“Get another phone, for Christ’s sake. That’s what I do. Separate work and home. It’s about time Paul learned that his employees have a life of their own.” Juliet stood up, the groceries now safely corralled in the brown paper bag. She reached out and tucked a lock of Cady’s red hair behind her ear. “How long have you been home?”
“Ten minutes,” Cady said, miserably.
“Right, then inside. At least have a sandwich and a cup of coffee before you head back out.”
“But…”
“But nothing, Cady. If you leave now, you’ll be stuck in the rush hour traffic anyway. Eat and get a shot of caffeine inside you. Paul won’t know the difference, just tell him there was an accident on the beltway.”
Cady relented. Her friend was right. It sucked that she couldn’t afford to live closer to work but the rent prices were astronomical in DC. She’d been thrilled to move in with Juliet, as the rent had come in one hundred dollars under budget.
The two women had shared for almost a year now and had become firm friends immediately, even though they couldn’t have been more different. Juliet was tall, model thin, and had long blonde hair that fell in perfect waves to her waist. She was one of those women who was constantly busy. Between her work as a nurse in a private clinic and her hectic social life, she never stopped, but she handled everything in stride, never looking like she had a hair out of place.
Cady, on the other hand, was a frazzled red-head, whose hair was almost always making its escape from her permanent ponytail. Cady wasn’t even in enough control to coordinate her socks let alone a whole outfit. She had zero social life, partly due to her needy boss, and partly due to some unpleasantness a couple of years ago. After an internet troll stalked her across social media, and then into her actual life, Cady had lost confidence. Now she only socialized with one or two close friends who accepted her need to avoid anything online and who would put up with her last minute cancellations.
After reluctantly following Juliet’s advice, Cady arrived back at work an hour and fifteen minutes later. Paul was on his hands and knees next to the photocopier, the toner cartridge rolling on the floor next to him, and all the compartments opened up.
“Thank God, Cady, where’ve you been?”
She ran in and dropped her bag on the table. “Sorry, there was a fender bender on the Beltway. You’re lucky I’m here at all, the traffic is backed up for miles.”
He muttered something in reply, but as he now had his head inside the machine, she missed it and decided not to ask him to repeat. “So, um, what can I help you with?”
She looked around his office and saw nothing to cue her into the emergency. Usually, if a project had gone south, Paul’s desk and half the floor would be littered with papers as he tried to sift through the information to see if anything was salvageable. Today, the desk was clear and the rest of the room—except for the area around the photocopier—all looked neat.
“Fuck.” He muttered and crawled out of the bowels of the machine. “Damn photocopier hates me.” Paul stood up, he was a disheveled version of himself. His tie had been loosened and was hanging at an angle. Gone was the expensive jacket to his Armani suit and there were toner smudges up the sleeves and on the front of his white dress shirt.
He glared at the photocopier with a very large canister in his hand. Cady took it from him. “Are you trying to put this in there?”
Paul ran his fingers through his hair, his cheeks pinking a little. For an architect, he was pretty clueless about anything mechanical. “Yeah, the fucking thing won’t fit.”
Cady tried not to laugh. “That’s because this is the canister to the large scale machine in the other room.” She went to the supply cabinet and swapped it out for the correct toner cartridge, and came back to the machine. “And it goes in here, not there.” She lifted up the top of the machine and quickly replaced the empty one. After she clicked the top back down, she ran the test program and got down on her knees to tackle the abandoned chaos Paul left in his wake. It was mainly storage items and supplies for the copier and office. She quickly stacked the spare reams of paper and other sundries Paul had scattered everywhere back inside the cabinet.
When she got up off the floor, Paul was back at his desk sorting through papers. He held out his hand, and she took the sheet from it. “Run that through the copier, please. I need two.”
It was all she could do not to roll her eyes. Seriously? The machine is just there… oh, never mind. “Sure, while I do this, why don’t you fill me in on the emergency.”
Cady couldn’t help but notice the paper she was copying was an itinerary for a safari trip to Africa. Lucky bastard. The closest she’d get to a safari would be watching ants going across the balcony on her fourth floor apartment. She wondered how Paul could afford all these luxury breaks he was always going on, then concluded it was probably because he paid his staff as if his surname was Scrooge. She handed him back the copies and the original. He quickly scrawled names on top of the sheets and gave the one labelled ‘Cady’ to her. On the others, she could see one was for him and the other for someone named Libby—no doubt the latest girlfriend.
“That’s for next week. I don’t want to be contacted unless it’s an emergency.”
“Speaking of emergencies, are you going to tell me why you called me back into work?”
He looked up at her and pushed his glasses back on his nose. The action left a smudge of toner along his cheek. The guy was very handsome, and filthy rich, although most of his money didn’t come from the business but from Daddy’s bank account. He was the hot topic in the breakroom. His almost all female staff was totally in love with him. Cady suspected quite a few of them, and quite possibly the new girl whose name escaped her, had taken a tumble with him in bed. Not Cady, though. She had more sense than to fall for his charms. Not that Paul ever tried to charm her.
Paul had a type. Leggy brunettes to be precise. She had never met this ‘Libby’, but she was sure she could pick her out in a police line-up. Seriously, every girlfriend the guy ever had was a doppelgänger for his first wife, Elizabeth.
Hmm, and now that she thought about it, they often had similar names, too… Bethany, Lizzie, Lilibet, Liz , Elsi, Betty, and she was pretty sure there had been at least two separate women called Liza. Weren’t they all derivatives of Elizabeth? Yeah, Paul had a type, and Cady definitely wasn’t it.
She hovered in front of Paul’s desk, wishing he would hurry up and tell her why she’d been summoned all this way.
“Oh, the copier ran out of ink.” He didn’t even look up at her as he explained, instead he focused his attention on his laptop.
“Yes, I know, I just fixed it for you. Now, what else do you need me to do?” She watched him save the document that she had made copies of on his computer. “Um, you do know you can print more than one copy of a document, don’t you? There’s really no need to use the photocopier, except for making batches of booklets when we put the job proposals together.”
“I can?” He squinted at the screen and she went around the desk and leaned over him.
Cady took control of the mouse pad. How could he not know this? “Here, like this. After you select print, there is an option.”
He looked genuinely surprised at the drop-down menu. “Oh, right. Yeah, I forgot about that.” He stood up and pulled on his jacket. “Um, are you going to be here long?”
Cady frowned. “Well, I suppose I’ll be here as long as you need me.”
He grinned back at her. “Great, well, seeing as we are done, I’ll walk you to your car.”
“What? Paul, you summoned me back here, what did you want me to do?”
“Fix the photocopier.” He picked up his briefcase and the two itineraries.
Cady was speechless—which was probably a good thing because if she had said something it would have most definitely been to tell Paul he could shove his fifteen dollar an hour PA job up his damn uptight rectum! Or, better still, she might have offered to insert
the fucking safari itinerary up there herself—and then set fire to it!
“Paul? You ruined my evening for this?”
“Ruined? Why? Did you have plans? You can stop and start Netflix you know?”
She ground her teeth in utter frustration. “For all you knew, I may have had a date…”
He chuckled. “Well, I don’t think there is any danger of that, do you?” He tossed her the keys to the office. “Lock up, will you? I’m in a hurry. I do have a date, and I’d prefer not to keep her waiting, if you know what I mean.” He winked at Cady and then disappeared out the door.
Dumbstruck and shaking with fury, Cady only trusted herself to lock up the offices after she heard the elevator ping.
Fuck Paul, fuck this job, and fuck my cowardly ass for never standing up to this excuse for a boss! The mantra she uttered as she took the stairs down to the garage didn’t bring her any satisfaction, but it did prevent her from doing something stupid like, say, handing in her damn notice.
Driving home, tears stung at her eyes. It was past eight o’clock, and she’d wasted two hours of her Friday night on a wild goose chase. But what hurt the most was that her boss was right. There was no date waiting for her, and she doubted there ever would be. Meeting the man of her dreams—well, meeting any man, actually—was proving very difficult. If it wasn’t Paul’s demanding drop-everything-I-need-you attitude preventing her going out, it was her own wariness and fear of getting burned, crippling her.
Since her stalker incident two years ago, it was difficult to trust anyone, and she had banished social media from her life. Juliet, and most of her other friends, used dating apps, but Cady couldn’t bring herself to sign up for one. Of course, she could meet a guy the old fashioned way, but that would actually mean she had to go out to places where men frequented. Hmm, perhaps she was destined to dedicate her life to rescuing cats instead.
Cady pulled up at the stop light, and her gaze went to a strip mall. The neon sign on the AT&T store winked at her through the tree canopy and as Cady tapped out a rhythm on her steering wheel, Juliet’s suggestion from earlier came back to her. Damn, Paul! Her roommate was right. She needed separation. Checking her mirror, she reversed four feet and turned into the mall.
Cady arrived home just after nine with a brand new shiny iPhone in a pristine white box. She slumped onto the sofa and excitedly pulled her new phone out of the packaging and set about transferring her contacts. Once she’d done that, she deleted Paul and a couple of colleagues from the list, and then sent a mass text to her entire contacts, giving them her new number. A second too late she realized she’d texted both the courier service and a local taxi company her new number too. Oh well, too late to do anything about that now.
It was amazing how liberating that felt. From now on, Cady was turning off Paul at six p.m. Guilt settled into her stomach—or perhaps seven—after all it wasn’t too unreasonable for him to have questions that she could answer in a minute or two. Ugh, get a grip, Cady. Be strong!
Several texts buzzed back. One was from her mother confirming she received the new number, and another from Juliet, which was a gif of someone emptying a bucket of water over a guy at a desk who was wearing a CEO badge. Cady laughed and found she felt strangely free. Now, if she could tweak some other things in her thinking, perhaps she could even manage to create some sort of social life!
3
Miles
Fountain, Colorado
Miles hiked up his jeans while he watched Lauren dress. A lot could be said about a no-strings romp with an older woman. They knew what they wanted, that was for sure, and from his experience, it usually wasn’t the hearts and flowers kind of sex. They had a physical need, and they were clear about that from the start. Call him jaded, but he liked things black and white.
Lauren patted her hair back in place and sidled over to him. Miles was laying back against some hay bales, his jeans still unfastened and his shirt crumpled on the straw next to him. Throughout the whole escapade, he’d kept both his boots and his hat on—a request from Ms. Clayton, which he had pandered to. She leaned in and kissed him—just a peck, signifying the end of their relationship. “I can rely on you to be discreet?”
“Yes, ma’am.” Miles accentuated his drawl, and raised his hat. He knew his place, and the last thing on his mind was drama. If he’d wanted drama, he’d have stayed with his ex-wife.
He waited for Lauren to leave before he finished dressing, then wandered into the tack room. He checked the notice board in there, scanning the lists outlining the feeding regime for each of the horses, and other step-by-step job information. They were there for the summer hired help, as a way to make sure stuff got done. Spying a note from Caleb, listing some tack he hadn’t got to cleaning, he pulled it off the board and lifted down the saddle soap, rags, and brushes. Miles enjoyed the mindless cleaning and polishing of leather, usually finding it a therapeutic way to end the day. But, for whatever reason today, Miles’ mind kept wandering back to his ex.
It had been just over two years now, but it still stung like a bitch. In hindsight, it was a train wreck waiting to happen, and he should have seen it coming. He should have listened to everyone around him, but, most of all, he should have heeded the warning from his sister, Harriet, and kept right the fuck away from her friends.
Clarissa and his sister roomed at college. Inseparable friends that did everything together. Miles met Clarissa one summer when Harriet brought her home on a visit, and he’d fallen in lust with Clarissa then and there. She ticked all his boxes—blonde, leggy, dressed classy, and—as he was to later find out to his cost—as high maintenance as they came. Then again, he always was attracted to the same type of women. Clarissa was a Mrs. Clayton-in-training, and she only hung around long enough to eat through Miles’ modest income.
This was before his ranch inheritance, of course, when he was working down town trying to keep his struggling business alive. Hardware wasn’t sexy enough for his wife, she thought he should sell and go into fucking real estate. When he flat-out blanked that idea, she went into real estate herself… though she chose to do that by sucking the cock of the guy that sold Miles their house.
All in all, it was the worst fucking year of his life, and he’d spent the last two years on damage control. Not just financially and personally, either. Marrying his sister’s best friend also caused one hell of a rift between him and Harriet, one that he regretted even more than his marriage bleeding him dry. They still weren’t back to how things had been, although she could at least stand being in the same room as him now, and they kept things cordial during family events. But his relationship with Harriet still had a long way to go.
After being caught in the act by Miles, you’d have thought his wife would have slunk back to the hole she came out of, but no. Clarissa got herself some big, fancy-ass lawyer and walked away with the house and half his failing business. She left Miles up Shit Creek without a paddle, where he might have drowned, if not for his father.
Ironically, when his dad suffered a stroke and passed away a month later, things actually looked up for Miles. Forced to return home to take over the ranch, he actually found he had a talent for the hospitality business. Although the dude ranch had always been successful when it was in his father’s hands, in the two years under Miles’ name, it had reached new heights.
Clarissa tried to come after him for a slice of that, too, but by then Miles was tired of being treated as a door mat. Thanks to a generous loan from Nolan, he hired his own suit to fight in his corner for him, and she never saw a penny.
Sometimes, Miles liked to torture himself by analyzing why things hadn’t worked out with Clarissa, but really, it boiled down to one thing—when the lust had petered out, Miles realized all his friends and siblings had been right. They had nothing in common, and at eight years his junior, Clarissa was far too young and flighty for him.
Miles finished up the tack and wandered over to the paddock. Caleb would be returning with Clayton and the ot
her guests any time soon. Leaning against the rails of the fence around the paddock, he looked out over his land. There were almost twenty-six acres out there of rolling pastures and woodland. Nestled at the base of the Rocky Mountains, he could admire the snowy peaks in the west and if he rotated and looked the other way, he had wide sweeping views of the plateau.
There was everything to love about this piece of property: the crisp fresh air, the lush green landscape, and the gentle pace of life made up for the drudgery it took to maintain it—not to mention the complaints about the tiny shampoo bottles from nit-picky tourists. It might not have been the path he’d originally chosen for himself, but Miles was thankful his life took that fork in the road.
His phone chimed, alerting him to a text. Pulling it from his pocket, he glanced down and frowned at the unknown number. Ordinarily, he’d have just deleted it, but the opening line caught his eye.
Hi, it’s Cady…
Miles opened it up and grinned. Cady was Juliet’s roommate, over in Virginia. He’d never met her, nor had he seen a picture of her—but he had spoken to her a couple of times when he’d called Juliet. His sister had an active work and social life, and a habit of ignoring her cell. Exasperated, he’d phoned the landline and got through to Cady instead of Juliet. The first time this happened was an accident, but then Miles found himself calling their apartment another time when he knew Juliet had a shift at the clinic.
Cady was easy to talk to, and she had him laughing out loud at the stories she told about her horrendous and useless boss. But, as fun as it was to talk to her those couple of times, they’d never exchanged personal numbers. Miles had tried to stalk her a few times on social media, but either he was too old for figuring out how to do that shit, or she didn’t exist because he couldn’t so much as find a single picture of her. Not wanting to sound warning bells with Juliet after what happened with him and Harriet over Clarissa, he decided Cady would have to remain a mystery woman… albeit one that kind of intrigued him enough to make him wish he could think of more excuses to call her.
Miles' Christmas Roundup (Holiday Hunks Book 2) Page 2