“And you act like everything’s a joke.”Her voice drops lower, more intimate despite the bite in her words.“Some things actually matter, Wilder.Some things are worth taking seriously.”
“Who says I don’t take things seriously?I take youveryseriously, Eve.”I throw the last part in there to mess with her but my gaze drops to her lips, yet suddenly I’m the one feeling dazed.They’re painted that bold red she always wears, and they’re parted slightly from her heated words.Even pissed off and lecturing me, she’s annoyingly gorgeous.The thought irritates me almost as much as it turns me on.Trust Eve Lopez to look like a fucking model even when she’s being a sanctimonious pain in the ass.I find myself wondering what those perfectly painted lips would look like wrapped around?—
I force my eyes back to hers, catching the exact moment she realizes where I was looking.Her jaw tightens with indignation.
“The mockups need work,” she says sharply, pulling back like I’ve burned her.“The color palette is too muted.”
I clear my throat, annoyed at myself for getting distracted by her mouth when she was in the middle of being insufferable.“Right.The mockups.”
“Steven, can you pull up the vendor contacts?”Eve calls out, all business again.“We need to start reaching out to craftsmen for the demonstration piece.”
“On it,” Steven replies from his desk.
I spend the next hour trying to focus on campaign details, but something keeps nagging at me.When I lean back in my chair, I spot more blonde strands on my sleeve.I brush them off casually, telling myself it’s probably just from running my hands through my hair.
“You coming to Danny’s?”Joshua asks as everyone starts gathering their things for lunch.“I’m buying lunch for everyone as belated penance for that psycho ex-girlfriend situation.”
“Yeah, in a minute,” I say, shuffling through some papers.
As the office empties out, I glance towards the security camera in the corner of the room.Making sure there’s nobody there, I check my phone for the video surveillance that Ethan forwarded me.Playing it on my phone, I notice that the desks the camera covers are Joshua and Eve’s.My desk is right next to Eve’s, but it is covered by the camera on the opposite end of the room.
The intruder hadn’t messed with them.He hadn’t been worried about being caught in them.Which probably means whatever he wanted was from Eve or Joshua.But what?Laptops are taken home at the end of the day, so he couldn’t have come to copy something from them.Whatever he was pocketing in the video had been small, like a flash drive.
Did he take something from one of the desks, then?
I can’t figure it out without asking questions.Eve will have no problem telling me, but Joshua will get suspicious.
As I return to my desk, I notice more strands on my notepad which is open to the first page where I was writing some vendor contact information.Then several on my coffee mug.What the hell?I run my fingers through my hair, checking for any loose spots, but everything feels normal.Maybe it’s just one of those days.People shed hair all the time, right?
The afternoon passes without incident, and I almost forget about the whole hair shedding thing until I’m putting on my coat to leave.There are multiple blonde strands on the shoulder that definitely weren’t there this morning.
“Weird,” I mutter, flicking them away.
* * *
The next morning,I find at least five strands on my keyboard before I even sit down.
“Are you molting?”Joshua asks, noticing me brushing them away.
“Very funny,” I reply, but confusion is starting to set in.What on earth?
Eve walks in wearing another pair of obnoxious earrings—this time silver hoops with tiny bells that actually jingle when she moves.The sound is like Christmas on crack.
“Those can’t be within regulation,” I say as she settles at her desk.
“There’s no regulation against earrings, Reynolds.”She shakes her head deliberately, making the bells chime.“Some of us believe in expressing our personality through fashion.”
“Some of us believe in not announcing our arrival like sleigh bells.”
“Right,” she says dryly, “because you prefer announcing your arrival by shedding hair everywhere like some kind of territorial animal marking its space.”She tilts her head, studying me with mock concern.
“You know, my uncle started shedding like that out of nowhere.”She looks thoughtful, her dark eyes scanning my hairline with clinical interest.“Come to think of it, he must have been about your age when it started.Thirty-two?Thirty-three?One day, he had a full head of hair.The next, he was leaving DNA evidence everywhere he went.He ended up going bald.He’s got a nice shiny head now and wears fedoras.”She tilts her head back, studying my head.“I suppose you would look okay in a fedora.”
“I’m not going bald,” I say through gritted teeth.
“Of course not,” she replies sweetly.“I’m sure it’s just stress.Or genetics.Or both.”
I just narrow my eyes at her, but I have bigger concerns at the moment.Sliding my chair over at her, I ignore the wary look she shoots me, and I ask in a low voice, “Is something missing from your desk?”
