Chapter 2

Veronica

Cold weather was the death of me. I stepped into the studio, a cramped space that was messy enough it gave me war flashbacks to my childhood bedroom, and I stopped to shed my earmuffs and my beanie and my scarf and my coat and take off the massive boots I needed to survive the blizzard and put on my work shoes instead I kept here for the winter, and I slipped off my jacket and took off my second scarf, and I was standing there like a coat rack covered in my own things when I realized the actual coat rack wasn’t there.

“Danielson, you sick son of a bitch,” I called into the back. “Where’s the coat rack?”

“Oh, that—” Liam Danielson poked his head out through the doorway, a guy in his early thirties with messy blond curls and a lean build, looking somewhere between posh and charmingly scruffy. He was kinda cute, and under other circumstances I’d have gone for it, but I didn’t like to shit where I ate. “It broke. We’ve just been shoving things on the shelf.”

“There’s no room to shove anything on the shelf.”

He scrunched up his face. “Why’d you even bring that much stuff? It’s only forty degrees…”

“What, you just want me to freeze to death? Jesus Christ. Fine, I’ll just die. You knew what you were getting into, calling me in here for something last-minute before Christmas. I’m well within my rights to up and burn the place down if I want to stay warm.”

He walked through the doorway fully, stepping around shelves, boxes, equipment that hadn’t been used in a while, equipment that was used every day, and a random filing cabinet in the middle of the room that had always been there and so we’d all kind of just normalized that there was a filing cabinet in the middle of the room and that became its home. I was still the newest one here, only six months in even though that was a long time for me to stick to any one job, so I was the one least likely to just nod and accept something like a filing cabinet in the center of the room, but I also didn’t give enough of a shit to move it, so there was a filing cabinet in the middle of the room. “I think everyone else here has thought about it at one point or another,” he said. “We’re getting all hands on deck, so it’s not just you.”

“Ugh, I hate when all hands are on deck. That always means I don’t get any time off.”

He shrugged, like it’s kinda your problem if you’re expecting time off. He was the worst boss I’d had in six months. “We’ll be able to relax after the holiday rush. This is big. We just got contacted by someone from a big corporate client I’d worked with back at Bayton, and it could be our best lead ever. We are not letting this go.”

I slumped. “Can’t I be on duty going there and charming their executives and our contacts there with my irresistible wit?”

He lit up. “That’s exactly what I want you to do.”

Oh, sweet. Forget the complaints. I was going to get to go to a party full of well-off, repressed corporate types who would absolutely shell out big money to flatter me and make me feel like a spoiled princess for a while if it got me in bed. These were the best assignments in the world. I hadn’t gotten to have a casual fling since I tried… something stupid with Kelcey Huntington and got my ego bruised, and maybe this would be good to help me move on. “Great,” I said, perking up. “I’m so there. What’s the company? Who’s our contact? Someone cute?”

“I…” He faltered. “I don’t know if she’s cute. That’s not my highest priority in a phone call.”

“Okay, fine, whatever. Who is it?” I’d take anyone and anything if it wasn’t Kelcey Huntington.

“Her name’s Kelcey Huntington, with Lakeshore Logistics.”

Son of a bitch. “Kel—what,” I said, my voice coming out like I’d stepped on a frog mid-croak. “I’m sorry, can you say that again?”

He raised his eyebrows. “Kelcey Huntington. Do you know her?”

Maybe I should have quit right now. I had a decent bit of money saved up. I could coast to my next job. That was something I did a couple times a year and I was a little overdue now anyway. “Kelcey… Huntington. You, uh—” I cleared my throat. Had to find something to recognize her by other than being the girl who… I didn’t want to think about, at any cost. “You mean the Silverfield General Hospital director’s granddaughter? That Kelcey Huntington?”

Liam’s eyes just about lit up with dollar signs. “The what? She’s related to the hospital director?”

I shouldn’t have said that. “Uh… yep. The one and only. Man, probably a bad client.”

“How do you know that?”

Ugh, I didn’t do lying. I was a straightforward person. I hunched my shoulders. “My sister is her direct supervisor at Lakeshore.”

“Are you kidding me?” Liam looked like he’d burst, eyes sparkling. “She never mentioned that.”

“Yeah, my sister doesn’t know I’m working here right now. Last she checked, I was a wedding photographer.”

He frowned, thinking it over, before he shook it off. “Well, either way, that’s the best opportunity I’ve seen in my life. What do you think? You can go talk to Kelcey and—I don’t know, bond over your sister. Make absolutely sure we get the gig. She’s strongly considering it but we still have to get her to sign on the dotted line.”

“Uh.” Kelcey would cut all ties with the firm if she knew I was working here. “Well… erm. Yeah. About that.”

He raised his eyebrows. “Something wrong? Kelcey’s lovely. I’m sure you’d get along well with her.”

That was exactly the problem. We’d gotten along great until we hadn’t, until the moment I’d caught myself staring at her contact waiting for her to come online, and I’d been, like, ew, I don’t even recognize myself, this is weird, and I’d cut her off.

I’d just been planning on fucking her a few times because she was cute and stupid rich, my favorite combination. But one tiny little thing getting her off under the table at her office’s holiday work party—as small and casual as anything—escalated into another thing and then another thing, and the next thing I knew, I was getting nervous suggesting getting dinner or something even though it was just to convince her to buy me a fancy dinner and then get her in bed after.

It kinda icked me out, being nervous and excited about the prospect of getting dinner with her. So I kind of fucked things up on purpose to make her hate me and ran away, except then I saw her again at another event later on and, well, she was cute and I was horny, so one thing led to another, and just one tiny little thing fucking her in the bathroom at her company’s press release escalated into me getting even worse over her, so I cut her off harder.

And then a few months later, I crashed another one of my sister’s work parties, and there was Kelcey. The scary thing was that I wasn’t even horny that time, I just couldn’t stop myself from going and talking to her. And when she’d put up even more resistance that time, I hadn’t been able to help myself, and I’d committed to it day and night until I won her over again, and we had a whole series of dates until I’d realized, with a feeling like getting kicked in the nuts by a horse—at least what I imagine that would feel like if I had nuts and a horse—that I’d caught feelings for her, so I cut her off even harder this time.

Anna had torn me a new asshole after that, telling me to keep my hands off Kelcey or she’d take them off my arms. And I’d been kind of grateful, because it turned out I needed all the help I could get to keep my mind off Kelcey. I’d even gone and gotten into my best attempt at a serious relationship with a guy I knew from a previous job as an event coordinator, and it was a relationship with all the soft, sweet comforts of sandpaper.

I’d gotten out and sworn off people forever. But then, when I’d just been casually hanging out at a networking event I’d seen advertised to someone else and decided to go and see if there was anyone cute there—then I found Kelcey there, looking beautiful in a little black dress with one of those big hair bows she always loved pinned into her cute new long-bob haircut, and I didn’t typically go thinking of people as beautiful. I’d think of them as a cutie I’d like to see in bed for a night, and I was happy with that. But then there was that dumbass with blue eyes and that thing she did where she bounced on the balls of her feet thinking over what to say, and I was kind of suckered in, and I went and said the most mortifying things I’d ever said in my life, things the CIA couldn’t have tortured out of me.

And Kelcey shot me down.

So the sane, normal thing to do would have been to say something like yeah we kind of dated and then I broke things off and then we kind of dated again and I broke things off and then we definitely dated and I broke things off and I tried to hook up with her again and she told me to leave her alone, so I’m probably not the right person to talk to her, but it turned out I needed all the help I could get to keep me from talking to Kelcey, because I said, “Yeah, no, nothing’s wrong. I can totally chat to her and get her on board. I’m just thinking about how much work this is going to be once we do land the gig… work sucks.”

“You know, there’s a lot of other people who would gladly take this job.”

“And none of them have my way with words. C’mon, you could never bear to be without me. So, what? Do I send her an email?”

“I can set up a conference call for us—”

“Ugh, calls suck,” I said, which, they did but I was mostly just trying to avoid the scene that would unfold if the call connected and Kelcey saw my face there on the screen and Danielson had to see the fallout. “I’ll just message her on Slack or something. Get me her contact.”

He raised his eyebrows. “You sure? This is a big deal… you know I’m going to kill you if you drop the ball on it.”

“I’m not. Trust me. I’m good at what I do.”

I tried to play it all casual and cool like I wasn’t remotely anxious—I mean, this was Kelcey Huntington. I knew her inside and out. Emphasis on the inside part. I knew what made her tick. And I headed to my desk in the tiny, cluttered corner of the studio, where there were all hands on deck: all four of them squeezed into one claustrophobic room with enough junk for forty people. And as I sat down at my computer and powered it up, I was completely relaxed, and I’d never once been nervous in my life.

I was going to throw up. How did Kelcey get under my skin? How did Kelcey Huntington get me to want her so badly that I was shaky as I pulled up Slack and waited for Danielson to get her contact and pass it to me—how did Kelcey of all people make me feel this way? Just because I liked blondes didn’t mean I was ready to fall head over heels for her. I didn’t date in general, and I especially didn’t date women. I couldn’t imagine it. Going around telling people about my girlfriend? Ick.

Well, it always had been ick. Now it made me picture Kelcey, with round blue eyes and long eyelashes fluttering around them as she looked at me in the low glow of the Christmas lights next to where I’d parked the car, late at night, just the two of us, and the soft laugh in the way she said my name and since when was I like that? Ick. Major ick.

A message popped up from Danielson, and my heart jumped as I looked at it—a Slack contact. Kelcey’s. And then a message, Here’s Huntington’s info, and, should I set up a meeting, tell her all about her boss’s sister?

Absolutely not, I sent. Let me handle the introductions. I know how to drop these things to make them land with maximum impact.

Meaning I wanted to message Kelcey without her realizing it was me, because it was the only way I’d ever get her to acknowledge my existence again. I’d always liked to play dirty.

I anguished for a long time over what to write before I sent a message, safe and polite, making sure my Slack contact was bare and didn’t give me away.

Hi there, Miss Huntington! This is Nic, head of outreach with ERC.

She responded right away. Rare of her. I guess she had other work she was avoiding. Hi, Nic! It’s really nice to meet you. You can just call me Kelcey. And after a second, Or just Kelce. It’s what my friends call me.

That meant we were friends now. This was evil of me. I regretted nothing. Thank god. I don’t do stuffy formalities. I’d been worried when Danielson told me this was a big corporate client that we’d be doing suit-speak.

She sent laughing emojis, and then, My bosses always tell me I need to be better at suit-speak.

She was immediately getting distracted from the work. That was just like her… it was perfect. I guess I liked easily distracted girls. I’d never had a type with women before, and I was just defining it as everything about Kelcey. Well, they put the right person on the job to talk to us. We’re a pretty small team so it’s all cozy.

I love cozy, so it works out well for all of us.

Yeah, of course she loved cozy. I knew full well how much she loved cozy—how she got excited about winter coming around because she got to wear big sweaters and fuzzy socks and cuddle with a hot drink, and once upon a time it had been me there cuddling her over a hot drink. And I was trying not to miss it, but I could hear every message in her soft voice with the little lyrical lilt to it like a silvery bell, and I wanted to print out every message and wallpaper them onto my walls.

Yeesh. Down bad, much? This was probably a bad idea. I kept doing it.

Well, this is supposed to be a formal business correspondence and a professional communication for a job, but I love cozy too, so let’s officially brand this chat a cozy little lodge with a fireplace, hot coffee, big fuzzy blankets, and a whole bunch of Christmas lights and decorations.

omg, she sent, all pretenses of proper business communications out the window. Thank god. It was like I was talking to Kelcey again. I shouldn’t have been, but I was. that’s perfect, she sent, and then, not too many Christmas lights though, last year I mixed up whether I was ordering individual lights or boxes of light strings and ordered 600 light strings for a Christmas party

Oh, that was why there had been so many lights at that holiday party. I’d always wondered who had been behind that. Now that I knew it was Kelcey’s doing, I thought it was cute and quaint. I thought suddenly that every Christmas party needed six hundred light strings. I think this collaboration still deserves something special, though, I sent. Maybe a very moderate and reasonable 400.

She replied right away with, 450.

Seemed like she didn’t regret the 600 lights too much. perfect number. And, hold on, I’m going to grab some coffee and a muffin before this so it’s just like we’re in that lodge while you tell me what you want for this job.

Under any other circumstances, I’d have weirded out any sensible client with this kind of conversation. But I had Kelcey on a string, and I was making her…

Who was I kidding? I didn’t care about the job at all. I could get fired this instant and walk out happy that I’d gotten to talk to Kelcey again.

She replied with heart-eyes emojis, one of her favorites. Always there in the top row of her recently-used emojis, and I’d see them whenever I’d come up behind her texting and put my arms around her from behind, and she’d giggle and inevitably make a typo in her message because I was distracting her.

Jesus Christ, I wanted to distract her again. I wanted to go back in time and punch myself in the face when I was about to go push her away for the third time.

coffee and a muffin is exactly how I like to approach business too!! I can see why you’re the outreach guy, you’re so good at this, I’m totally getting a coffee and a muffin too

Ah… she thought I was a man. I guess Nic could be neutral. Well, whatever made her less likely to think I was Veronica.

Coffee and muffins and a cozy little imaginary lodge with Kelcey. I knew there was a reason I’d stuck with this job even though Danielson kept telling me to do work.