Page 2 of A Break in Communications

“Can you look at this page and tell me if I did something wrong?”

Oh, but wasn’t that lovely? I was sure she’d never in a million years have done something wrong. I couldn’t even fathom it. “You couldn’t just ping me on Slack?”

“I thought it was urgent.”

“Okay, okay, okay. Ugh…” I stood up, stepping around the desk, just as the door to Sean’s office opened, the man Sean was meeting with still lingering in the doorway talking on his way out. Kelcey and I stepped around it and got back to her desk, where she spun the laptop towards me, and I about had a heart attack.

“I was submitting this purchase order—”

“Kelcey.For six hundred lights?”

“It’s for the holiday party.”

I pulled her laptop towards me, clicking through the page to pull up the invoice. Jesus. She’d sent it. Theurgent problemwas the notice they’d given that the order was above the usual volume and may take extra time to fulfill. “Are you trying to decorate for a holiday party, or are you trying to light up the whole city?”

“Six hundred isn’t that many,” she said, scowling. “They’re tiny lights.”

“Kelcey. It’s—” I gestured to the screen, but I needed to stop, get myself under control as Manfield walked out of Sean’s office, the bank guy, a man in a blue suit with stubble who could not have looked more British if he was wrapped in the Union Jack carrying a mince pie. I was not shouting Kelcey’s financial mismanagement to the world with the bank guy right there. I dropped my voice, speaking carefully and quietly. “That’s six hundredlight strings.Each with one hundred and fifty lights on it.”

Her mouth fell open into a small o. “They didn’t say that.”

“They did. They absolutely did. The price should also have been a clue, because it’s going to cost you to buy roughly one hundred thousand tiny lights.”

“They offered a bulk discount, so I figured it was saving money.”

I pinched my brow. “I am sure that they did offer you a bulk discount. Okay—relax. No worries. I’ll send this on to Daniel and he should be able to get it canceled or just brought down to the right quantity, no problem.”

“I can do it,” she said, sitting down at her computer.

“Pleaseallow me. I have something else to update Daniel on anyway,” I lied, standing up taller as Sean came out of his office, a heavyset older man with a neat mustache and one of maybe three people here who did his job, and of coursehewas the one retiring. “Why don’t you get back to the client reports?”

“Ugh, I was hoping to take a break from all those,” she muttered, but she relented, going back to the computer and tabbing away to get to where she’d barely started the client reports. But hallelujah, she wasn’t screwing anything else up.

“Anna,” Sean said, slowing down on his way past me but not stopping, “I’m just heading to see Gloria for something, but is ten minutes from now a good time to have you in my office before I leave for the day?”

“Ten is good. Something wrong?”

“No, just a more complicated question that’s going to take a second to ask. Tricky little job I need done, and I trust you. I’ll see you then.”

My heart skipped a beat, a nervous energy tightening in my stomach. If he went to me specifically with thetricky little jobhe wanted to discuss in private…

Sean Dobbs was our executive communications director, the role I’d had my eyes on since I started here five years back. When he announced he was retiring, it was a free-for-allthrough the department trying to scope out who might be his replacement, and it had slowly whittled down to either me or Lucy Masters, mostly because Lucy was a ruthless attack dog and had picked off the competition one at a time, convincing them to step back or sabotaging them. And for a while, I’d been convinced she’d even find a way to take me down—it was hard to stop a person who’d traded all their morals for self-importance—but if Sean wanted me specifically for atricky jobnow of all times, then maybe—

“See you then,” I said, standing up taller, and I was just starting back to my desk when I heard, from the other end of the office,

“No, Rick—don’t—let me—”

It was more than three desks away. That was officially not my problem. I kept my head down, walking back to my desk, close to where night had settled over the city through the window, only to find everything good came to an end. One little glimmer of hope with a comment from Sean, and immediately, like a dog to meat, there was Lucy Masters, sitting on my desk, giving me that self-satisfied smile that only stood out more for her cherry-red lipstick, her chin up and resting on her hand, one leg crossed over the other.

“Looks like someone’s working late tonight,” she said, with that cat-that-got-the-cream tone just aboutdrippingfrom her. She had her pinstripes on today, her favorite—sleek black pantsuit, blonde curls swept to one side, short nude manicure still tidy from where she’d gotten it done just last the other day. All put together, just for me. Wasn’t I flattered?

“What do you want, Masters?”

“Preston, darling, dearest. Not good for you to work overtimeeveryday. All work and no play makes Preston a dull girl.”

She could at least try to be transparent. She and I always worked until it was just the two of us in the office, and then it was the frustrating game of not wanting to be the first one to leave the office between us. Obviously if I slacked off, she’d pick up that slack and take Sean’s position, and she wasn’t above harassing me openly to get me to leave.

“Don’t you have something to be doing?” I said, and she raised one neat eyebrow.

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