Ina, who saw me clearly enough to know exactly what would make me smile.
“The entire office knows?” I asked.
“Pretty much everyone’s figured it out by now. Yeah, it’s obvious.” He left, finally, closing the door behind him.
Ina was my Secret Cupid.
Which meant for the past month, we’d been in this bizarre dance where she’d been giving me thoughtful, perfect gifts while she got shit on by Keith.
But I’d known, on some level, that the gifts I was receiving were too perfect to be random.
I went back to my office, closing the door this time, shutting out the chaos of the floor.
The “I Hate Everything” hat sat on the corner of my desk where I’d left it.
I picked it up, turning it over in my hands, thinking about Ina finding it, buying it, probably laughing to herself as she imagined my reaction.
She knew me.
Better than anyone had known me in years.
CHAPTER 17
INA
The coffee shop on the ground floor of our building was packed. Apparently everyone had decided they needed a caffeine fix after a long Friday. Everyone was probably getting fueled up for a wild weekend. I just needed the boost to get through the next few hours before I collapsed in bed. I was better, but there was still a lingering exhaustion.
I stood in line, shifting my weight from foot to foot, exhausted from a day that had felt like three days compressed into one. For me, it had been. The work hadn’t stopped because I’d been out. It just piled up.
The phone had been ringing off the hook since the Valentine’s campaign officially launched. Everyone wanted a piece of Dane. I felt like the little boy holding my finger in the dam. It was between Dane and the horde of investors, reporters, and podcasters asking for interviews. Random people who somehow got the main office number and wanted to know if the rumors about him dating someone were true.
I’d spent eight hours saying variations of “Mr. Kavanagh is unavailable” and “I’ll pass along your message” until the words had lost all meaning.
And through it all, I’d barely seen Dane. He’d been in back-to-back meetings, then disappeared for a lunch that ran two hours over, then locked himself in his office for calls that I wasn’t privy to.
The only interaction we’d had all day was a brief Slack exchange about rescheduling Monday’s board meeting, and even that had been more perfunctory than usual.
I was trying not to read into it. Trying not to wonder if he was avoiding me. He’d been nice. Period. It didn’t mean he was always going to be nice and treat me like a friend.
“Medium latte with an extra shot,” I told the barista when I finally made it to the counter.
“Name?”
“Ina.”
I stepped aside to wait, pulling out my phone to check my emails one last time before the weekend. Nothing urgent. Just the usual end-of-week chaos.
And then I felt a presence. That female sixth sense kicked in, alerting me to danger. I looked up to find Keith standing far too close, holding what appeared to be some kind of elaborate iced coffee concoction despite the fact that it was February and actively snowing outside.
“Ina,” he said, smiling in that way that probably worked on most people but made my skin crawl. “Fancy seeing you here.”
“Hi, Keith.” I took a small step back, trying to create more personal space. “How are you?”
“Better now.” He moved into the space I’d just created. “Listen, I’ve been meaning to catch you. You’re always so busy, running around doing Dane’s bidding.”
I forced a polite smile. “Doing my job, you mean. Yeah.”
“Right, right. But surely even the best secretaries get time off?”
