusiasm for it. Especially now. Like I said, I don’t love my firm.”
Josh polished off his last slice and broke into the garlic knots. She watched, amazed at the amount of food he could pack away. He ate like a seventeen-year-old boy, but damn he was so cute. Caroline fell for Josh when he was a teenager and seeing this glimpse of him made her yearn for the perfect, tragic angst she felt when she was twelve.
He was her everything then. The last thing she thought of before she went to sleep and the first thing she thought of when she woke up. She felt like she dreamed about him every night.
Sometimes she still did.
“So what do you want to do?”
Caroline stared into her now-empty wine glass. She had to stop drinking so fast. Her mind was a little floaty because two drinks was her strict limit and she’d finished her third in as many hours. Did she want to tell him about her true love? The thing that kept her up late at night, that made her wish she could just up and quit her job?
“I want to write.” Well, there it was.
