Opposite of Frozen

by Jan O'Hara

  Tucker looks up when I enter his office. He has already put away all his paperwork and is shrugging on his suit jacket.

  “How long have you had this?” I ask, brandishing the file.

  “It came the same day as mine.”

  So six weeks then. You bastard is the phrase that springs to mind, but since Tucker is sensitive to that particular wording, I restrain myself to a growl. “How did you get it?”

  I’m at work a good hour before he arrives in the morning, and easily another hour after he leaves for the day. Since he darn well didn’t take the dossier from my desk, that means he’ll have co-opted one of the clerical staff in his scheme—perky, blonde Katrina in the mailroom, if I had to guess.

  Before he can reply, I throw up a hand. “Never mind. I don’t want to hear it.” Where Tucker’s concerned, it’s often better not to be too inquisitive. “Anyway, you waited too long to tell me. I can’t go. There’s the Fairchild meeting next week.”

  “Amy’ll cancel and reschedule.” He opens his corner wardrobe to extract his overcoat. “It’s not like they were flying in.”

  “Hello?” I tap my wristwatch. “She’s gone for the weekend. Everybody’s gone.”

  He smirks as he shrugs on the coat. “Guess you’ll cancel it then. His assistant should be reachable if you hustle.”

  “What about the Barker project? No way I can make the deadline if I’m away for a business week.”

  “The resort has WiFi.”

  Meaning that I’ll spend all day in the rah-rah false intimacy of team-building exercises, and my nights on office work. Super.

  I turn my back on him with a huff and fold my arms over my chest. Two stories below, my fellow Buckeyes shiver and shuffle through the falling snow, getting an early start to the weekend. I wish I were among them.

  Tucker comes up behind me. When he settles his hands on my shoulders, I shrug them off. “Look, Liv, if I could have spared you, I would’ve. You know that, right? And it’s not like we haven’t worked out a strategy to deal with this all.”

  This is true. Tucker has his own reasons to be worried about his job. In the summer we three spent together, he and Finn got along like proverbial oil and water. We had decided the best plan was for Tucker to attend the retreat, but become the Jamaican equivalent of beige wallpaper.

  “Besides, let’s be honest, you’d have been a mess if you’d known this was coming.”

  I set my jaw and feed him a look over my shoulder.

  “You wouldn’t have been able to concentrate on the Handel account—”

  “What a horror,” I say dryly.

  “—and the fractionator would have fallen through the cracks.”

  I raise a finger and make a small twirling motion.

  “Plus you’d have been starving yourself to try to lose the fifteen pounds.”

  I swing around and glare at him. “Sometimes I really hate you.”

  “Only sometimes?” he says mildly. “I’m getting lax.” He winds a powder-blue scarf around his neck. Rebecca in HR once said she liked how it brought out the color of his eyes, and it has been a perennial favorite since. “Besides, you know you’re going to see him eventually—Mr. Bigshot Corporate Raider in his custom-made suit—though I’ll always remember he looked and smelled just like me after shoveling cow shit.”

  Tucker’s bitterness has such a fresh edge I wonder if I’ve missed something. “Have you seen him, then?” As an engineer, Tucker attends all manner of high-level meetings that a technologist wouldn’t be invited to.

  He chucks me under the chin. “I’d have told you if I had. I was referring to the pictures on the company’s website. It’s obvious Finn drops a bundle on his clothes.”

  By biting my tongue I refrain from pointing out that Tucker has been known to indulge in sartorial elegance himself, his coat being the latest example.

  As for the larger argument, a corner of me knows he’s right. If I’m to continue to work for Wakefield—and with my situation I simply have to—it’s only a matter of time until I run into Finn. Better to rip off the Band-aid in a time and place of my choosing rather than wait on tenterhooks for months, or possibly years.

  “Okay. I’ll make it work.”

  Tucker nods approvingly. “That’s the spirit, Kibble.”

  But as I let myself back into my office and start packing up the drawings I’ll need to take, the enormity of the task seems overwhelming. I’m going to have to pull off the balancing act of a lifetime.

  I’m going to have to come across as smart and competent, but not to the point Finn looks too closely at my employment record, or my position within the company. I’ll need to be cool and collected, but not to the point he’ll take my reserve as a challenge. Again.

  I’ll have to figure out how not to become the pawn in a power struggle between Finn and Tucker. Like that’s going to happen.

  But carry it off… Oh, carry it off, and the potential rewards are huge. Maybe I can repair some of the damage I did the last time we saw one another. Imagine that—Finn able to look at me without revulsion.

  The very thought has my throat tightening and my eyes prickling.

  And if I’m exceedingly fortunate, not only can we be civil to one another in passing, but I’ll work in an opportunity to show him a photo of my apartment. I think Finn would approve of it. I think he’d be impressed with all its white, pet-free serenity.

  * * *

  Get your copy of Cold and Hottie today.

  Books in the Thurston Hotel Series

  Find them all at www.thurstonhotelbooks.com.

  A Thurston Promise, Book 1 ~ Brenda Sinclair

  Opposite of Frozen, Book 2 ~ Jan O’Hara

  On a Whim, Book 3 ~ Win Day

  Love Under Construction, Book 4 ~ Sheila Seabrook

  A Lasting Harmony, Book 5 ~ Shelley Kassian

  With Open Arms, Book 6 ~ M. K. Stelmack

  The Starlight Garden, Book 7 ~ Maeve Buchanan

  Betting on Courage, Book 8 ~ Alyssa Linn Palmer

  The Thurston Heirloom, Book 9 ~ Suzanne Stengl

  An Angel’s Secret, Book 10 ~ Ellen Jorgy

  To a Tea, Book 11 ~ Katie O’Connor

  A Thurston Christmas, Book 12 ~ Brenda Sinclair

  Acknowledgments

  I’ve been writing a long time. While I’m bound to omit many of the people who’ve made this book possible, the following deserve special mention:

  I owe an enormous debt to Brenda Sinclair. Beyond conceiving of the Thurston series, when personal circumstances made my deadline feel impossible, she gently pushed me to stretch myself.

  Both Brenda and Suzanne Stengl made OoF infinitely stronger for their critiques.

  My thanks to William O’Hara for his advice in the train plow chapters. Any errors are the product of artistic license, or mistakes on my part.

  Therese Walsh and Liz Michalski, thank you for the title help, and all-round support, especially the advice to enjoy the process and kick fear in the teeth.

  My thanks to the Cherries, Cherry Tarts, CaRWAckians, Purgies and Absolute Write peeps for your fellowship, wisdom, and encouragement.

  My Thurston sisters: I appreciate your help with titles, cover art, and promotion. A special thanks to Sheila Seabrook for formatting help.

  Therese Walsh, Kathleen Bolton, where would I be without you and the entire Writer Unboxed community you founded? (Yes, that includes you, Vaughn Roycroft. And Donald Maass, whose voice often echoed in my head as I wrote this book. “Now make it worse.”) Thank you for taking a chance on your longest-running Voice of the Unpublished Writer!

  To fellow mods of the Breakout Novel Dissection group (Elissa Field, Natalie Hart, and John Kelley): thank you for handling the page with such competence and understanding.

  To my parents, late mother-in-law, siblings, and immediate family: thank you for your encouragement once I decided to get ’er done, especially Molly, for beta reading and listening to me blab about my characters. “Frank,” you are
an excellent sounding board, and I’m so grateful. And my ToolMaster? What can I say that you haven’t heard in all these years? I love you, guy.

  Lisa Harrington Munley: thank you for offering help via Facebook, and for saving one of my favorite metaphors.

  My gratitude to Su Kopil from Earthy Charms Designs for the beautiful cover.

  Thank you to Ted Williams for line editing.

  Last but not least, my gratitude to you, the reader. I had a lot of fun writing this book, but without your participation, it disappears into the void.

  About the Author

  A former family physician and academic, Jan O’Hara left the world of medicine behind to follow her dreams of becoming a writer. These days she confines her healing tendencies to paper—after first making her characters undergo a period of delicious torture, naturally.

  She writes love stories (and biographies) that move from wackadoodle to heartfelt in six seconds flat.

  Jan lives in Alberta, Canada and is a columnist for the popular blog Writer Unboxed. She loves to hear from readers.

  * * *

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