Again, getting through the crowd was proving to be challenging, but I managed to sneak out mostly unnoticed. I shuffled around the people on the balcony. Glancing over my shoulder, I saw him. I was hoping tall, blonde, and handsome would get lost in the crowd and I could sit here, drinking my mixed-overthinking-drink, telling myself it’s over and I can finally be me and not worry about anything else. Because it was.
It was only February. I’d only been divorced for maybe, five minutes. I was not looking for a rebound, a plaything, a special friend, nothing of the sort. I didn’t want, nor was I ready, to put myself back out there.
The Anti-Valentine’s party was my party.For life.
I took another swig of my drink, then proceeded to overthink everything about that brief interaction.
If you could even call it that,I thought absentmindedly. Looking over the city skyline, I let my thoughts come without much of a filter.
He probably had a girlfriend. Or boyfriend. Or both. Who knows.
I felt something slide over my shoulders. Looking up, I saw Eddie and Clint. They draped a blanket over me.
“It’s pretty cold out here. You comin’ inside any time soon, Fia?” I glanced at my brother as he sat next to me for just a moment. He was watching the city too.
“Yeah,” I said, looking out at the lights across the city, “Soon. Just…thinkin.”
“Oh,uh,” Eddie stood quickly. When I looked up at him, he was already moving back toward the door, “I’ll check back in on you in ten minutes, little sister!” Eddie shouted at me, the further toward the door he got. I saw Clint waiting there, patiently, and just smiled. That’s my brother. Days, literally, older than me. So not fair. Our parents still called us their Irish twins though.
Just as the nip in the cold started to get to my fingers, I seriously considered giving up and going inside to find Clint’s library or call a cab home. I stood, stretched, Eddie’s coat sliding off my shoulders when a throat cleared behind me. Turning my head to the side, I saw it was the hottie from earlier.
“Shit,” I muttered, the mason jar in my hands feeling colder than it did just moments ago.
“Not the response I usually get, but hello to you too. I’ve been hoping to see you again since the Christmas party.” He walked closer to me, a nice beige cable knit sweater stretched overtop of his all-black get-up. He stuck his hand out to me, his deep voice adding another layer of goosebumps, on top of the goosebumps I already had. Maybe it was the cold. Maybe it was his voice.
“Name’s Cash.”
Has to be the cold,I told myself as his name sent a shiver all the way down…to the base of my spine. I stared at him for a moment, considering if I wanted to play with this type of fire. I reached out and shook his hand.
“Devin, but my brother calls me Fia.” He flashed a smile at me.
Stick a fork in me. I’m done.
He had dimples.
Chapter Twenty-One:
Cash’s POV
“As in Johnny Cash, Man in Black?”
I chuckled lightly at the tiny woman in front of me.
Fuck, she’s stunning.
She was just as beautiful as I remembered from the Christmas party, only with a bit of sadness and unsteadiness about her now. It was just a brief moment that I saw her that night at the party, but it changed something cellular within me. Seeing her again, I knew. This was a change deep within me, on amolecularlevel. I’d been on Clint, more and more to help me find her, meet her, get to know the dazzling redhead who stole my breath away the moment I laid eyes on her. I wanted any information I could get on her, even to just give me her name! But the block-head wouldn’t budge.
I had asked him about her every time I bumped into the man! He was as tight-lipped as always and said the same things,‘She needs time’or‘Just wait’.
He hired me at his company around Thanksgiving. The initial offer was a possible partner position within a year or two. After the Christmas party, he let me know that the partner position was available immediately. When I didn’t say anything, he continued on, telling me he needed to replace a partner he’d just had to fire for breaking the fraternization clause in the employment contract.
“Someone actually got busted breaking that?” I almost couldn’t believe it. There were harsh penalties involved with that clause. You’d be blacklisted from the industry for the next threeyears. It was career suicide. Breaking that clause, after working for Clint Westwood, it was dropping a bomb on your life. The clause essentially went nuclear on the person who signed the contract. They would end up doing it to themselves.
Fucking moron had been caughton camerafucking this woman all over the manor that had been rented for the annual Christmas party. I’d heard the whispers that floated through the cubicles. The hot gossip was a suspected affair for a few months, but nothing could be proven. Everyone at the office said how sweet the wife was and how she didn’t deserve any of the shit he’d been doing to her.
Fucking dumbass.
I felt bad for the wife. I hoped she was doing alright. But as I heard more and more about the policy, I hoped like hell that she, my mystery woman, didn’t work for Clint, or I’d be fired too! She stole my heart in that green dress! She looked like fucking Christmas personified. The image of her in that stunning green dress, with that red hair that was all piled on her head. She looked like a queen. One I wanted the honor of protecting and loving for life. I’d been thinking about her so much and so often that I almost thought she was a hallucination in Clint’s kitchen ten minutes ago.
