Next To Me

by Amabel Daniels

  AMABEL

  DANIELS

  Disclaimer

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

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  Copyright © 2019 Amabel Daniels

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions

  Dedication

  For CJ, a true badass in this wonderful world of authors.

  One

  Carly

  “You get your little cupcake a—”

  Oh, my God. Oh, my God. This was it. It had to be it. The moment a thirty-year-old loses her sanity. At the precise moment when she verbally threatens a mottled blob of a dessert.

  Still, I glowered at the shiny metal basin where I’d last seen the cupcake a-hole. Yeah, it is an asshole of a cupcake. Honestly, I bet it might have been tasty and well worth the four thousand calories it probably offered. Chocolate mousse frosting… Glistening sugar sprinkled on top, just like minuscule diamonds… Oh, and the real diamonds inside of the cake.

  This was no ordinary gourmet treat I was attempting to rescue from the garbage disposal in the private kitchen of my boss’s office suite. No, of course not. What I had been instructed to “retrieve” was the idiot’s method of proposing to his flaky girlfriend. Just past that drain in the sink had to be an outrageously, stupendously extravagant engagement ring.

  Which I’d just accidentally thrown away.

  It has to be in there.

  I wrinkled my face in a grimace to end all grimaces and shoved my hand further down the opening.

  Damn, is this a tight fight. Metal secured my skin like I was cuffing myself to the pipe opening. My lip curled. There was no helping it. I was sticking my hand into the damn garbage disposal. Slime slicked past my wrist as the rubber cover slid up, and I gagged.

  I wiggled my fingers and felt nothing. At least nothing that would resemble a ring.

  On the counter, my phone buzzed an incoming call. “Richard calling,” the device told me.

  Before answering, I inhaled a deep breath for cour— Oh, God. At the instant waft of kitchen sink stink released from the drain, I slapped my mouth shut and closed my eyes tight.

  Holding my breath, I told the device, “Answer call.”

  “Carly?”

  I sighed at the ceiling. Who else would it be? I was the only human who ever answered this number, the one he dialed dozens of times during the day. He had my name in his contacts as “Karlee,” even though I’d corrected him maybe a hundred times. I’d given up. Hell, it sounded the same. And it could be worse. He could have dubbed me Gopher, or Personal Biotch. Maybe Woman I Drive Insane.

  No, it’s the cupcake. That’s the one causing me to lose my mind right now.

  “Did you find the ring?”

  Define find.

  I dug my hand into the sink some more. Bracing my other hand on the edge of the sink, I thrust my all into the search. More slime on my arm. I was so short I was on my tiptoes to even reach in. Open, muggy air… Oh, the tip of a dulled blade. It’s gotta be in here.

  “Uh. Ye-well-uh…” Squinting, I studied my forearm stuck in the drain. Technically, yes. I did locate the ring. It was in the sink. Since I hadn’t turned on the disposal yet, it had to be sitting in the murky bottom. So, it wasn’t within my possession. It would be.

  “Is that a yes or a no?” Richard demanded.

  “It will be a yes.”

  I could see the huff that he exhaled. The same dear-Jesus-why-isn’t-everything-going-my-way-yet huff he executed daily. “Carly, that ring needs to be kept in a safe place until Felicia has it on her hand.”

  “Uh-huh.” I winced, squeezing my arm as far as it would go. My fingertips rubbed against bumpy, wet metal. The bottom. Now I just needed to do a little Mars Rovering in here and find it.

  “I don’t understand why it was misplaced to begin with.”

  I smirked at the phone. Why? It was simple. He’d ordered a lunch for his beloved and thought it best for her to dine alone and encounter his token of affection. Back when I was proposed to, years ago, the trend was for the guy to get down on one knee, blather about romantic BS and promises he’d never keep—maybe shed a tear for theatrical persuasion—and hold up a little square jewelry box. Wait, no. That hadn’t gone completely out of style. Rings in cupcakes were just as common as written proposals in fortune cookies. Yet people still typically asked their significant other for marriage in person.

  Not my eccentric billionaire of an employer, though. Richard Young III had to be “original” and deliberately not be there to propose personally. Something about paying homage to her independence while he asked her to marry him. She was supposed to bite into the decadent dessert, find the ring and the note he’d had printed on the bottom of the liner, and she’d eagerly agree to become the fourth Mrs. Richard Young III’s bride to be. Tada!

  Instead, she’d sniffed the stupid cupcake, decided it wasn’t gluten-free, vegan, locally sourced, and non-GMO—all criteria she’d decided to follow starting now—and smashed that damn thing top-down to the plate.

  You tell me how I was supposed to have known there was a twenty-carat ring inside. He’d only explained his ridiculous proposal scheme after I’d started clearing out her lunch.

  “Perhaps the next time you propose, you should be there and make sure—”

  “This is the last time I’m proposing.”

  Of course. Because the hippie-wannabe millennial twenty-six years his junior was the One. ‘Scuse me for forgetting—the dude had a crowd of exes.

  “And since it’s your fault the ring was misplaced, I am counting on you to get it to her.”

  But I don’t want to marry her! And how was it solely my fault? I couldn’t assume what was going on in his head. Richard wasn’t that crazy. Odd, but not batty. His oddities kept my job as his personal assistant entertaining most days. Like the ones that didn’t require me blindly groping in yesterday’s discarded food. Even so, this task was falling under stupid shit my boss makes me do.

  “O…kay.”

  He hung up at my answer.

  Asshole. “No, that’s the cupcake.” If I blamed an inanimate dessert, I couldn’t cry about it.

  I put all my weight on my left elbow and slid my right arm further in. Now three fingers scraped the wet bottom inside the disposal, yielding nothing. So far. I hadn’t even run the water for more than ten seconds before Richard first called and asked how Felicia liked her ring. It couldn’t have rinsed down into the pipes yet.

  “Lexi calling,” my phone announc
ed.

  Not now… I pouted at the device. My best friend and I weren’t clingy by nature. Sure, we chatted and texted during downtime when we were both on the clock. Had I been doing normal assistant crap, I wouldn’t have hesitated to answer. Her being significantly preggo had me saying, “Answer call,” without a pause.

  “Hey, hey, hey,” she said.

  Too calm. All right, so this wasn’t the my water broke and we’re on the way to the hospital if he can ever drive faster than a grandma call. “Kinda busy right now…”

  Her exaggerated sigh was airy. “Damn. I was hoping to shoot the shit.”

  “Watch your language,” her husband Jack said in the background.

  “Bored?” I asked, straining to grope the moist container under the sink. “Nervous?”

  “Bored. We’re at the last Lamaze class. Teacher’s giving one of us big ol’ cows some one-on-one lecture. Whatcha doing?”

  I rolled my eyes. Bored at Lamaze? I was taking outlined notes and hanging on the instructor’s every word when I’d gone before having my daughter. Bored? “I’m working.”

  “Anything fun today?”

  “I’m trying to get this ring out of the garbage disposal and—”

  As I spoke the word, my ring caught on one of the blade tips. It wasn’t sharp enough to pierce my skin, but it was hooked enough that it securely snagged the only piece of jewelry I wore. A tungsten band with a Slytherin logo on the front. A gift from my Potterhead child.

  “Oh. No.”

  “What?” Lexi asked. By the tone of her voice, it seemed she’d perked up.

  “I’m stuck.” I tugged on the ring hard enough that the band dug painfully into my finger. Then I lowered my hand as much as I could and attempted to spin the inactive blade arm. I maneuvered my trapped arm and hand in every way possible to free my ring.

  “In a garbage disposal?”

  “Yes!” Goddammit. It was snagged for good.

  Dancing my fingers side by side, I could feel my Hogwarts ring slipping lower. No. That wasn’t an option either. I couldn’t lose that slim circle of metal. Violet would be devastated. I refused. If my hand was coming out of this sink—I tugged on my arm, checking I could retreat—it was going to be with both damn rings.

  “Oh. God. Damn. It.” I slapped my free hand to the countertop and growled. “Who gets stuck in a garbage disposal?”

  “You, I guess.”

  I ground my molars and smirked at my phone. “Look, girl, I gotta call you back. I need help.” My Slytherin ring eased even lower and I crooked my knuckle to keep it with me.

  “Call for security to come help or some—”

  “No!” My torso slipped against the edge of the counter as I bellowed it. A shoe fell off the foot that was dangling in the air as I splayed myself over the ledge to reach.

  “Oh, come on,” Lexi scolded.

  I didn’t need her reprimand. Maybe it was childish and stupid, but I would never call for security to help me. If I requested a favor from Maverick Green, I wouldn’t hear the end of it.

  “I still don’t get why you’ve got such a problem with the man.”

  I smirked at the phone. Of course she wouldn’t. She didn’t have to work with the jerk—in office spaces adjacent to each other. She didn’t have to live in the same apartment and run into him in the lobby. She didn’t have to suffer being in the cocky bastard’s presence day in and day out.

  “I think he’s nice.”

  Sure, he’d probably charmed her in passing during the handful of times she’d visited since Violet and I moved to Orlando. That was Mav’s thing. Charming every single woman he encountered. Or at least it had to be his goal in life. With the string of chicks he’d dated or brought home, and with the simpering sighs from office personnel he’d issue in his wake, I’d witnessed enough. Quite frankly, it was ridiculous. Didn’t they all realize he was just a tease?

  I smirked. “Hormones must be addling your brain.”

  “Or yours are all dried up and have been shriveling you into a man-hater since you signed the divorce papers…how many years ago, again?”

  I seethed in silence. I wasn’t giving her the satisfaction.

  “You know, Violet was telling me about some article she read.”

  I’m never going to let that girl subscribe to National Geographic ever again.

  Lex prattled on about what my science-geek daughter had learned. “There’s this species of dragonflies that play dead when a male is nearby. How’s that for avoiding—”

  “All right, all right,” Jack interrupted in the background. “We are in a class, Lex.”

  “Oh… You were one of those kinds of people in school, huh?”

  Still fighting my way in the garbage disposal, I tuned out Lexi and Jack starting to bicker in a disgustingly adorable, sweet way. I didn’t need Jack’s refereeing. Lexi, whether she’d admit it or not, had grown a sassier streak while expecting. I had no time to give to her now, anyway.

  “And I’ve got to get unstuck.” I bit back a whimper when I twisted my finger nearly around the blade. “Pay attention to the teacher, Lexi. Popping out a kid isn’t always fun.”

  Her sigh evolved into a groan before it was over.

  Uh-huh. Just you wait, girlfriend. She’d be wishing she’d at least listened when the time came.

  “As long as I don’t poop when he or she is born.”

  I closed my eyes as she said it, my pinkie dabbing into something in the disposal that resembled a mushed turd. Oh, God, this is disgusting.

  “Can’t promise you won’t.”

  She groaned. “That’s so gross!”

  No. This is. “Pay attention and call me later,” I said.

  She hung up after a hastily whispered goodbye—likely busted talking in class by the teacher, something she’d done numerous times in school. Free to focus on my dilemma, I hoisted myself higher onto the counter and attempted to spin my arm and hopefully my hand. Standing on one foot, I grunted. Now I was full and well trapped. My brilliant move shoved the Slytherin ring tighter on the metal. My elbow bumped into my phone.

  “All right. Are you shitting me? Seriously?”

  “No, I am not shitting you,” the smartphone replied. “Would you like me to locate the nearest restroom?”

  “Smartass,” I mumbled. As I wiggled my fingers, though, I felt the barest trace of a small circle. My movement only shoved it out of reach.

  “Are you joking?”

  The phone replied, “No, I am not joking. Would you like me to locate a comedy?”

  “No!” I knocked my forehead to my bicep. “No, I do not need to find someone else’s jokes. My life is the most hilarious episode out there. Look up joke and you’ll find—”

  “Searching for the definition, of, joke—”

  “Oh, my God! Shut up!” I swiped my arm across the granite and slid the phone to the opposite side. I’d never get used to the damn thing Richard insisted I use for pandering to his wishes.

  “You goddamn cupcake!” I yelled at the sink as I doubled on my efforts.

  The soft click of the kitchen door shutting behind me paralyzed me. Didn’t chase away my frustration, though. Nope. Because the voice that sounded only peeved me more.

  “Well, I’ve seen and heard some crazy things in my life, but this is new.”

  Mav. That deep, drawling, gravelly voice of his. Teasing dripping from every syllable.

  Then his footsteps nearing me as he strode across the tiled floor.

  Coming up right behind me.

  I squeezed my eyes shut.

  “Now, I know you can be feisty. But what’d some cupcake ever do to you?”

  Right there. He had to be right behind me as I remained lodged in the drain to the disposal. My ass right out there, jutting up as I draped myself over the counter.

  Oh, all days to wear this skirt… I inhaled as deep as I could and coached myself not to lose my cool. If he was going to be a perv and try to get a peep of my panties, whatever. As long as
he’d do something to get this damn ring out—

  “Just… help me.”

  His amused scoff tossed more gasoline to my anger. “You? Help you?”

  Through set teeth, I readied to lash out. The fact he stayed behind me raised my hackles. Like he had to have the upper hand, staying out of my sight.

  “Little Miss Independent asking for my help?”

  I wouldn’t have any more enamel left on my teeth. “Please?”

  Finally, he stepped closer. He came next to me, propped his lean frame against the edge, and crossed his muscled arms. “Well, I’ve never been able to say no when a lady begs.”

  Two

  Mav

  “Beg?”

  She narrowed her bright baby blues on me to enforce an arctic iciness. Too bad for her, I was immune. Had been since the week she’d moved into the building and took up a job here. It’d take a lot more to get me shaking in fear than some of her sass. Her attitude only egged me to push even more buttons.

  Too fun.

  “I’m not begging. I don’t beg anyone for anything.”

  I wasn’t informed of every detail there was to learn about this woman, but I knew she didn’t beg or plead. Carly Winston was the definition of Get out of my way while I do it.

  I leaned over, examining her forearm disappearing into the sink drain. Yep. This was a new one. Like the woman herself, an unexpected incident.

  “I’m deluding myself that you might be a decent human being and want to assist a coworker in dire straits.”

  Delusion wasn’t necessary. I’d assist. Not before I poked a little fun out of the moment, though. “Looks like you’re in a garbage disposal. Not straits.”

  She huffed and licked those plump lips that so easily snapped at me. “No. Really.”

  I cocked my head at her and waited. After thirty seconds, I let my smile grow, all the while her scowl deepened. Patience wasn’t a strength she cared for. Even her pissy expression didn’t mar her spunky allure.