by Cora Brent
Almonds.
I dropped my pen.
No one had called my name or made a sound, yet some internal sense made my head snap up in the next instant. And when it did, the first thing I saw was Jason Roma. He didn’t even try to hide his stare. Instead of doing the polite thing and looking away when I narrowed my eyes at him, Jason raised an eyebrow and smirked.
What the fuck do you want?
He stretched and leaned back farther in his chair. I got the feeling he was trying to send a message, but I’d be damned if I could figure out what it was.
I didn’t care anyway.
I didn’t care at all.
Aspirin.
“And as we all know, the big downtown county courthouse project is now upon us. I don’t need to tell you again that this is the big time. We get this one right, people, and the door will be opened for state projects and maybe even federal.” The Man raised his little fists in the air like he’d just won a prizefight. “I’ll be needing the best for this one—the ‘A team.’”
Now The Man had my full attention. I straightened up in my chair and tried to look like the most responsible person in the room. My track record could speak for itself anyway. I’d busted my ass for this company for seven years and was promoted to project manager four years ago. Since then every single one of my projects performed within budget and on time despite a number of grueling obstacles and sometimes eighty-hour workweeks. I was proud of the job I did. Hell, if project management had a rock star, then I was it.
The Man closed the meeting on that note, promising that the decision on the team for the big project would be forthcoming.
After The Man sprinted out of the room and on to his next challenge, people began heaving themselves out of their comfortable chairs to go face the rest of the afternoon.
I was capping my pen when I noticed that Jason Roma hadn’t moved. He was still leaning back in his chair and still watching me. He winked, just enough for me to wonder if it was really a wink or if he had something in his eye. Then I finally picked up on his meaning.
An object peeked out of the top of Jason’s shirt pocket. A silver foil-wrapped item—the very same condom that had occupied a place at the bottom of my purse a mere hour ago before it reached freedom in the middle of Third Street.
Jason waited to see what I would do, what I would say. Playing with people was his specialty, and he’d be disappointed that I wasn’t willing to respond.
I wasn’t in the mood to spar with him. Not today or any other day.
I capped my pen with dignity and stalked out of the conference room without looking back.
CHAPTER TWO
The next morning I wound up seeking a spot on the roof of the full parking garage. On the inside I was cursing the fact that I was five minutes late, but I’d stopped by the Koppling site first thing to reinforce the impression that I was keeping a close eye on things. Yesterday afternoon when I assembled everyone for a quick huddle to address the unfortunate incident of the elevator pisser, I was sure a few of the workers were rolling their eyes. But this morning everyone was in place doing what they were supposed to be doing, and I left feeling satisfied.
Now, as I swung my Lexus into an empty parking space, I caught a glimpse of the time and felt the satisfaction vanish.
Spitting a slew of curses, I grabbed the keys and remembered my shoes only when my feet hit the concrete. The sensible steel-toe boots didn’t exactly match my power-suit ensemble, but I was a stickler for safety rules whenever I visited an active construction site. How could I expect my workers to follow the rules if I didn’t?
Still, I didn’t intend to go trudging into the office this morning looking so mismatched, not when I’d received a text late last night from The Man asking me to visit his office at nine a.m. because he had an important matter to discuss. Since The Man rarely sought one-on-one meetings and had HR deal with anything of an unpleasant nature, I assumed I was being summoned to receive the news that I would be the project manager in charge of the courthouse. The whole drive here I’d been silently rehearsing my response.
“Thank you so much for this opportunity. I’m beyond grateful to be trusted with this task, and I assure you that there will be no bigger priority in my life.”
Yet somehow I felt less confident expressing these feelings in ugly shoes. Exchanging the boots for a pair of black pumps cost me another minute of time, but this would be a good day. Tonight on the way home I’d celebrate by ordering some takeout sushi and curling up on the couch with a steamy romance novel. Perhaps something with a sexy, smartass executive who had an appetite for riding rough and a penchant for taming uptight workaholic women. My tastes were rather specific.
Just before I reached the elevator, my phone buzzed in the old Michael Kors bag I’d dug out of my closet last night. Six years ago it had been a birthday present from my boyfriend at the time. The relationship had ended badly, but at least the handbag held up. I wrestled the phone from its depths, grimacing to see a text from my mother.
Mom: William’s birthday at four o’clock on Sunday. Need you to pick up centerpieces.
I answered with a smiley emoji even though I didn’t feel very smiley-faced over my brother’s looming birthday celebration. With all the fuss and planning and hysteria that was going into the big event, you’d think the birthday boy was turning five instead of thirty-five. William’s birthdays were always momentous occasions in the Gordon family, while my birthdays were notably more subdued, with the long-standing excuse that mine fell on the day following a major holiday and everyone was all celebrated out. Anyway, this year my mother was putting in even more effort for William, perhaps figuring floral centerpieces and an elaborate fondant cake would make him forget his freshly finalized divorce.
Not that I begrudged my big brother his birthday gala. But it would have been nice to be asked if I had other plans. Sometimes I wondered if my folks just took it for granted that I would jump when they called. Or whether they cared if I actually showed up.
The buzz of another incoming text almost made me sigh, until I saw it was The Man.
The Man: We are waiting.
“Shit.” I broke into a run across the concrete bridge between the parking garage and the offices of Lester & Brown. Sometimes my brief stint in junior varsity track served me well because even now, fifteen years later, I could cover impressive lengths in low heels. I should have remembered that The Man expects all meetings to begin on his time, not yours, and if he decides that it ought to begin five minutes early, the fault lies with you for not anticipating that.
“Audrey!” Helen shouted as I sprinted past her. She was holding a pile of papers and waving them at me furiously.
“We’ll talk later,” I threw over my shoulder before rounding the corner to The Man’s office. I came to a dead stop and took a deep breath before casually strolling the remaining few steps to the door. My knock was answered immediately.
“Come in, Audrey.”
I opened the door expecting to find The Man and maybe the CFO. Perhaps even Davis Brown would be there yawning in a corner. Two faces turned to me expectantly, and I felt my smile falter.
There was The Man.
There was no Davis Brown or Elgin McCray in sight.
But, inexplicably, there was a certain difficult colleague named Jason Roma reclining in a chair with his hands casually folded as if he were waiting to be served a glass of brandy and maybe a lap dance. He waved.
“Have a seat,” said The Man in a pleasant tone. He didn’t sit down himself. In fact there wasn’t even a chair behind his desk. A back injury sustained in a car accident years earlier made sitting difficult—he was even known to lie down on the floor in the middle of a meeting in order to stretch his back muscles.
I, however, was glad to settle into one of the cushy chairs facing him even though I was still wondering why in the hell Jason Roma needed to be here.
The Man clapped his hands together once, loudly, like a grade school teacher who
wanted to ensure all eyes were on him. “I’ll make this quick,” he said, glancing pointedly at his silver Movado. “We all know that the courthouse is by far the largest project ever undertaken in our fifteen years. We’ll be breaking ground downtown in less than a month, and I need my best project manager on the job. And that’s you. The two of you. As a team you’ll have equal standing and equal responsibility when it comes to managing every aspect of the courthouse’s construction. Brad will be meeting with you in an hour to go over all the contract language and architectural plans. Since he was the sales lead responsible for putting the bid together, he can answer any questions you might have.”
The Man paused for a breath and then beamed at us. “Congratulations to both of you. Don’t hesitate to keep me informed of any complications, and always keep in mind, the future of the company rests on the success of this project.”
I sat there in stunned silence and tried to absorb the jumble of words that had just been unleashed. I didn’t quite realize that The Man had already dismissed us from his office until I saw Jason shaking his hand.
“Thank you for the opportunity. I’m grateful you have put so much faith in me, and I assure you the courthouse will be my number one priority from this day forward.”
Bastard stole my speech.
Of course Jason didn’t really steal my speech, because I’d never even spoken it out loud.
But Jason shouldn’t have had the chance to make a speech in the first place.
I had a year’s seniority on him and a half dozen more projects under my belt. For crying out loud, I was there his first day—I remember the arrogant party boy fresh out of Arizona State who was only hired because his father used to be in the industry. Come to think of it, I was the one who trained him.
My purse fell on the floor with a thud. I thought my lower jaw might be down there beside it. Both Jason and The Man looked at me then, and since I couldn’t just sit there like a gaping fool, I got to my feet.
“Thank you,” I muttered weakly, and held out my sweaty hand for a shake. The Man pumped it dutifully for half a second and shifted to impatience, like he was wondering why in the world there were so many damn people hanging around his office. Jason opened the door and kindly waited for me to walk through it.
On the other side of the door I looked at Jason. He stared back at me.
“Nice hat,” he said.
“Dammit.” I’d completely forgotten that I was still wearing the hard hat from this morning’s site visit. I tore it off my head, realizing how weird I must have looked sitting there in The Man’s office. “Conference room,” I hissed through gritted teeth, marching away and pausing at my desk long enough to shove my purse and my orange hard hat underneath it.
Jason must have taken the long way to the conference room, because he didn’t show up for a good three minutes while I sat there clenching my fists and trying to apply some calming meditation techniques I’d learned from a YouTube video. To no avail.
When Jason finally appeared and opened the conference room glass door, he was whistling.
“You get lost?” I snarked.
He slid his tall, muscular body into a chair on the other side of the table. “No. Nature called. It’s healthy to deal with such urges when they arise.”
“I don’t need to hear it.”
“Then why did you ask?”
“I—never mind.”
“Don’t you deal with your natural urges, Audrey?”
My mouth fell open. Again. “What the hell is wrong with you?”
“Nothing at all. I’m having a great day. You should be having a great day too. We just received some exciting news.”
“Jason.” I lowered my head and tried to focus on a response that didn’t include the word f-u-c-k.
“We can’t work together,” I finally said, and raised my head to challenge him with a glare.
He shrugged, unimpressed. “We’ve been working together for six years.”
“No, we’ve spent six years staying out of each other’s space.”
Jason grinned, waiting for me to correct what I’d just said.
“For the most part,” I added miserably, hoping he wouldn’t mention things that were unmentionable, hoping he couldn’t discern that I was pressing my knees together beneath the table to silence the spontaneous reactions surging through my body.
Jason adopted a serious expression, which looked about as genuine as eyelashes on a chicken. “If you don’t want the assignment, Audrey, I’m sure management will understand.”
“Shut up.”
“The time commitment will be enormous, the pressure will be . . . ah, massive.”
“You’re an asshole.”
“Nobody would be surprised if you decided that you weren’t up to the challenge.”
I glowered. “I suppose you think you’re the only one capable of handling the job.”
Jason tapped his fingers on the table and looked thoughtful. “Maybe I am.”
I raised a hand to my forehead to mock him. “You’ll have to give me a minute. I’m blinded by your conceit.”
“That doesn’t even make sense, Audrey.”
I took my hand away and leaned forward. “Well, I’ll tell you a few things that do make sense. No other PM in the company has logged as many hours or has overseen as many successful large-scale projects as I have over the past four years.”
He laughed. “Now who’s conceited?”
“Not conceited, just accurate.”
Jason appeared to mull this over. “Actually, you aren’t.”
“Aren’t what?”
“Accurate.”
“How do you figure?”
Jason cleared his throat. His smirk disappeared. “If you’d bothered to do a little homework before shooting your mouth off, you would have realized the total revenue of my projects in that same four-year period was five million dollars more, and all were completed under budget with an average profit margin that was six percent higher than yours.”
I had no ammunition to fire in return. Sometimes I pretended Jason Roma was just a brainless ex-frat boy who couldn’t keep his zipper closed. But in my honest moments I knew that wasn’t true. Jason had a sharp intelligence that was difficult to match. Plus I could—though I didn’t want to—admit that he was good at the job and everyone loved him. Laborers, customers, subcontractors, management, everyone. And finally, in all likelihood he was telling the truth.
“Audrey,” Jason said. I looked at him, at the chiseled jaw and the broad shoulders, at the carefully slicked-back hair and the calculating dark eyes that had already seen more than I wished they had seen. “We’ll be good together,” he said with a confident nod. “A hell of a team.”
“You mean for the project?”
His eyes strayed down to the neckline of my blouse, and even though it was too high to display any cleavage, I felt utterly exposed. He gave me a winning smile. “Of course that’s what I meant.”
I thought about him sitting in that same chair during yesterday’s meeting, with a stolen condom in his shirt pocket. Yes, Jason was smart and charming and hardworking when it suited him. He also couldn’t be trusted to tell you the correct time of day if it amused him to do otherwise. But none of that meant I wouldn’t be able to effectively oversee the project with him around. Having my name attached to the county courthouse project would give me a notable résumé bullet point that even my father was bound to be impressed with. It was an assignment I could get excited about, one that would make my career. If I had to hold my nose and put up with Jason Roma in the meantime, then so be it.
“You’re right,” I told him. “We can get this done as a team.”
Instead of answering right away, Jason had a funny look on his face. I wondered if he was counting on the idea that I’d storm out of the room and go bellowing to management. If so, then he’d underestimated me.
There was a knock on the glass and a man holding a giant camera waved from the other side. He walked right
in, explained he’d been hired to take photos for the trade show materials, and asked if we would mind posing for a few photos.
“Brad told me to pull a few people off their desks, but if you have a minute to spare, I’ll just take some shots of the two of you.”
“I’ve got a minute,” Jason said, glancing at me.
“Sure, why not,” I said, hoping I wouldn’t be instructed to smile, because phony smiles did not get along with my face.
“Great,” said the photographer, already setting up his camera as if he’d never had a doubt we would agree. “Now fold your hands on the table and look as if you’re having an intense meeting. Perfect. Just a few more here. Now stand up and reach across the table and shake hands. Hold it right there.”
If Jason felt any discomfort that I was squeezing his hand as hard as my muscles allowed, he gave no hint.
“Uh, you can let go now,” said the photographer as he replaced the lens cap.
I released Jason’s big hand and flexed my cramped fingers, slightly embarrassed that I’d been holding on to him so tightly.
“Are we done here?” I asked.
The photographer assumed I was talking to him. “Yeah, all finished for now. Thanks a lot.”
Jason held my gaze. “I think that’s about right. We’re all finished for now.” He stuffed his hands in his pockets and headed for the door. “Don’t forget the meeting this afternoon,” he said on his way out. “I want to hit the ground running on this thing.”
His last statement irked me. It was like he was adopting the role of boss and warning that I ought to be just as committed to the job as he was. I wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of knowing that I was bothered. Anyone in my position must have been cursed with some shitty luck to wind up working on a project of this magnitude with such an arrogant rival.
One who also happened to be my fuck buddy once upon a time.
CHAPTER THREE
I haven’t touched a drop of alcohol in years. Yet every time I approach the circular driveway of my parents’ palatial Scottsdale estate, an ancient itch tickles the back of my throat.
