“I wasn’t, either.”
His hand rubbed up and down her back.
“I know.”
As they sat, breathing in the silence, she felt his hand cover hers. The dim lights of the Bayview blurred in the distance as she felt his fingers pry open her palm. The light graze of his nails sent a pulse of heat to her fingertips as he pressed something smooth and warm into her hand.
“You were looking for one of these, I think.”
The white object Nicholas picked up hadn’t been a stone at all. It was a sand dollar.
She looked up at him in surprise. He was staring at her.
“I’m only happy when I’m with you,” he told her solemnly.
Jay ran a hand through his thick hair, curving her fingers to cradle his scalp. “I had a similar thought recently.” She pulled him closer. “Right before you cockblocked me on your sofa.”
“Sounds like something I would do.”
“Dick,” said Jay.
And with the wind tangling in their hair, and the faint scent of the dead fires mixing with the salt of the sea spray, she closed the distance and kissed him beneath that brilliant moon.
The sand dollar went on her desk, next to her favorite mug and a chipped geode that was too broken to be part of her main collection but she also couldn’t bear to throw away because the thought of all those crystals glinting dully in a landfill made her went to cry.
She rattled the sand dollar unthinkingly sometimes while reading her emails, until she caught Annica giving her a dirty look. Then she shut it away in her drawer.
As she put together spreadsheets and pulled data, she found herself thinking of Nick.
Nick and his hands. Nick and his faint aura of menace. Nick and his devastating words.
(I’m only happy when I’m with you)
Another email had gone out that morning that Nicholas would not be interviewing candidates for the VP position, after all. Arthur would be carrying out the interviews alone.
“I’m trying to minimize the potential for conflict of interest,” he had told her privately in the car that morning. “When you get the role, I don’t want anyone saying we didn’t do this properly.”
“If I get the role,” she corrected him gently.
“Right.” He winked and tweaked her nose.
Some people were disappointed. They had been hoping for a chance to hobnob with the CEO. But according to the chatter, this wasn’t unusual. Nicholas often cancelled redundant meetings and he didn’t manage people as closely as Arthur did. Numbers and fine details were his domain, and when it came to facts, he was like a fine-tuned machine.
Jay got up for her interview stiffly, feeling very self-conscious. She had dressed in eyelet lace and her favorite A-line skirt, not wanting to be too obvious. Someone had asked, “IsJay applying for the role?” while not entirely out of earshot and the other person had responded, “No, that’s just Mr. Hartwell’s secretary. She’s just here to take notes.”
It was only with supreme effort that she was able to walk through the room with her shoulders relaxed and her steps unfaltering. She was an administrative assistant, not a secretary. She had gotten a certification for her work and she did her workwell.
No more tossing my dreams into the flames, she told herself.
As she passed Nicholas’s desk, he looked up from his computer and winked.
Her face was warm when she opened the door to the office where Arthur was waiting. He’d gotten a new desk chair, one of the ergonomic ones that looked like it belonged behind the console of a spaceship. “Hello, Jay.” He leaned back comfortably. “I hear congratulations are in order.”
Her mind blanked out. “For what?”
His tawny eyebrows lifted and for a moment she thought—perversely—that all of this interviewing had just been a farce. That despite her repeated insistence that she wanted to do this her way, Nicholas had found a means of just giving her the position.
But Arthur was nodding at her hand.
