by Sylvia Frost
Normally, Cynthia found the sight of the clean offices soothing. But normally she wasn’t lugging a suitcase stuffed to the gills with half her wardrobe. Normally, she wasn’t homeless.
Cynthia rolled the suitcase behind her as she walked past the other businesses that shared office space with Boxes & Broom. There was Three Bears and a Moving Truck Company, Lion Linguistics, and of course, Merrymen Security.
It was the last door that Cynthia dreaded passing the most. Robin Loxley was one of her oldest friends from prep school. Although friend might’ve been too strong a word. Cynthia winced as the wheels of her suitcase squeaked against the wooden floor.
“Cynthia, Cynthia, Cynthia.”
Her wince turned into a scowl as she glared at the wily redhead leaning against the doorframe that led to the section of the floor designated for her company. “Can I help you, Loxely?”
Loxely gestured theatrically. “It may be that I am beyond help.”
Isn’t that the truth?
“I’m sorry about the rent. I’ll sign the check today.” Cynthia slid the suitcase behind her.
“Oh, don’t worry about that.” Loxely waved dismissively and slumped further against the doorframe. Considering the way his rumpled green shirt clashed with his red hair, you’d never have guessed that he was worth a cool thirty million. “I don’t collect rent until a company is profitable, public, or morally questionable. Other than my equity stake.”
“Right, so then why did you email me again about payment?
“Marian.” He wagged his finger. “You mentioned you might put a good word in for me.”
“I never promised you that.”
“It was implied.”
“You always think every friend of Marian is implying that they’ll help you in your totally hopeless attempts to date her.”
“Aren’t they though?” He raised his eyebrows and lowered his chin. “Aren’t they, my dear Cynthia?”
Cynthia debated just barreling right through him. Loxely was skinnier than she was. However, Cynthia could tell that under his video game T-shirt, he was all muscle. She decided against a full frontal attack.
She put her hands on her hips and glared harder. “I have had zero sleep, and I currently have zero fucks to give about your love life, Loxely. If you don’t want the rent then let me pass.”
Loxely blew air out through his lips, sending a strand of his red hair out of his eyes. “Fine.” He leaned out of the way and opened the door behind him with a flourish.
And let all the chaos in.
The staff was huddled in the center of the office around something and whispering. Cynthia swore that she even saw some money change hands. What they were watching, Cynthia couldn’t exactly see, but she did hear a muffled argument. The only employee actually working was their CFO, aka accountant, Hikari Waters, who was playing with spreadsheets at her cluttered desk, humming a melancholy Korean pop song.
“What is going on?” Cynthia said.
Her voice wasn’t loud enough to register in the din. However, as Cynthia rolled up to the gaggle of employees, they parted to let her in. She realized then what had gotten their attention. In the center of the circle, Marian, their lead engineer, and Emma, their graphic designer, were facing off. Marian, with her ripped jeans and bluntly cut bangs, was holding up her iPad, showing the company website to Emma, who was smiling brightly in full-on innocent angel mode. Her Shirley Temple curly, golden hair helped.
Marian stabbed her finger on the corner of the iPad. “I needed the logo in a square aspect ratio. This is a rectangle.”
Emma exhaled, clearly trying to remain calm. “We’ve been through this, Marian. The branding identity won’t work as a square.”
Marian rolled her eyes. “Yes, because then, God forbid, maybe our logo would look less like a pair of boobs.”
“Hello, Marian.” Cynthia stopped her rolling suitcase with a pronounced thud. “Emma. Can I help you, ladies?”
Everyone turned to look at her at once and fell silent.
Cynthia was mollified, but only slightly. “Does anyone want to tell me why we’re not working?”
“Emma and I were discussing the logo,” Marian said curtly .
Emma rolled her eyes and began twirling one of her almost infinite number of tight blonde curls around her fingertip, but she said nothing. Marian started to explain, but Cynthia interrupted her.
“Marian, we decided that we’re sticking with the logo the way it is. That’s what last Friday’s meeting was for. You said you could accommodate a rectangular logo on the top of the webpage.” Cynthia took in a deep breath, but the effect backfired, and she found herself near tears instead of calmed. The pain in her leg was back again, and she had to lean against the handle of her suitcase just to stay upright. Lucille was right. I am running this company into the ground. I am just a spoiled little rich slut.
Cynthia looked upward into the bright florescent lights, knowing that if she didn’t, she would start to bawl.
“Cynthia?” Marian’s normally direct and monotone voice was small.
“I’m fine. I just haven’t slept,” Cynthia said. She sighed, and it ended up more like a shudder. She faced reality again.
Everyone was looking at her, of course. Not just Emma and the rest of the staff, but Hikari had taken her headphones off, swiveled her chair around, and was frowning with no small amount of concern.
“I need to see all the top-level members of the company in the conference room,” Cynthia said.
Dead silence. Cynthia wanted the noise back. Everyone, even no-social-skills Marian, was staring at her as if they were toddlers and she was their mother, but this time, she had been the one to have the tantrum.
“Now.”
Most of the rank and file dispersed. Marian, Hikari, and Emma went to the conference room, but one woman stayed behind. She was short and large, larger even than Cynthia, who considered herself squarely in the plus-size camp. The woman dressed well, not flamboyantly, but in jewel tones with strategic stripes of leather that highlighted her curves and made her look much younger than her forty-three and some years.
“Cynthia.”
“Yes, Eliza?”
Eliza was one their newer hires, but had really done a spectacular job with their clients. Cynthia had given her raises accordingly, which Eliza desperately needed with her three kids at home.
Before Cynthia could stop her, Eliza grabbed Cynthia and squeezed her into a very unprofessional hug. It felt so good she almost cried. She couldn’t remember the last time she had been hugged by someone. She barely knew Eliza, but in that moment, she didn’t care.
After a pat on the back, Eliza let her go, and looked her over carefully, like she was looking for boo-boos to fix. She nodded when she finally decided she didn’t see any. “Mom thing. You looked like you could use a hug. After all you’ve done for me, that’s the least I could do.’”
“T-thanks, Eliza” Cynthia stuttered.
“Go get em’.” Eliza pumped her first up in a muted cheer, and then returned to her workstation.
Now that the woman’s hefty warmth was gone, a cold kernel of doubt was grinding against her ribs. As Eliza walked away, Cynthia’s smile withered completely.
It wasn’t just her company she’d lose if she couldn’t save Boxes & Broom. People’s, good people, lives and families were at stake.
Chapter 19
The great thing about being a wolf was that you didn’t have choices. Not really.
Hungry? Eat.
Lustful? Fuck.
Angry…
Well, if you were angry.
You killed.
Rex lowered his body to the ground, snarling at Bane, who was still twirling the shoe around his pinky with the dexterity of a drummer playing with his sticks.
“Growl away, little wolf. That won’t help you find your mate,” Bane said, holding out the shoe in front of him, gazing out at it in mock fascination, like it was a skull and he was Hamlet. “If you were to
say, transfer a couple of hundred million dollars my way…” The shoe swung a full revolution. “That might help.”
That was all the opening Rex needed.
He sprung upward, leaping not only over the stream, but also over the waterfall itself, to land directly onto Bane’s chest, pushing the panther back against the bench until he grunted. Rex smiled inside as his claws tore through the silk of Bane’s suit. Only a little more pressure and he’d hit skin. Bane’s dark brown eyes were wide, but Rex couldn’t smell any fear on him. Although it was hard to smell anything through the rancid odor his cat-ness.
“What the bloody hell are you doing?” Bane spluttered.
Rex snapped at his nose. He wanted to bite it off, just as he had destroyed the phone in his apartment, but he managed to restrain himself. Better give Bane a chance to tell him where his mate was first.
“You idiot; you can’t do this here,” Bane hissed through a gritted jaw.
Rex knew what Bane really meant was that Bane couldn’t shift here. Rex was large for a wolf, but still at a distance could be mistaken for a dog. There would be no mistaking a giant black panther.
Rex dug his claws further into Bane’s chest, scraping through skin until he felt the wet warmth of blood.
To his credit, Bane didn’t scream; he barely even winced, before trying to pry Rex off with his bare hands, as if he were a naughty puppy.
Bane’s attempt didn’t last long because Rex’s teeth lunged for his fingers. He almost caught the fool’s pinky, glinting with a golden ring inscribed with the same signet as his cufflinks. A spinning wheel. The logo wasn’t just for Bane’s ride-sharing app but for his whole conglomerate, one spoke per subsidiary of his company. Rex’s wolf’s mind struggled with the complexity of the design, and Bane used Rex’s distraction to scramble sideways off the side of the bench. But he wasn’t able to dislodge Rex completely. As a result, they both tumbled to the ground.
Bane managed to squirm out from underneath Rex, before rolling upright in a motion so sudden a human eye would’ve missed it. Rex whirled to face the cat, ears twitching. Mud and loose dirt speckled his fur, but Rex didn’t risk Bane trying something by taking the time to shake his pelt clean.
Bane’s panther instincts on the other hand apparently demanded immediate grooming. He frowned down at the puncture wounds leaking red down his torn white button-down, as if it more offended by his ruined shirt than the attack itself. “Wolves…” He shook out his wrist, as if they’d just had a fistfight. “So quick to violence and so slow to get a joke. Or maybe that’s just Americans. Either way.”
Rex growled, his wide tongue darting out to catch a bit of foam dripping from the corner of his dark mouth, but he didn’t attack Bane again. He didn’t have to. Rex had the upper hand. Bane had no weapon and he couldn’t risk shifting without being seen. He would tell Rex what he needed to know. Or Rex would kill him.
“Stop yipping at me like I’m a Bond villain, Rex.” Bane tried to shoot Rex one of his impish grins, but it came out more of a grimace. “I haven’t kidnapped your mate, and I’m certainly not ransoming her. Not really.”
Rex lowered down to his haunches and imperiously nodded once, as if to say ‘Explain.’
Flicking off a splotch of blood from his hand into the river, Bane began, “I met her stepsister last night. Reagan.”
The stepsister. So that had been the girl in the golden gown. Interesting.
“Reagan mentioned her stepsister was dancing with you, and even human eyes could see the sparks flying between you two. So when your mate’s name came up as a request for a ride share on Spinning Wheels, I thought I’d do her the favor of giving her a ride home from the CEO himself.”
Rex’s lips pulled away to reveal his fangs as his growl tapered into a snarl. The points of his claws, still wet with Bane’s blood, pierced through stiff spring earth.
“Oh, calm down.” Bane waved away Rex’s concerns. “I didn’t kidnap her. Just offered our little Cynthia Cinders some friendly advice.”
Cynthia Cinders.
Her full name shot a straight path through the tangled synapses of his wolf’s brain, and his clumsy lips tried to stretch to form the syllables. It came out as a dull whine. Bane’s winged eyebrows swept downward, as if he could smell Rex’s weakness. But it was a trick. Cats had inferior noses.
Rex narrowed his own eyes in turn. As a human, he had more than enough practice hiding his emotions, but in his wolf form he was raw. “From what she communicated to me, I gathered there’d been some sort of—” Bane gestured vaguely “—misunderstanding. So when she exited my cab and threw her shoe, I thought I’d do you the kind favor of retrieving it.”
Maybe it was the sun, slipping behind the trees only half-clothed in young leaves, that shadowed his profile, sharpening his cheekbones into razors and making his dark brown eyes glint a warning gold. Or maybe it was something within Bane, a weary coldness that had seen demons in the eyes of men and monsters alike, but instead of fighting them, had stolen all of their best tricks, leaving the heroism to the more foolhardy.
Rex had spent so long pretending to be a human, that he sometimes not only forgot he wasn’t one, but also that many of the shifters he associated with weren’t either.
“Seeing,” Bane continued, his voice quiet enough that even with his enhanced hearing Rex had to swivel his ears to catch his words, “as you’re a wolf. I’d assumed that if I gave you the shoe, you’d be able to track her with it.” He sneered. “I’d also assumed you’d be grateful. Not attack me”
Rex barked once in an equally low reply, careful enough of the human hearing that even the pigeons perched in the nearby tree didn’t fly away.
“I wouldn’t have taken the money even if you’d offered it to me, wolf.” Bane smiled thinly before flicking another line of blood away. This one to the ground.
It was disconcerting how little Bane seemed to care about the fact that Rex had just attacked him.
As a human, Rex found Bane difficult to read, but as a wolf, understanding Bane was impossible. What Rex did know was that Bane wasn’t lying when he said he wouldn’t have taken the money. Now that his panic over his mate had faded somewhat, Rex couldn’t believe he had fallen for Bane’s joke.
Everyone knew Bane didn’t deal in cash. He dealt in favors. In fact, Bane Stilskin had told him on more than one occasion that he considered money to be a more diluted form of the currency of power. Why would he ask for a hundred million dollars when he had a billion of his own? No, much better to ask for nothing, and then call in the favor later. Better a blank check.
Rex cursed at himself for being such a fool and giving into Bane’s bait. It was his damn wolf’s fault. He couldn’t think.
He felt Bane’s eyes on him like a teacher analyzing a pupil to make sure the lesson had sank in. Bane had given Rex Cynthia’s last name, which doubled as a way to find her, and now he owed him. Quite possibly his life.
More at himself than at Bane, Rex snarled.
Satisfied, Bane smirked and buttoned up his shirt, smoothing out the tears over his now completely healed, if blood-crusted chest, as if they were nothing more than wrinkles. “I suppose you’ll want this?”
Casually, he tossed Rex the shoe.
It flew upward, spinning end over end.
Spinning.
Spinning.
As it glided through the air, Rex was taken back to the first moment he had met Cynthia, in a forest denser and truer than Central Park’s. Even then, he’d known what a disaster letting his wolf out would be, but the impact of seeing her, with those tight jean shorts and the “kiss-me-I-dare-you” purse of her lips, had ripped the animal out from between his legs. He’d lost control and growled at her. Then she ran.
Just a second of that noise had earned him ten years of anger at himself. His wolf had driven her away. He had been so sure of it.
But what if he was wrong? Last night it wasn’t him nipping her on the neck that made her run—it was after they had consummate
d the bond. After he had complete control.
Gods! There was something holding her back. Something keeping her suspended in the air, just a hair’s breadth out of reach. Twirling and twirling, like at the ball during their dance. Something kept her running away.
But in this body, he couldn’t seem to figure out what it was. All he could do was stare up at that damn shoe. If he wanted his mate, to know her, to love her as he craved, he had to change back.
Rex knew what he had to do. He reached for a knotting worry in his muscles that his wolf’s form couldn’t comprehend. Pain grew, first in his muzzle and then his bones as they pulled and broke. This change wasn’t the quick reshaping of flesh to fur in a flight from fear and panic. No, if anything, to keep his bones growing and fur shrinking, Rex had to embrace the agony and uncertainty. It felt like it took years. But by the time it was done Rex’s mind was clear enough to realize it had only been minutes.
When he was fully a man, he was naked and on his knees in front of Bane, his hair draping over his face, limp. In front of his much shorter human nose was the shoe. It had landed just on the edge of the book, its toe dipping with the current. Rex snatched it, and clutched it against his bare chest already tingling with gooseflesh from the nippy, spring morning air.
“I’m going to find her,” was all Rex could manage. “Now.”
Bane looked at him curiously. “You might need to borrow a suit.”
Chapter 20
Reasons Why You Have to Make This Work
oProve Lucille wrong.
oKeep your employees employed.
oBecause you are not your father.
oBecause you can.
oYou really can.
The atmosphere in the conference room was tense, and Cynthia hadn’t even said a word yet. While the space was expertly decorated with a refurbished table she had found at an antique store, painted white just like the rest of her office, the chairs were standard issue. Natural light poured in through the windowed walls, but even that couldn’t ease the mood.