Page 8 of A Break in Communications

“Do you want to bring it to higher management? Talk to Berg? I’m trying to get the documents to save one of our biggest clients, even if I have to follow you around begging. I’d be willing to try it.”

Ugh… she was winning, and I hated it. I had to stop and pull myself back out of the bubbling anger in my skull, think logically.

Even if I didn’t like it, I knew Lucy was damn good at her job. If we both worked on the Gould and Stephens event, we’dretain the account for sure. All I had to do was make sure that credit went to me—that I positioned myself as the leader on the project. And I had this advantage, so I’d take it.

“Fine,” I said, my voice low. “On conditions.”

She raised her eyebrows, a smile on her lips. “That’s exciting. You’re setting conditions now?”

“I’m not giving you the documents. But you can ask me for anything you like off them, and I’ll tell you.”

She laughed, once, short and sharp, and then she said what I never would have expected, which was, “Deal. Works for me.”

Seriously? No bartering, no snarky commentary, no back-and-forth? I stared at her for a second before I said, “Okay… great. So we have a deal, and you can get lost.”

“Mm… I don’t think so. I’m putting in extra hours tonight. So if I need you to tell me what’s in the documents, then I’ll have to stick around to get it done.”

“Masters—go get a life.”

She laughed. “Like you weren’t planning on working all night too, darling?”

Ugh. She had a point. “You’renotstaying the night at my place.”

She beamed. “We made a deal.”

Dammit. We did. Why did it always end up feeling like she was winning? I sighed, hard, pushing past her and unlocking the door. Easier to just let her have it at this point, I guess. “Back-to-back people sleeping on my couch. Why the hell not. Just don’t make a mess.”

“Home sweet home,” she said, following me inside, setting her laptop case down on the kitchen table, looking around. “Not a lot of Christmas cheer here.”

I snorted, throwing my bag onto the sofa and hanging up my jacket. “And you live in Santa’s workshop.”

“You don’t even have a tree? We put up the tree first thing in November.”

Lucy did not strike me as a Christmas decorator type. Probably the partner did the decorating while she criticized, and she called that decorating together. “Well, I guess we can head to the Christmas tree farm together and pick out the perfect one for my holiday home.”

She stretched her arms out over her head. “Is that an invitation, Preston? I know a really cute place upstate, they do little gingerbread-themed drinks too.”

I glowered at her. “How do you have the time for that bullshit?”

“It’s a matter of what you make time for. I squeeze that bullshit in, becauseIcare about beautiful things. Let me know if you want to go have our Christmas tree date.”

I wrinkled my nose, kicking my shoes off. “Don’t make me vomit, Masters. I’m taking a shower. You can drink water from the tap and sit at the kitchen table, and aside from that, don’t touch anything.”

She walked to the window, touching it and immediately violating our contract. “Some string lights here would really add a little magic and character.”

“I’ll string you up,” I muttered, grabbing my pajamas hung neatly on the door on my way into the bathroom.

Surprisingly, though, she was behaving herself well enough when I got out of the bathroom, sitting at the kitchen table with her laptop open in front of her, and she’d used a glass, but other than that, she was just drinking water that came from the tap.

“What’s your wi-fi passcode?”

“Who the hell calls it apasscode?”

She tapped on her keyboard. “It says that’s wrong. Is that sentence case, all lowercase?”

There was nothing that could shake this woman… I went to the kitchen, turning on the espresso machine. I’d need it. “Cumberbatch. All lowercase.”

She looked up. “Like Benedict?”

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