A genuine smile finds my lips. “Do you? Everyone is still healthy?”
Shelly nods, some of her wispy gray hair shifting. She’s Denice’s secretary, helping our boss run this place smoothly even into the last stages of her pregnancy. The past two weeks she’s been holding the fort until Denice’s replacement arrives, too, and she’s been doing a great job. “Everyone is happy and healthy,” she says, holding out her phone to show me a picture of Nessa, Denice’s two-week-old newborn.
“She’s so little,” I say.
Shelly nods and then clears her throat, tucking her phone away and adopting a more professional tone. “Anyhow, the new guy showed up this morning, thank heavens,” she goes on, lowering her voice. “Apparently he’s Denice’s younger brother.”
My smile fades. “I didn’t know Denice had a brother.”
“I didn’t either,” Shelly says. “But he’s here, so she must.”
Denice is the best boss we could ever ask for, and part of that is because she’s the daughter of our company’s founder. She has her finger on the pulse of the company, small though it is, and she has a clear vision of what we’re doing and where we’re headed. It doesn’t hurt that she and her husband are still as in love as ever—a powerful motivation to bring that same love to others.
“Anyway,” Shelly continues, “he’ll only be here for a couple weeks, and then someone else will come until Denice comes back from maternity leave. I just came to look for you, because he’s asking for you.”
I blink at her. “What?”
“The new boss,” she whispers, waving me down the hall. “He’s set up in the room down there at the end. The interim. He wants to see you.”
“I—why?” I say, racking my brain even as I head that direction.
“I don’t know. Just go.”
“Wait, wait—before I do that. Did our permit come through?”
“Yes,” she says. “The town square of Lucky, Colorado, is officially ours for the event.”
“Perfect,” I say with relief. “Good. All right. Thank you, Shelly.”
She nods and continues on her way, and I straighten up to counter the desire to slink away and hide, because hiding is not allowed. With my shoulders back and my head high, I stridedown the rest of the hall and stop at the very end, knocking softly on the cracked door.
“Come in,” a deep, unfamiliar voice calls.
With one last inhale, I push the door open and step inside.
Except, I’m surprised to see, I’m not alone.Bartis here; Bart and Mindy, the two of them holding hands and standing side by side in front of the desk, behind which sits?—
Oh, no.
My heart sinks down, down, down in my chest, until it thuds sickly against the pit of my stomach.
The man from the holding cell.
Denice’s brother, the son of our company’s founder,my temporary boss…is the man from the holding cell.
Right? It’s him? I scan his face, his hair, his suit, and come to the horrible, awful conclusion that it’s definitely him. He’s young—younger than I realized, definitely younger than me. He’s fidgeting carelessly with a Rubik’s cube, the same watch from last night glinting as his hands move. His light-brown hair is neater today, his tie no longer loose, but he has the same long lashes, the same full lips and winged brows.
And when he sees me, I watch his mind come to the same realization. It happens in slow motion. The tiniest widening of his eyes—dark brown—followed by the up-and-down scan of my body, the brief study of my face and hair, and finally the slow curl of his lips that can only mean he recognizes me too.
He recognizes me, and he looks delighted about it.
“Ah,” he says slowly, leaning back in his seat as his smile widens into a boyish grin, his eyes brimming with new laughter as two dimples appear in his cheeks. His hands stop working on the Rubik’s cube. “I see.” He looks back to Bart and Mindy. “Barf?—”
“Bart,” Bart corrects, looking confused as I step up next to him.
“Of course,” the man behind the desk says, waving one hand. “Bart. AndMindy.” He glances at me, possibly watching with fascination as my cheeks turn as-of-yet undiscovered shades of red. “I understand.” Then he clears his throat. “All right,” he says to Bart, sounding professional now. “Please explain.”
Bart shuffles closer to Mindy and then glances at me, giving me a little smile. His normally buoyant demeanor is subdued. “Apologies,” he says to me before looking at the man behind the desk. “I meant to come see you before work,” he says, “but someone egged my car”—a rare thread of irritation trickles into his words, and I hold back a savage smile of triumph—“so I ended up being late.”
