Nolan’s jaw clenches, bright eyes flaring to life. “The file,” he says. Voice straining and swallowing back unspoken words.
It takes me a second longer than normal but I tear my eyes from his unusual display of restraint and search my mess of a desk for what he requested. “Yes, it’s riiiight—” I drag out the word until my fingers curl around the bindings of the reports I put together last night before heading home. “Here!” I exclaim, holding them up like a trophy.
With four long strides, he moves swiftly and plucks them from my grasp. No “thank you”, no “I’m so glad you had time to do this last night even though I told you five minutes before you normally go home.”
Nothing. Nada. Zilch.
Instead, he quickly thumbs through the pages. Lips mashing together in a hard line like he expects to find a mistake.
He won’t, but he still looks.
“We should only be there for an hour. Can you make sure next week’s budget is in my inbox by the time we’re done?”
“You know I’m not your assistant, right?”
He looks up from the reports, and my next breath disappears. I really wish there’s something I can do about this…is it still a crush when you’re this old? Nolan has a hold on me and us working in the same building every day is only making it worse.
“What?”
“I’m not your assistant, you’re my boss, but only because I’m a one woman department. That’s what Sadie’s for, and she should have sent you the budget two weeks ago. If you don’t have it, take it up with her.”
He drags his tongue along his top teeth while continuing to stare at me. A few seconds in I forfeit and glance over at my computer screen. The file in question is staring at me from my desktop because Sadie, while also another breathtaking human somehow stuck in government work, is kind of useless and I figured she would have forgotten to forward it along after I sent it to her to put the meeting on his calendar.
“Harper,” Nolan says in a low, rocky tone. The deep baritone sound shoots straight to my core, flushing every inch of my body in a heat I’m afraid he’ll see if he looks closely. And the last thing I need is for Nolan to find out the types of thoughts I’m harboring about him.
“Fine,” I click open an email and attach the file I was always going to send him. “But for the love of God, once you're done with this secretary, can you please get one with a brain?”
Without an answer he turns and leaves, finally allowing me a chance at a full breath. Except it’s tainted with the smell of him. Rich notes of smoky woods, trapping me in a forest that’s hard to find my way out of. For months I’ve tried to figure out what he wears, spending an ungodly amount of time in the fragrance department and have never been able to pinpoint it.
Knowing him, it's probably some imported scent where one bottle alone costs more than I make in a month. It would be impossible for me to figure out but then most things concerning him are, like why he’s even in Cupid.
Six months ago Nolan left his job as CEO of his family company, only to show up and take over as City Manager. For weeks the town talked only of him, and normally I might have leaned into the gossip except we’ve known each other for years, or at least we’ve knownofeach other.
My father is a born and bred Cupid man, and as is Nolan. The two were best friends all throughout school until high school graduation, when Nolan went to one Ivy League school and my father another. My father came back to Cupid, Nolan avoided it like it was on fire. Theykept it touch, but the years whittled them down to Christmas card acquaintances until he showed up in town and is suddenly City Manager. I’m not too sure running a conglomerate company translates well to running a small valley town, even if it was founded by the same family two hundred years ago, but who am I to say?
I never thought twice about Nolan over the years, he’s my dad’s friend, why would I? But suddenly I’m sharing the town with him and my mind is reduced to one track. Whenever Nolan is around, my brain turns off, my libido flips on and skyrockets off the charts. It’s a real problem.
I need to spend the next two weeks in party planning overdrive and not thinking about Nolan. Which is easier said than done. At least I’ll have my one night at Midnights to get me through it.
“Sadie,” I bark, walkinginto the small foyer before my office. A long way from the high-rise corner office I once occupied in the Bay Area, but who’s keeping track? Sadie practically jumps out of her seat at the sound of my voice, her platinum blond hair bouncing with movement and the nail file she’s holding goes skidding across herdesk. Zero attempts to hide she was fixing her nails when she should have been working.
What’s new though? I’m convinced Sadie thinks of herself as more ornamental than a government employee. Why she works here is beyond me.
One delicate hand presses against her chest as she blinks up at me with dull, stagnant water-blue eyes. Sadie takes a few seconds to straighten up, running her hands down the front of the obscenely tight dress and brushing back the loose curls around her face before looking back at me, her gaze switching and toeing the line of predatory. Every movement is for my benefit and I try not to think of the way it makes my stomach sour.
“Yes, Mr. Archer?”
Whatever she’s doing to her voice only solidifies my bad mood. It’s too high pitched and too soft all at once, and I know it’s fake, her voice isn’t even remotely that annoying when she’s on the phone or talking to literally anyone else in the building.
Maybe this whole show she puts on for me is done absentmindedly? Maybe I’m reading too far into it? Maybe I’m the problem?
But then her hands skate back up her stomach and I have to take back the thoughts immediately. The displayis extremely deliberate. What I want to know is what the hell was Dan thinking when he hired her?
“You never sent February’s budget over,” I say, doing my best to remove any sort of emotion from my voice.
Confusion creeps across her face in real time “The budget…” she says slowly, eyebrows pulling together.
“You know what, never mind, I asked Harper to send it over already.”
