We both look at our boss, who’s guffawing with the VIPs and mimicking swiping a credit card while his wife rests her fingertips on her necklace and frowns down into her glass of Rumpleshaker. What a prick. Then again, if he thinks one of his “women be shopping” stories will impress the investors, maybe I didn’t need to work so hard to tank this IPO.
“So are you heading to the bank to send a bunch of panicky texts?”
The former bank building that now houses Sounder is a twenty-minute drive from the event space, so even if Maxine was willing to sweet talk her way through security to get back to her former desk, it’s unlikely she’d get people here before eight regardless.
“Cutie,” she tells me, “I am walking to my car, driving home, ripping off my Spanx, lighting a joint, and getting into a bath. But please call me tomorrow with the full update.”
“That’s a promise.” I laugh and kiss her cheek as a thought surfaces. “Oh, but what about the artist?”
We built our plans to avoid blowback for everyone. Everything is intermediaries, cash payments, and iron-clad contracts, and Howard, who’s notorious for never reviewing a thing Maxine puts in front of him, signed off on all of it.
His former admin waves a dismissive hand. “She’ll be fine. You know how good her work is.”
I shake my head. “Who?”
“Olivia,” Maxine says. It takes me a beat to connect the dots.
“Liv did this? How did she get involved?”
“She came highly recommended,” Maxine says as if that’s explanation enough. And after a beat, it is.
It really, really is.
Sure, Liv Fielding’s been dating my brother for a year now, but I know down to my bones that Hollis isn’t the person who got her this design gig.
No, that honor would belong to Liv’s best friend in the world.
“CJ.” The name comes out like a curse. I slam my drink down on an empty table and stalk toward the kitchen where the catering staff is buzzing in and out with food for the handful of guests in attendance. I burst through the swinging doors to find the bane of my existence huddled over a tray of canapés.
“Charlotte Jane,” I bark, and goddamn it, she doesn’t even glance up from her conversation with the tattooed chef.
I stride across the kitchen and grab the soft, yielding skin of her elbow. “We need to talk.”
“I’m busy.”
“Now.”
“Why is it,” she asks, trying to shake off my hold, “that you keep turning up everywhere I am?”
“It’s not hard. All I have to do is follow the smell of brimstone and regret.”
She gives a condescending tilt of her head. “You think I regret a single thing about hating you? That’s cute.”
I smile grimly. “The regret’s all me, babe. If only I’d never gone near that mistletoe.”
Her mouth snaps shut, and as her eyes cut away, I feel a spurt of something. Accomplishment, I guess. It’s always nice to land a point against CJ.
Before either of us can speak again, Chef Samson snaps us out of our mutually assured destruction.
“Out.”
“But I—” CJ starts.
“Out,” he barks, and that don’t fuck with my kitchen tone has us both shutting up and backing away. I rest my hand on her lower back and guide CJ toward the exit.
“Pretty brave of you to get handsy with the help, Jones.” She glances at me with a feral glint in her eyes. “Feel like pulling back a bloody stump?”
I sigh and remove my fingers, which is a mistake, of course. She twists away, plucks a loaded tray off the table next to us, and breezes out of the kitchen with a demented cackle and a “See ya, chump.
