Chapter 1
Blue Jay McAllister white-knuckled the box she was holding.
You can do this because you are a badass and take no crap from anyone.
Watching the numbers on the elevator panel as it descended was something she’d done hundreds of times in the eight years she’d worked for Cavanagh Sale, a fashion house that had nurtured her career and given her plans for a future the naive country girl she’d once been would never have believed possible.
All that had come crashing down today.
Be strong, Blue.
The doors slowly opened and she stepped out, exhaling. There was just a short walk now, and she was out of here. Done with this place and the lying, backstabbing people who worked in it.
“Blue!”
Lowering the shoulders that had risen to her ears, Blue turned to see a man running toward her. Tall, gorgeous, and as trustworthy as a snake oil salesman, but that was something she hadn’t realized until about twenty minutes ago.
“Wait, Blue.”
She didn’t. Gripping the box with everything she’d cleaned out of her desk, she struck out for the door.
“I said wait.” Fingers wrapped around her arm, stopping her. “What the hell are you doing?”
Sebastian Cavanagh’s dark brows drew into an angry line, his handsome face no longer wearing its habitual genial expression. The man whom everyone loved and who had been trying to get her into bed for the past year. She’d never succumbed to his charms like others because she was a professional, goddamn it, and sleeping with a Cavanagh of Cavanagh Sales had always seemed like a really bad idea.
“Leaving.” Blue added nothing to that. She just jerked her arm free and backed up a step.
“Look, there is no need for this behavior?—”
“No need,” Blue gritted out. “The protege you made me train because, and I quote, ‘you are the best designer we have, Blue, and I want my cousin to learn from the best,’ just stole one of my drawings and pitched it to Shannon, my boss, as her own. Said boss then told me to get over myself. It’s no big deal as this kind of thing happens all the time.”
Sebastian’s eyes narrowed. They were what had drawn her to him. Blue, the color of a bright cloudless day in her hometown of Lyntacky, Colorado.
The stab of longing she felt for her home then nearly dropped her to her knees. She fought the need.Keep it together. You’re the tough McAllister, remember.
“And the worst part of all this is that you knew. Shannon told me you said I’d be unhappy, but I’d roll with it ‘because Blue is a professional.’”
“Look. I know what Layla did was wrong?—”
“When did you know she had stolen my drawings, Sebastian?”
He didn’t want to answer her because his eyes moved just an inch, to the right.
“How long?”
“I saw her talking to the clients with Shannon, and when she came out, I asked her what was going on,” he conceded. “She showed me her drawings, but I knew they were yours.”
That had to be over a week ago, Blue realized. The betrayal hit hard.
“Let’s go upstairs and work this through. You are our best designer, and we can settle this. I know you’re halfway through the designs for the catalog, and?—”
“So you’ll tell everyone those are my designs that she stole, and your cousin will be reprimanded, if not fired?”
“There is no need for that. She knows she was wrong, but Layla is family?—”
“And I’m what?”
“Important,” he gritted out.
