Page 72 of Mark my Words

He’d been seated at the breakfast bar again this morning, eating a freshly baked blueberry muffin, a robe pulled on over his pajamas. They hadn’t even tried to hide that he’d spent the night again, and while disturbing, I was glad that Nana had someone worth traumatizing her grandchild over.

Chase and Evan were making an appearance at the office this week, and with me being on forced vacation, it meant I needed to get back to the office to catch up. As far as I knew, Isobel still hadn’t managed to get Chase to agree to the book tour, but once Chase was trapped in her office, it was only a matter of time until Isobel coerced her into doing what she thought was best.

I still hadn’t interacted with Evan—other than when I’d unknowingly caught him in the city with Chase—so I was curious what he was like beyond what little information Dickhead and Sam had divulged about him. Although if the book tour went ahead, I’d be spending plenty of time with Chase, Evan...and Sam by default.

He hadn’t called after our little Tinder conversation, but I wasn’t sure what I expected. I wasn’t sure how to take his silence after I told him I was trying. Nana had convinced me I might not need to avoid getting attached to Sam. Our future beyond the next few months was still uncertain, but I didn’t want to push him away anymore intentionally. I was scared, though, and I knew I’d probably do something stupid instead of talking to him about my feelings. This whole relationship business didn’t come easily to me.

Finally, after sitting in a café next to the dock for three hours staring at the cursor on my computer screen, lost in thought, the ferry pulled into position. I packed up my bags and headed down to board the boat.

The water was choppy, and a late spring storm was on the horizon in the forecast for the afternoon. I’d intended to go over my last set of edits using the free Wi-Fi on the boat, but the rocking forced me to close my laptop and settle in with a view out the windows. So I spent the trip watching the landscape of the coastline gradually transition from quiet beaches to urban buildings and skyscrapers by the time we hit the harbor in Boston.

I was already running late for work, but Isobel’s texts assured me I could take my time as long as I was at the office for our meetings with Chase tomorrow.

Not wanting to drag my luggage into the office, I took an Uber to my apartment building, changing into something more professional-looking before heading downtown. It took me way too long to decide what to wear, finally settling on a sheath dress, throwing on my raincoat, and grabbing my umbrella before I booked another ride on the app.

I told myself that the dress wasn’t for Sam, but when the car dropped me off in front of the building, and I caught sight of him walking down the sidewalk outside the building, my heart started pounding. I thanked the driver and hustled down the pavement, grabbing the door right as he prepared to let it go.

“Hey,” he greeted me with a smile as he glanced back and noticed my hand on the edge of the door.

“Hi.”

His smile widened as he stepped to the side, grabbing my hand and tugging me inside as I tried to retract my umbrella. Sam’s hair was wet, curling around his forehead and ears, moisture dripping from the light layer of scruff on his chin and his glasses, dropping onto his crisp dress shirt. He was wearing a lightweight jacket but still half-soaked from being out without an umbrella.

“Forget something at home today?” I teased as I shook my umbrella over the rug inside the door.

“Eh, a little rain never hurt anyone. You’re late today. Trying to play hooky again?”

“No, the ferry was late,” I scoffed as I carefully navigated across the wet marble tile toward the bank of elevators. My heels slipped slightly, and Sam’s hand shot out, catching me by the elbow. “Thanks.”

“Don’t need you having to hobble around on a cast while we’re traveling.”

Frowning, I jabbed at the elevator button. “They still haven’t agreed to anything. We may be stuck here for the next few months.”

“Adrian is convinced it’s a sure thing. Legal wants to reduce their royalties if they don’t agree. Kind of a dick move, but I think they may go for it.”

“I’m sure Dickhead didn’t have anything to do with that being snuck into their contracts.”

“Of course not,” Sam laughed as the elevator doors opened, and he ushered me inside with a gentle press of his hand to my lower back. “He’d never do anything that unethical to one of his authors.”

“I bet you can’t wait to get away from him,” I chuckled, making eye contact as he settled beside me at the back of the elevator after selecting the button for our floor. “I don’t know how you’ve lasted this long.”

“Nothing is a done deal yet,” he smiled, his lips tight, obviously thinking of what’d kept me away from him lately. He still had to earn the promotion first if I didn’t throw up roadblocks. The mature thing would be for me to drop out of the fantasy position, the position in New York was mine for the taking if I wanted it, but my pride and my need to stay independent made our lives difficult. I knew Sam would never say anything to persuade me, but I hurt both of us by holding onto the possibility of staying in Boston so tightly.

“Why were you out of the office this late?” It was already past 3:00 pm. He wasn’t carrying anything besides his messenger bag, so it wasn’t likely he was out in the rain doing an errand for Dickhead.

“Uh.” He shifted awkwardly before glancing over nervously. “Client lunch ended up taking longer than we thought it would.”

“Since when do you meet with the authors? And out of the office?”

Isobel regularly took some authors to lunch when they were in town, but she’d never invited me. Most of them knew who I was, but typically the copy-editing interns didn’t meet with them outside the office. We were faceless names in the margins of their manuscripts.

“Uh, Adrian wanted me to come and observe. Jessica wanted to talk about the whole editing process, and you know how Adrian is hopeless when it comes to polite interaction with people.”

Oh. Not only was he meeting with authors, but Adrian was already grooming him. Nice. Guess it didn’t matter if the job was his yet or not. The good ol’ boys’ club seemed to be at work behind the scenes to give him an edge. My eyes narrowed as I gave him a pointed look.

“It’s not like that, Jessica was just really chatty, and when Adrian needed to get back to the office for a meeting with the genre heads, I told him I could stay and fill her in.”

Dig the hole deeper, Sam. I was assuming that the Jessica he was talking about was Jessica Prange. She was an up-and-coming mystery writer with a semi-successful series about a sexy female detective already self-published. I’d seen her headshots. Jessica was a tall, slender redhead with ample cleavage revealed in most of her author photos and dual dimples to set off her light blue eyes. And Sam had just spent several hours keeping her ‘entertained.’

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