I laid the drawing flat on top of many other drawings as he walked over.
He wasted no time. His long fingers traced the shape of the road, and his gaze skittered across the design. His dark brows pulled close, a line of thought separating them. Without looking, he reached out for his red pen. My stomach twisted in anticipation. That awful color had torn through my work multiple times over the last few days.
“This needs to be wider.” He scribbled, circled, and scratched through things that had taken me all day. “This isn’t the correct font. Check our standards.”
How much wider? What font?
But he never paused long enough for me to ask a question. Mr. Carden moved at the speed of light. I could barely register everything he said.
“The north arrow is too small. But I’m pleased to see you’ve included it this time.”
I sucked on my teeth as I thought back to the numerous mistakes I’d made in the past few days. “Live and learn.”
His mouth twitched upward.
Getting Mr. Carden to smile was a new game I liked playing with myself.
He straightened to his full height, which left him about a head taller than me. “Where’s the vertical alignment?”
“I’m not done with it yet,” I admitted. Although the truth was that I hadn’t started. Everything took longer than I’d anticipated. “I’m sorry.”
Instead of being mad, Lincoln Carden nodded.
I couldn’t get a read on this man. It was weird. Everything was either a nod or a sigh. He was always stressed and appeared angry, but the anger was different from what I was used to. And it was never directed at me.
But he didn’t seem happy around me either.
As a people pleaser, this killed me. People were generally very pleased by me. Well, those who didn’t know the real me.
Pursing my lips, I stared at all the corrections I’d need to make. My eyelids drooped. It had been two days of working nonstop. I’d been falling asleep before managing to get into pajamas.
While no one asked me to stay late, I had to. I was already four years behind everyone else after dropping out and starting over years later.
Mr. Carden walked over to his desk and unplugged his laptop. “Go home. We’ll deal with that in the morning.” He packed his bag and swung it over his wide shoulder.
I tried not to think about how hard his chest had been when we’d collided or how effortlessly he’d caught me. My pale cheeks threatened to expose my inappropriate thoughts, so I turned away. “I’ll leave when I finish these corrections.”
As soon as Mr. Carden was out of sight, I went to the kitchen. The next revision required a fresh cup of coffee.
“How’s it going?” I asked Kimberley, another intern, who wasalso filling her cup. She was number three on the intern list and the only other woman in the internship. Other than that, I knew nothing because all her social media accounts were set to private.
“Good,” she responded with a curt smile.
I waited for something more while adding a generous serving of sugar. “That’s great. It’s been such a hard transition for me. I don’t feel like college prepared us for this.”
“Yeah” was all she said before slipping out without a backward glance.
It was no surprise. The sick scent of competition was thick between the interns. Heads were kept low and resources hidden because only two of us would find placement after the eight-week internship.
Another intern walked into the kitchen as I was leaving.
He grinned. “Hey, Seven.”
My muscles tensed at the nickname, but I steeled myself and rolled my eyes.
I knew what everyone thought: I was hired because my stepfather, Douglas Gordon-Bettencourt, was the CEO of one of the biggest movie production companies in North America.
Mr. Anders assured me that wasn’t the reason. Still, I couldn’t help but wonder. Did I earn this? Did I get lucky? Or was it because everyone wanted to be close to Douglas Gordon-Bettencourt in the hopes that his success would rub off on them?
