Breathless (The ABCs of Love Book 2)

by Clover Hart

  I put on my clothes in the dim room while framed prints of Italy and the Caribbean stare right back at me as if they’re Penny’s avatars. But she’s still sleeping peacefully, the covers pulled up to her neck, her red hair splayed over a pillow. I toy with the idea of kissing her goodbye — why not? — but then I realize escape is much more preferable.

  Then she stirs.

  Fuck.

  I freeze like a shadow on the wall, holding my breath, praying that I can get out of here in time. Then she stretches her arms over her head and opens her eyes, catching me in mid-creep.

  “Hi,” she says sweetly.

  “Oh. Hi.”

  She glances at the louvers on her window, where a hint of the night peeks through. “You off and running?”

  “Yeah. Gotta get up early tomorrow. It’s Sunday, but Zach and I need to put in the work until we’ve got the Full Circle campus operational.”

  “Got it.”

  This is where women get needy and whiny, wondering why I can’t stay the night. But Penny merely burrows further into her pillow and then sighs, almost as if she’s glad I’m out of her hair.

  She whispers one last thing. “Thanks, Barry.”

  For what? Finding my groove with her? For buying her a drink earlier? For finally leaving her alone?

  I continue to stare at her as her breathing evens out and she apparently falls back asleep. It’s not uncommon for my dates to be a little more impressed with my job or the fact that I went to Stanford or even that I wear great clothes and eat at the best places. And if women aren’t impressed, then they downright hate me for ditching them. So doesn’t any of that matter to her?

  Ah, screw it. But before I leave, there’s something I want to say to her, and it has nothing to do with our bangathon.

  I go to her bed and wait for her to notice I’m still there.

  Denied.

  “Penny,” I whisper.

  She opens an eye and gives me a look like You’re still here?

  Whatever. “Not to put too fine a point on this, but if you’re bent on going to Chicago, will you at least think about using this new job to get some experience in HR, then find a better job ASAP?”

  “Sure.”

  “And finish your degree online.”

  “Mm-hmm.”

  I frown, then back away from the bed. By the time I get to my BMW, I still haven’t figured out what just happened with Penny. Then again, I don’t need to, and I drive away, happy that I at least got to bone the hottest girl in Cherry Valley.

  Chapter 8

  Penny

  Oh my God, I slept with Barry.

  I bolt up in my bed, squinting at the beginnings of a sunrise peeking through the louvers. As my apartment’s heating system kicks on, I gradually realize that my phone is sounding off from my nightstand with a familiar ringtone. It takes me a second to process that it’s an old 1970s song called “Mandy,” and I thought it was absolutely hilarious when I picked it for my sister.

  I yawn, not sure if I should be laughing this morning or burying myself in my blankets. I slept with Barry, and it was great fun, way more fun than I expected, but …

  Whoopsy daisy.

  I lean over to answer my phone, but every inch of my body is sore. Wonderfully sore, from my skin to my muscles to my pretties. But when I grab my phone and hear Mandy’s worried voice, I stop smiling.

  “There you are! How’re you feeling? I’ve been texting you to see if you need me to come over and take care of you.”

  Indeed. As I check my phone, there are about five texts from Mandy.

  “I slept through all your messages,” I croak. Then I clear my throat and plop back into bed where I can catch a whiff of Barry on my sheets. I absently run my fingertips over the linen. “It was a really fun party before I had to leave. My stomach was killing me, and I guess I just needed some rest from all the stress of moving.”

  Might as well push my sick lie all the way.

  “Aw, Penny. I can swing by with some Saltine crackers, Sprite, and chicken soup from the market.”

  “That’s sweet, but I’m feeling much better. Thank you, though.” I smile. “And thank you for the party.”

  Mandy sighs. “I have to say that I’m glad you only had a tummyache. I mean, that’s not a good thing, but Zach and I thought that Barry might’ve insulted you, and he was what made the contents of your stomach curdle. We saw you talking to him at the bar.”

  “Oh. Barry?” Dear me, I’d almost forgotten who he is. “He was only apologizing like Zach wanted him to. I started feeling like crap shortly thereafter, and it had nothing to do with him.”

  “So he didn’t insult you again?”

  Nooooo. “He bought me a drink and then left.”

  “Excellent.” Mandy pauses. “You know something funny? I was actually worried when I saw you alone with him. We both know he’s right up your alley.”

  Hmm. Is now a good time to mention that Barry has been up my alley?

  Mandy goes on. “As I said, he’s more worldly wise than your average Cherry Valley bear, but he’s still got the potential to cheat on you and treat you like trash.”

  Maybe I like being treated like trash. I sit up, because trash isn’t going to be my thing anymore.

  I finally roll out of bed to put on a thick, warm robe, assuring Mandy that I’m over guys like Barry. Then I tell her that I’m feeling really, really well this morning and that I think I’ll take a walk and then drop by the new yoga studio downtown to check it out. After we hang up, I mull over what I should eat for breakfast and how much packing I should do today. Ugh, I hate packing. I’ve been really slow at it, but procrastination isn’t anything new with me.

  As I’m poking around in my kitchen, despairing that all I have left to eat in my cupboard is some instant oatmeal, my phone rings again. Chicago area code. WayvComm. On a Sunday? Still, I give a little hop in place and answer.

  “Penny Burnett speaking.” Might as well get the professional voice on now.

  But it turns out that it’s not a We can’t wait for you to arrive call.

  Ten minutes later, I’m back on the phone with Mandy.

  “Hey, Penny,” she says.

  I sob once and curl up on my kitchen floor with my back to the wall.

  “Penny? Are you sick again?”

  Yeah, I’m sick. My stomach is roiling and I think I’m going to throw up for real. “The job in Chicago fell through.”

  Silence on the other end, but Mandy couldn’t possibly be more stunned and numbed than I am now. Chicago. Gone. I look into my family room at my framed travel prints, and they seem to melt down the walls.

  “Penny …” Mandy sounds almost as devastated as I am.

  “WayvComm had to make some emergency financial adjustments, and they so generously wanted me to know right away.” My voice is shaking. “They got rid of my position before I even started.” I sniff wetly. “I didn’t even have the chance to show them how much ass I could kick.”

  “And you would’ve totally kicked ass.” Her voice is as thick as mine.

  “You should’ve heard the woman who set this job up. ‘I’m so very sorry,’ she said. ‘But good luck to you, Penny.’ She said it like I don’t have a moving van booked or an apartment I signed a lease for.”

  I feel even sicker now, because I’m also unemployed. Even worse, I’m stuck in Cherry Valley.

  Now the kitchen walls are closing in on me, and as Mandy tries to soothe me, all I can think about is being trapped, crushed under these walls, unable to move because there’s nowhere to go. I close my eyes, thinking that when I open them again, this nightmare will have disappeared.

  But when I do open them, nothing has changed, and I cry some more as Mandy keeps soothing.

  After we finish talking, I cower in the kitchen for I don’t know how long, sobbing until I don’t have any tears left. When I finally move from my spot there, it’s only so I can crawl to my bedroom and stare up at more melted pictures on my walls and cry
again — very dryly this time. I have no idea what to do. I don’t even have the curio shop now. And when I look over to see my red slingback heels and city dress slumped on the floor from last night, I cry harder.

  I don’t care that I had sex with Barry. That’s the least of my problems. But those slingbacks represent the city girl I was going to be.

  I grab the shoes and hurl them out of the room. The sound of them hitting the wall only makes me panic that I might’ve done some damage to this apartment and I’ll have to pay for it with money I won’t have. Then my phone rings again.

  It’s not Mandy’s song. It’s my generic ring, which means WayvComm might’ve changed their mind and …

  They’re calling to apologize!

  With no shame at all, I spring toward the phone. WayvComm has become my new bad news, cheating on me, treating me like garbage, but here I am, ready to take them back.

  I don’t even look at the number before I say, “Penny Burnett here!”

  “Hi, Penny. It’s Zach.”

  Why is he calling? He doesn’t work at WayvComm. And he never calls me. God, he’d better not be on some mission from Mandy to make me feel better.

  “I’m really sorry to hear about the job,” he says.

  Yup, he’s on a damned mission. “It’s okay. Really.”

  I didn’t think I had more tears. But it turns out I do.

  “Penny.” He sounds like he’d rather be eating the jellied moose nose from Milton’s Diner than listening to my caterwauling.

  I suck it up and stop. “Yes, Zach?”

  “I’ve got a proposition for you.”

  Eh?

  “What would you think of interviewing for a position at Full Circle?”

  I’m not sure he said what he just said. Did he say it?

  He goes on. “The construction on the old grain warehouse for our main campus is moving along nicely, and we need to get serious about staffing FCT. We need a human resources person here in town, and now that you’re available—”

  “Did Mandy put you up to this?” I’m not accusing him. I’m just utterly bewildered.

  Zach laughs. “Not at all. This seems to be a case of right place, right time. But just so you know, this is an interview, Penny. No promises.”

  Maybe he’s only offering me a ray of hope out of the sweetness of his nerd heart, but I grab onto it. I have no shame or options.

  “Yes,” I say without asking any more details. “Yesyesyes, I’ll interview for this. And thank you, Zach, even if this is just a pity call.”

  “It’s not. I think you’d be a good fit for us, and we’re prepared to give you intensive training, so I’ll text you the link to the online application. All right?”

  “All right. And Zach?” I smile, wiping my face. I feel like crying again, but this time out of pure gratefulness. “Thank you!”

  After we hang up, I hug the phone to my chest. Life works in mysterious ways, and if I could get this job, everything wouldn’t be so bad. Everything would be …

  Then I remember. Zach is only half of Full Circle, and Barry is the other half.

  My gaze slides over to the red dress I was wearing for my party. It’s still piled on the floor, a reminder of all the humpin’ and pumpin’ that went on in this room with the guy who might end up being one of my bosses.

  Chapter 9

  Barry

  I told Penny that I needed to go into work, even though it’s the weekend, and I wasn’t lying. There’s no rest for the wicked or even the depraved, and as Zach and I walk around the old brick warehouse that’ll serve as FCT’s main building on the work campus, my mind keeps going back to the depraved.

  Penny, making soft, delighted sounds as I use my hands and mouth on her … Penny, leaving little pink crescent marks from her nails that are still burning into my skin … Penny, yelling Give me more, yeah, just like th—

  “Did you hear a word I just said?” Zach asks.

  I blink and grin at him like an imbecile. I suspect he’s been trying to get my attention for the past few fanfuckingtastic moments.

  Then I wipe away that grin and get to business. “I heard you.” I gesture toward what is now the bottom-floor room where construction materials are strewn about from the large local crew we’ve hired. “You were telling me how things will go in the lobby: hand-worked lumber from the mountains for the reception counter, an open feel to the room, cherry-colored stained glass on the edges of the windows, bubble chairs hanging from the beams on the ceiling, polished wood floors. I got all that.”

  “Very good, Aaronson. And here I thought you were reliving the date you had last night and totally tuning me out.”

  Er, yeah, my date last night — the one I should’ve been on with Tami with an “i” instead of Penny with a Pow!

  “Must’ve been a hell of a time,” Zach says.

  “It was fine.”

  Then something odd happens. Heat rushes up from my groin and covers the rest of me, including my face. I think it’s called a blush. But I don’t do stuff like that. I’m sure I’m just ruddy from the chill in the unheated building, and I shrug a little more into my heavy jacket.

  Zach is looking at me as if I’m coming down with something, but I wave him off and walk toward the area where the reception counter is already underway. We’ve hired a lot of the local artistic talent from Craftsman’s Row, and so far, they’re not disappointing. Construction is even underway on the annex buildings outside where employees will develop our software, work on community outreach, and further our research. We’ll also have a swimming pool and a cafe to start out, as well as a sort of hotel for late-birds who don’t want to drive home during intense projects. In time, there’ll be hiking and bike paths, classrooms, sports facilities, and food-forward restaurants where we’ll be inviting up-and-coming chefs to experiment. We’ve got a lot of funding behind us, thanks to Zach’s business mentor, but we’ve also got a lot of work ahead of us.

  I’m not worried about the work. The reason we named this company Full Circle is because Zach and I are a perfect business fit. Before we melded minds at Stanford, I’d had a bad internship and a couple of dud jobs, but once I met him, everything made sense. Even if my family doesn’t get it, I do, and that’s what fucking matters.

  When Zach joins me, he’s got a thoughtful look that says he’s already onto the next item on our to-do list. “This morning was sure full of drama.”

  Okay, so he wants to talk about Mandy before we discuss what’s next for FCT. “How bad was it with your bae?”

  “Oh, it wasn’t Mandy who had a crisis. It was Penny.”

  Shit, does Zach know about last night? I rewind the past twelve hours in my mind, quickly inspecting the footage to see if I somehow pissed Penny off or, even worse, tipped anyone off as to who my date really was. But there’re no red flags that stand out.

  Zach shoves a hand into the pocket of his Icer down coat, then adjusts his glasses with his other one. “First off, Mandy was worried because Penny got sick at the party, and it happened after you were talking to her. Mandy sent her a thousand texts to see if the nausea had anything to do with yet another cloddish thing you might’ve said, but Penny didn’t answer until this morning. Turns out you had no part in it.”

  “Yay me?” Seriously. Yay.

  “You did a good job apologizing to her last night.”

  I’ve just taken one step closer to getting let off my leash. “So that was the drama? Penny got … sick?”

  “Unfortunately, no.”

  Crap.

  “Her job in Chicago fell through. They let her go because of a budget shortfall, so they deleted her position.”

  Without thinking, I slam my hand down on the counter. “Dammit, I told her so. You should’ve warned her about WayvComm before it even got this far.”

  He raises his eyebrows at my reaction, and I have to say I’m surprised, too.

  His eyebrows remain lifted. “Mandy didn’t tell me about Penny moving until she’d already accepted
the job. Besides, I didn’t know just how bad WayvComm is.”

  “I knew that fucking company was crooked. You’ve just got your head too far in the wires to know the details about WayvComm’s financial reputation.”

  I’m starting to sound like I care too much, and I don’t, so I shake my head and mutter something about how places like WayvComm give techies like us a bad name, then walk away. But there’s a pit in my stomach about this news. I feel bad for Penny. Based on how much she kept talking about how this move would be her chance to start a new, exciting life, this has to hurt. Believe me, I relate to how much she wants to get out of Cherry Valley, but at least I have options. Also, she just doesn’t seem very savvy, like a guppy who was about to dive into a pool with sharks. I should know, because I’m a shark, but even I wouldn’t treat a newb like Penny the way WayvComm did.

  Zach is right behind me. “The reason I even brought this up is because it’s all pretty serendipitous.”

  I stop in my tracks near a pile of lumber. “And how’s that?”

  He stands beside me, casually looking around. “Well, since we’re interviewing for support staff this week, I added Penny’s name to our candidates.”

  Red flags hit me in the face, nailing me until my head swims. Penny, working for FCT? The woman I wasn’t supposed to shtup last night could end up sitting at a desk down the hallway from my own office every day? Holy shit — she’s supposed to be headed out of town, not thrown into my path so I can stumble over her and maybe have my penis inserted into her again. Fuck, Zach won’t just kill me if he finds out what I did, he’ll let Mandy come at me with whatever sharp objects she can get her hands on.

  “Let me get this straight,” I say as calmly as possible. “You’re thinking that Penny can be our first HR person.”

  “That was definitely my thought. Mandy told me she’s taken some accounting classes as well as studied business law, however briefly. And she had to deal with a small lawsuit at her shop once. She wouldn’t be coming into this cold, and she would grow along with the company. That’s the idea we had for FCT, right? Getting local staff who’ll grow with us?”