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CHAPTER1
Brooke
Ishouldn’t have checked my social media this morning, especially since I needed to be in the right headspace for my first day at my new job.
But I did, so now I had to live with the consequences of seeing my ex-boyfriend, Dane, engaged to someone else. Someone who was visibly pregnant. After I broke up with said ex-boyfriend not that long ago. Like, maybe the conception of said baby happened when I was still with him.
This was like the worst cup of coffee in the world. I was awake and alert, yeah, but drinking what tasted like gasoline first thing in the morning wasn’t worth the energy boost.
I threw open my closet, which only had my professional clothes hanging up. Everything else was still in boxes. I’d only moved here last week for this job after licking my wounds while staying with my cousin Cody in New York City. I’d wanted to come back to Vegas, where I’d been an executive assistant before, but now I was doubting my decision. The city was big when you took in all the tourists, but what if I ran into him? And his fiancée and baby?
I swallowed the lump in my throat. I was so over Dane. Seriously, what did I even see in him? But the pain was still there. It wasn’t even like we had a huge fight or a major conflict. He just “fell out of love with me as a person,” which was the worst possible thing to say.
So it wasn’t him; it was me. As usual.
“Ugh, whatever,” I mumbled to myself, plucking out a pencil skirt and button-down blouse.
I pulled on my outfit and fell into autopilot, putting on tasteful makeup and putting my dark brown hair into a chignon. Or at least I attempted it, because my hair wasn’t behaving. Was it the dry air that was making my hair go absolutely insane, or was it just this shitty morning? And my mascara had gone missing, on top of all of it.
I grabbed a can of iced coffee on my way out and got into my car. My heart nearly stopped as the engine turned over one too many times for my liking before my car came to life. I’d left it parked at a friend’s house while I was in New York, and my friend hadn’t driven it all that much. But at least it was still running.
My commute was far from ideal, but turning down the rent at this place would have been an idiotic move. Plus, my friend Jamie was my roommate, and I needed all the friends I could get right now. My ex had drained me dry by asking me for money for his business, and a lot of our friends had gone with him in the breakup.
I took a deep breath and let it out as I pulled out of our apartment’s parking lot. I was back on my feet again. My entire life wasn’t going to flip back into place overnight.
I fought my way through traffic just to get to the highway, my stomach churning from a mix of coffee on an empty stomach and no breakfast. I’d been an executive assistant for most of my career, so I wasn’t that worried about the actual work. But I was worried about my bosses. I’d gotten the job from an employment agency, so I hadn’t actually met them before. All I knew was that there were three of them, and they were billionaires.
“Comeon,” I said to myself as people drove the stupid speed limit in the left lane. I didn’t want to be late for the first day.
But I was starting to believe that I’d woken up with a curse because I nearly got into a wreck when some asshole went from seventy miles per hour to twenty in the middle of traffic, then got stuck in evenmorestandstill traffic near the strip. My stomach was growling so loudly that I had to press my hand to it to somehow quell the ache.
I called Jamie, who saved my life by putting in a pickup order at the smoothie bar next to the casino’s offices. My car’s wheels squealed when I pulled into the employee lot, and I parked in the first spot I saw. I cursed myself for choosing to wear heels on my first day and hobbled to the smoothie bar. My smoothie was ready to go, thank goodness, and I rushed to the elevators.
I was three minutes late. Not a huge deal, but I still didn’t like it. I booked it off the elevator and down the hall to the offices. Once I got inside, I rounded the corner and smacked directly into someone. Smoothie first.
On the upside, the smoothie mostly avoided all of me, aside from my shoes. On the downside, the wall of muscle I ran into was now covered in banana berry smoothie.
“Oh, I’m so sorry,” I blurted, taking a step back.
I look at the man, starting with his shoes, which were beautiful brown leather. The bottom of his well-tailored pants was soaked, too. They showed off his muscular thighs just as well as his tailored—but now ruined—shirt showed off his flat abs and broad shoulders. He was way too delicious.
“Brooke?”
I finally locked eyes with the man I’d just wrecked, and the jolt of recognition nearly knocked me flat.
“Lucas?”
I hadn’t seen Lucas Thomas since high school, and obviously, the years had been kind to him. His thick black hair was styled away from his face, making his ocean blue eyes seem to pop. His jawline was clean-shaven, which only emphasized how defined it was. Getting past puberty had made his cheekbones chiseled, too, like he’d been carved by a master sculptor.
Honestly, he’d already started from an amazing place back in high school—I’d had a crush on him from afar. Way afar, since I was definitely not popular back then. It wasn’t just that I was the scholarship girl at a fancy prep school—I was also the awkward, nerdy girl who probably would have been on the fringes of the social scene even if I’d come from money.
But Lucas always seemed so golden, one of the few guys who was both popular and actually nice. He was homecoming king, but he also stood up for kids who got bullied.
I wasn’t surprised at all when I saw him in business headlines for becoming a billionaire before he turned thirty. Everyone knew he’d make it to the top with his charisma and intelligence.
And now he was here, looking absurdly hot. Even covered in my smoothie.
“Yeah, it’s Lucas.” He looked down at himself.
