Page 17 of Some Like It Hot

Sure, there’s responsibility, but we also have the ability to give thousands of people jobs, turn out products and services that can make the world better, and at the same time live lives that are pretty fucking easy and comfortable.

Money can’t buy happiness, so they say, but it sure can buy a lot of things that make it easier to enjoy yourself.

I chuckle as the camera actually finds a couple that doesn’t want to kiss. The guy holds up a sign that says SHE’S MY SISTER. They were obviously prepared.

Then the camera pans to where the mascot, a huge silver and white dog, dressed in a vest and fedora, is standing on the steps. He’s pulling a laughing woman to her feet, then dipping her back and kissing her.

I straighten as he pulls the woman upright again, and the camera zooms in on her face.

I swear my heart stops.

“Holy hell,“ I mutter.

“You okay, Simon?” Nathan asks.

I can’t tear my eyes away from the woman, but I nod. Am I okay? I’m fucking fantastic.

I just found Elise.

“How do I get down there?” I ask Nathan, not taking my eyes off of her.

She’s just as drop dead gorgeous as I remember. Tonight, she’s dressed casually, instead of the business attire I’m used to seeing her in. She’s wearing tight, dark jeans, and a Racketeers hockey jersey. But because the mascot pulled her out onto the steps with him, I can see her from head to toe. She’s wearing high heeled black boots, her dark hair hanging in large curls around her face and down her back. And the lips that I have been thinking about for fourteen bloody months are painted a cock-teasing crimson.

But more than anything, more than the curves, more than her hair, more than that mouth, it’s the way her face lights up when she smiles.

I would know her anywhere.

That is the woman who walked into my office one day almost two years ago, grabbed me by the balls—metaphorically, not literally—and made me wish for the first time in my life that my last name was not Armstrong and that I didn’t have millions of dollars to my name. That I was just a regular guy who she would agree to go out to dinner with. And then just a little over a year ago, the woman who finally let me kiss her. And then disappeared from my life.

“Down where?” Nathan asks.

The camera has moved off of Elise and I’ve lost track of her.

I turn to my cousin. “I need to find the woman the mascot was just kissing.”

Nathan looks at me for several beats. He narrows his eyes. “Are you fucking kidding me?”

I shake my head with a frown. “No. Why would I be kidding?”

“Did Danielle put you up to this? Or was it Crew?”

Okay, if anyone was going to put me up to something to mess with Nathan, Crew is a pretty good guess. But I’m dead serious. “No. Nathan, I know that woman and I need to talk to her. Right now.”

I can’t believe she’s here. I looked for her after she quit. We kissed and then the next day she just didn’t come back to work. Accessing her employee files to find her address was probably not completely ethical, but I didn’t care. I needed to know that she hadn’t quit because of me because then I would have to apologize and talk her into returning to her job.

But she’d already moved. I resigned myself to the fact that she didn’t want to be found. She could’ve walked back into my office at any point. Hell, she had my number. I’m still convinced to this day that she knows I would’ve welcomed any contact.

Which means she didn’t want to have contact.

I chalked it up to just one of those things. It could have been something, and then it wasn’t. But if she is within the same building as I am at the same time, I am going to find her and talk to her.

If for no other reason, than to assure myself that she is fine and I didn’t somehow fuck up her life.

Nathan studies my face and apparently decides that I am completely serious. He nods. “Fine.” He pulls his phone from his pocket and presses a couple of buttons. He puts the phone to his ear. “Wade, I need you to go get the woman you just kissed.“ He pauses, then frowns. “Elise?” His eyes find mine.

I give him a single nod, telling him that yes, that’s the name of the woman I am talking about as well.

“Yes. Go get Elise and bring her up to my box.”

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