Total pages in book: 104
Estimated words: 103030 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 515(@200wpm)___ 412(@250wpm)___ 343(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 103030 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 515(@200wpm)___ 412(@250wpm)___ 343(@300wpm)
My stomach turns itself inside out.
“So,” Lisbeth says, poking me along as she sits across from me. “What happened? What did he say?”
“He … he sat down. We talked a little bit. I accused him of being a cop and—”
“What?” she shrieks.
“I mean, isn’t that really Occam’s Razor here?”
She snorts in frustration. “No. No, it isn’t, Miss Conspiracy Theorist.”
I shrug at the accusation. It’s not totally wrong.
“So you accuse him of being the po-po, and he still offers you a job?” Her eyes widen. “The job? His trusted confidant job?”
“Well, yeah. I think that’s a little over the top in the description, but basically.”
She crosses her arms over her chest, smirking happily.
“Don’t look at me like that,” I say, pointing a finger at her.
Her smirk deepens.
“I didn’t take it,” I admit.
“And why the eff not?”
I rub my forehead with the palm of my hand.
“I’m … thrown off,” I tell her before dropping my hand. It hits the table with a thud. “Can I do the job? Absolutely. Do I need it? One thousand percent. Is it an amazing opportunity? Clearly. But …”
I look at my best friend and silently plead for help. She reaches across the table and puts her hands on mine.
“Look, I know this is a lot for you at once,” she says softly. “A new job is enough to freak anyone out. But you chose this guy to be your first crush since Luca—”
“It’s not a crush. And I didn’t choose anything.”
She brushes me off without a thought. “If you weren’t panicking a little, I’d worry.” She withdraws her hand.
“I am. Don’t worry.”
She laughs.
“I feel so … clumsy,” I tell her. “Let’s set aside the fact that this guy, Oliver, might be my new boss. Let’s just consider him a guy who asked me to have lunch with him only yesterday, okay?”
“Okay.”
“I don’t know how to do that. I don’t know how to navigate the dating waters, Lisbeth.”
“Yes, you do. It’s been a long time, I know, but you know how to do it. You weren’t born yesterday.”
“I might as well have been. I only dated one guy before Luca, and I was nineteen. I mean, besides the three blind dates you’ve set me up on this year, that’s it—and those went so well.”
She giggles at the mention of the awful dates she arranged. I roll my eyes.
“I just keep getting thrown into this guy’s life and”—I shrug—“if I take this job, I need it to work. I have to get a grip on my life so I can move on. I can’t work for him and feel myself tingle in all the right places—or wrong places, depending on how you define the word.”
“I think you’re getting ahead of yourself.”
“Probably.” I sigh hastily. “You’re probably right. I mean, who am I to think that he even sees me like that?”
She laughs. It’s loud and chirpy. “Oh, he does.”
I look at her like she’s nuts.
“Shaye.” She says my name with exasperation. “You’re beautiful. You have the prettiest hair in the world. Your eyes tell stories. Your body is banging, my friend, and you’re funny and smart. So, yeah, I’m absolutely positive he’s attracted to you.” She grins. “I was just saying that … who knows? You might get to know him and hate him. The chemistry might fizzle. Maybe he has rules about dating co-workers. You don’t know.”
Suddenly, she seems less crazy-pants.
My shoulders sag as I let her words of wisdom soak in.
I know I’m jumping the gun with some of this. My mind is definitely ahead of reality. But I want this so bad, I need this so much, and it feels too good to be true. Naturally, my mind wants to sniff out all the ways it could go wrong instead of focusing on the ways it could go right.
“Just relax and do what’s best for you. Today, maybe that’s taking the job,” she says.
A chill rushes through my body. I close my eyes and breathe.
“Maybe you’re right,” I say. “I don’t know.”
I open my eyes as her sweet smile gets sharper.
“Maybe I’m right,” she repeats. “And tomorrow, maybe it’s taking his dick—”
“Hey!” I protest, but not without a giggle.
She laughs too. “If he’s hot enough to flip your switch and he owns Mason Limited, keep your options open. Be smart.”
I get to my feet and roll my eyes.
“Don’t look at me like that,” she says, standing too.
“I am being smart. I’m well aware of the fact that my judgment on men is broken. Maybe Oliver Mason is a sociopath or a narcissist. He could be married and a total scumbag.”
“Nope.”
I turn to face her. “Nope what?”
Her face sobers. “Don’t write this job off already. Don’t write him off already. Don’t write you off already. You’re defaulting to your mother’s voice in your head.”
“Yeah …”
“Listen to me, Shaye Marie—your mom is fucked up. God love her, but something went wrong with her parenting gene. You gave that woman so many chances to be in your life and be the person she should be, and she failed you every time.”