by Liz Meldon
“But—”
“We understand your concerns, your fears, and your reservations,” he pressed on, buttoning his jacket and peering around the parking lot. “But I really hope that you’ll give us a chance to change your mind. That’s what I wanted to talk to you about today. A chance. Some of your time and patience to hear us out. What do you think?”
She shook her head slightly, then flinched when her phone buzzed from the depths of her purse. Feeling a little waterlogged with information, her mind slowly processing what he’d said, she dug into her purse again and fished out her phone. Theresa. Curator’s senior assistant. She had offered to give Skye a lift back to Coral Bay as long as Skye helped her shop for a swanky party she was throwing for her husband’s law firm partners tomorrow night. After all, Skye had a bit of experience with the rich and petulant.
“I… I…” She stared at Theresa’s text message. The woman was sitting in her car near the service entrance. Was Skye ready to go? No. Not really.
“You need time to consider it,” Finn offered. “That’s fine. Do you have a ride home?”
“Yes,” she answered automatically, her hand falling by her side as she tried to figure out what was happening with this conversation. “Thanks.”
Nodding, he pressed a quick kiss to her cheek, then flashed a breathtaking smile before sauntering into the parking lot. She watched him go, numb, until the realization hit her.
“Wait… Give us a chance?”
What was he talking about? Her phone buzzed again, and she headed in Theresa’s direction on unsteady legs, trying to put the pieces together—and coming up short.
4
Meddling Meddler
“Mr. Cocksman will be with you in a moment. Can I get you a coffee or tea while you wait?”
Skye shook her head, smiling politely. “No, thank you. I’m fine.”
Mr. Cocksman. Yikes. What an unfortunate name to say out loud. She wasn’t sure how his secretary managed to keep a straight face, but the woman in the red pantsuit did so unflinchingly. Clearing her throat, Skye reached into her purse at the foot of her chair and dug out her phone. As subtly as she could, she checked her hair and makeup, pleased that the ungodly winds outside hadn’t ruined either, then did a quick time check. She had arrived fifteen minutes early, and with five minutes to go, she was no less confused as to why the hell she had been summoned here in the first place.
Sunday, no more than twelve hours after running into and fucking Finn at the fair, she found herself seated in the management building of another museum. These offices managed a whole chain of popular museum locations that operated throughout the state, focusing on frontier-era history, with a special emphasis on the gold rush. They’d been pretty successful with their historical reenactments, frontier cottage camping retreats, gold digs and washes for kids, and spectacular in-house exhibits. This location was about a twenty-five-minute drive from Coral Bay and was one of the first places she’d applied to. Skye had sent her résumé to almost every department, despite having never performed a historical reenactment in her life—not even a grade school theater production. Her logic at the time was that there was opportunity for growth since the chains were plentiful with a lot of on-site staff, and she had been disappointed when she received a form letter rejection shortly after her submission.
Imagine her surprise, then, when she got a call at nine this morning asking her to meet with the guy who ran everything. Not just the owner of one location, but the head honcho of the whole operation. His secretary hadn’t been very specific on the phone, nor had she provided much more information since Skye arrived at the office. All Skye had been told was that she’d been invited to meet with Quintin Cocksman, and, oh, sorry it’s such short notice. Out of sheer curiosity, Skye had dressed up as if attending yet another interview, taken a cab out to the location, and sat in the waiting room—all the while clueless as to why she was even there. It couldn’t be for an interview, as she’d been outright rejected already.
So, there she was—guessing. Fidgety. A bit uncomfortable under the intense blasts of AC.
Mercifully, she wasn’t left waiting for long. About two minutes before her two o’clock appointment, the secretary cleared her throat and nodded to the big black door across the room.
“Mr. Cocksman will see you now.”
Right. Skye grabbed her purse and stood, smoothing a hand down her high-waisted skirt and fluffing out her beige blouse so that it wouldn’t stick to her. With her hair up in a sleek ballerina bun, she padded across the curiously modern reception area—everywhere else screamed eighteenth-century colonial chic—and opened the door.
“Ah, Miss Summers. Please come in.”
Resisting her face’s need to twist with confusion, she slipped inside and closed the door, noting that the hard lines, neutral tones, and subdued wall décor had continued in from the reception area. There, behind a thin glass desk, sat Quintin Cocksman, a man in his late forties by Skye’s best estimate, with a pencil-thin black mustache and enormous designer frames—with no glass in them. While there was nothing wrong with trying to prove you were not your brand, this was a little ridiculous. She crossed the room with her hand outstretched, smiling when he rose to shake it. Slim and narrow-shouldered, he wore a fitted grey suit, a white dress shirt, and the emblem for the New England Patriots on his cuffs.
The only reason she even knew the emblem of any NFL team was because Cole had briefly entertained the idea of purchasing one about three years ago. Eager for a billionaire to own their team, marketing departments from across the country had flooded his beach bungalow with merchandise. Skye held back a smile at the memory: she and Cole had spent a whole weekend sorting through NFL crap, putting it into piles and researching teams, only for Cole to realize it’d be a poor fit. He ended up scrapping the whole thing, donating the gear to children’s hospitals and charities, and treating her to a spa day for wasting her time.
Back then, she hadn’t thought it was a waste of time. Even though she had been drowning in homework, being with Cole, just the two of them in sweats surrounded by mountains of NFL swag, sushi takeout for just about every meal, had been Skye’s idea of a perfect weekend.
Quintin Cocksman’s almost too-hard handshake brought her firmly back to reality, and her smile faltered. If she wanted to get over Cole, reminiscing had to be off the table.
Screwing Finn should also be off the table, but Skye had already dropped the ball on that one.
“Please, have a seat,” Quintin insisted, gesturing to a pair of black and silver chairs in front of his desk. Neither had an inch of padding anywhere, and once she settled into one, Skye could confirm that sitting on a boulder would probably be more comfortable.
And better for her back.
Years of wearing convincing fake smiles for Cole’s social circle had prepared her for instances like this, and she managed to effortlessly hide her discomfort.
“Now, I’m sure you’re wondering what you’re doing here,” Quintin said after he took a seat behind his sleek glass desk, hands folded on top of it.
“Well, a little.” Skye hoped her smile continued to look natural, rather than showing the strain she was starting to feel. “Your secretary wasn’t very specific on the phone.”
“We’ve had another look at your résumé,” he told her. “First, thank you for submitting it. The cover letter was very thoughtful.”
She bit the insides of her cheeks: all her cover letters had been the same, minus a few tweaked sentences to make them seem unique to the specific job in question. “Thank you.”
“We’ve decided to go ahead and offer you a position here with us at this location,” he said, “in management.”
For a few long seconds, all Skye heard was a high-pitched whine, the world fading in and out of focus until she blinked. Had she heard him right? She was being offered a job somewhere she hadn’t formally interviewed at—after they had already rejected her?
“I’m sorry,” she said, her laugh
sounding mildly maniacal. “You’re going to have to repeat that. I don’t…understand.”
“I just think you’d be a good fit for our corporate environment,” he insisted, though Skye didn’t believe him—and she wasn’t sure why. The lack of enthusiasm in his voice? His dark, dead eyes? Something felt off.
“But… I haven’t interviewed.” She shook her head, all pretenses of fake smiling gone. “Your hiring manager rejected my application almost immediately.”
“We get so many applications,” he said, motioning toward the huge window behind him. Below, out among the pines and cedars, was where most of the historical reenactments took place. “A lot of actors looking for work… The hiring department gets swamped sometimes. I do apologize.”
Again, Skye didn’t believe him. “Okay.”
“The position would entail managing the interns and assistants at this location,” Quintin explained without missing a beat, his head cocked to one side as he studied her—perhaps searching for something beyond Skye’s bewildered expression. “You’ll manage day-to-day operations of the exhibits, which the interns and assistants run, and ensure our guest needs are met in the gift shop, the washing stations, and the colonial village. Does that sound like something you would be interested in?”
Skye stared at him, finally deciding that he was serious, and answered honestly. “No. Not really.”
Ten brutally awkward seconds later, she cleared her throat, realizing she might come across as disrespectful.
“No, I’m sorry.” She forced her smile back up. “It’s just… I’ve accepted a position elsewhere and I’m not interested in leaving.”
Was it glamorous to sell tickets at Gallery Sens? No, but Skye had the opportunity to establish herself, learn a lot, and work her way up. Managing a whole team of people at an enormous museum facility was totally out of her realm of experience right now. Skye couldn’t imagine being responsible for anything beyond her little kingdom. She had been upset about it when she was first hired, considering she was older than most of the other candidates and had a university degree. However, the more time she spent at her new job, the more she realized she wasn’t qualified for much else. Classroom knowledge translated somewhat to the real world, but there was still a lot to learn otherwise.
And Skye wanted to prove she could work her way up from the bottom. She wanted to get to the top knowing she had insider knowledge and experience of every position below.
“Ah. Well.” Quintin leaned back in his chair. “That’s perfectly fine. No harm done.”
Skye tried not to frown at him; couldn’t this conversation have happened over the phone—or an email? Had she really needed to waste money on a cab, and lose a huge chunk of her day off, driving out here?
“Thank you,” she said, resisting the urge to sprint the hell out of the building, “for the offer. It’s very generous, but I wouldn’t feel right taking it when I’ve just started working elsewhere. I also don’t think I’m qualified for it, honestly.”
He grinned, seeming more relaxed. “I appreciate your candor. Please tell Mr. Daniels that an offer was, at the very least, extended—”
“Wait,” she said, leaning forward and pressing a hand down on his desk. “What did you just say?”
For a few long seconds, he looked at her like she was crazy—or that this was a practical joke of some kind. “Er, Cole Daniels? You two are, uh…” He gestured between Skye and himself, as if that explained what he meant. “He and I are both creative arts patrons. We met at a fundraiser about three weeks ago and he wouldn’t let me leave until I promised to find you a position. He said you’d be the best person for the job and that I was a fool if I didn’t at least sit down with you. I’m sorry it took me so long to follow up, I’ve just been busy with…”
Tuning out his reasoning, Skye fell back in her chair and winced at the way the backrest cut into her back just under her shoulder blades. Cole had done what? A flood of emotions ripped through her all at once: appreciation, rage, discomfort, nostalgia, irritation, love… The list went on, and Skye could feel her cheeks heating up as each one made itself known across her body.
“I’m so sorry that Mr. Daniels wasted your time, Mr. Cox,” she said stiffly as she stood, unsure if she had cut him off or not. “And thank you for the offer.”
They shook hands again, with Quintin staring up at her warily like she was a bomb about to go off, and Skye marched out of his office with her hands in fists. The high-pitched ringing in her ears returned as she stalked through the management building, unable to think coherently until she reached the roundabout loop at the main doors where her cab had dropped her off.
It was quite peaceful out there now that the wind had died down, surrounded by thick forest, birds twittering in the distance. The visitor portion of the museum was on the other side of the management lodge; here, just for a moment, she was totally alone. Nothing but her and early-August greenery as far as the eye could see.
Her gaze darted from tree to tree, unable to think, to process, to grasp, that Cole had meddled in her professional career. Their sugar daddy contract had been severed. Skye no longer had any affiliation with the agency that had matched them four years ago. For all intents and purposes, she and Cole were broken up—yet he still thought he had a right to stick his nose in her business. Sure, this job was a marked improvement from her current position, but that wasn’t the point. Knowing Cole, he had her best interests in mind, but again—that wasn’t the fucking point.
Jaw clenched, she retrieved her phone and called for another cab. When the operator asked if she would be returning to the location they had originally picked her up at—her apartment…Cole’s apartment—Skye hesitated.
“No,” she said thickly, her voice catching. “I have a new destination in mind, actually…”
5
You Fucking Twat
“Garrett Jones will be a good fit,” Cole insisted as he took the long, winding bend leading up to his Coral Bay vacation home. His eyes flickered to the mirror—not a soul behind him—then down to the built-in touch screen on his dash. The call had been in progress for the last twenty minutes, but he felt like he’d been going on and on about this for hours. “See that the salary is higher than average… Significantly.”
Marta Jensen, his tech empire’s CFO, sighed into the phone. “You can’t keep doing this with every new person we hire.”
“I can and I will.” He clicked the remote for his front gate when it came into view, nestled between large cement walls. “Marta, I want to step back from things, and I need to know the people I’m delegating to will take the job seriously.”
“That’s why we’re offering them the position,” she argued, “because after an exhaustive interview process, they’ve proved that they will. Cole, you’re driving me up the wall.”
He grinned, slowing his navy Bugatti Veyron as the gate swung open. “I know. I appreciate it. You know how I am.”
“That I do.” Marta had been with him from the beginning. At almost fifteen years his senior, with immense experience in the industry, she was an invaluable asset. Without her and a few of the other top-tier personnel, Cole wouldn’t have been able to get to where he was today. His fortune would have gone to someone else, and he probably would have been writing code for them in a dingy cubicle. Or on some ridiculous communal bean bag chair. Skill and ingenuity got you far in the ever-growing tech and cyber security industry, but you needed a whole crew of people with vastly different, and sometimes superior, skill sets if you wanted to dominate the market.
Which Cole had.
And the thought of handing off a sizeable percentage of his usual responsibilities, responsibilities most other CEOs wouldn’t be caught dead doing, had been giving him heart palpitations all month. Literally. His private physician was about ten seconds away from medicating him if Cole didn’t get his anxiety back under control. He knew, logically, that easing away only slightly and passing off some of his workload to capable, competent people w
as the right thing to do. He worked himself to death just about every year, and Coral Bay—with Skye Summers nearby—had been his medically-mandated retreat where he forced himself to recoup and refocus to get through the rest of the year.
But if he wanted to pursue a relationship with the woman he loved, all that needed to stop. He could still work, of course, but as he and Finn had agreed, Cole needed to do so significantly less. So, here he was, managing interviews from his car even though he had promised Finn he’d take the next two weeks off to really concentrate on the task ahead. He couldn’t help himself—and it didn’t hurt anyone if he could efficiently multitask. The trunk of his newest car was full of cat toys, bedding, food, and litter for Oz’s upcoming birthday. He had spent most of the day bouncing between specialty pet boutiques, and afterward he hadn’t seen any harm in checking up on things with Marta on the drive home. Once he was parked, he’d hang up and get to wrapping.
Maybe. Maybe he’d stay on the phone a little while longer to find out about a few of the other corporate positions they were trying to fill. His assistant had been rather deft at fielding calls from the office this week, which meant Cole was out of the loop and panicking. Being out of the loop meant being out of control. He didn’t know what was happening with his company, or to his employees, and that only made his anxiety worse.
But he had to do it. For Skye, he would do it.
Speaking of Skye… Cole swallowed hard when he spotted an unexpected yet gorgeously familiar figure sitting on his front stoop, her arms crossed, her coppery waves caught in the wind, and her face pinched in annoyance.
“Marta, I’ll have to call you back. Just move forward with salary negotiations,” Cole said quickly as Skye stood, her hands in fists. “Remember to offer significantly higher than—”
