She sulked.
"What can you tell me about Allie? Why is she being so cold with me? What's her deal? I need everything you know about her."
Stacy puckered her lips and widened her eyes. Carter wondered if she thought that was a sexy thinking face or something.
"Well," she said slowly. "Her old boyfriend is back in the picture. Bryce. She and him weresoin love!"
"Didn't he stalk her and she stuck a gun in his face?" Carter said in disbelief.
"It was passion!" Stacy said, clasping her hand to her chest. "You don't understand how much they loved each other, how much they still love each other. He was injured in Iraq and had a mental breakdown, but now he's healthy and back in her life. He's trying to win her, and she'll let him. She is a very emotional person."
"Allie?" Carter said, feeling sick.
"She's not showing you her true self, Carter. Not like me," Stacy purred, reaching out to run a hand down his chest.
She grabbed for his hand, and he yanked it away. Stacy made a sexy face and pulled her phone out from her bra and showed him a picture.
"This is Bryce." The man in the picture was handsome and blond with a strong jaw and a blue-collar, country vibe around him. He was the exact opposite of Carter. If that was Allie's type, he was sorely lacking.
"He's gorgeous, isn't he?" Stacy said with a laugh.
Carter stewed over Stacy's comments on the way back to the office. Could it be true that Allie was getting back together with her old flame? He wished he could find better confirmation besides Stacy. Carter didn't exactly trust Allie's old roommate.
But then again, maybe that was why Allie was so insistent that they be friends and not in a romantic relationship.
He brooded over the conversation with Stacy the rest of the week. As he spent time with Allie, he started to notice little things that confirmed what Stacy had said. The way Allie seemed guilty when she went through her emails, the way she kept her phone flat on the table or close to her chest as if she were playing a hand of poker.
By that Friday when the Holbrook Enterprises internship program officially ended, Carter had worked himself up into a frenzy.
In the auditorium, Monique stood before them. "The internship program is at an end. Thank you all for your hard work. As far as the project competition, Carter, Allie, and Liz win. They not only created a template, but they also discovered embezzling going on in one of our subsidiaries. Great job, you all!"
"So is that it?" Carter asked as they went back to their desks.
"We're going to hear about job offers Monday," Liz said.
"I wonder if they'll hire me," Carter mused.
"Carter, your family owns the company. They're probably going to give you some management position that you aren't even qualified for," Liz retorted.
Carter felt slightly ashamed.
"What about you?" Liz asked Allie.
"This is not the only iron I have in the fire," she told them, packing up her stuff. "I have to finish submitting paperwork for my degree program."
"What's going to happen?" Carter asked Grant when he saw him at dinner that night with their family.
Grant gave him a blank look. "What do you mean? You're working at the company, starting Monday."
"Doing what?"
"I have to figure that out before I can give you a definitive answer."
Nancy raised her glass. "A toast to Carter! You finished the program!"
"And you won the project competition," Kate said as they all clinked glasses.
"I didn't do a lot. It was Allie and Liz. Mainly Allie—it was her idea."
