Page 2 of Off the Record

Too late.

Hudson doesn’t look the least worried about his designer suit pants on the cold gravel, despite the fact that they probably cost more than I make in a month. He fits the wrench onto the lug nut, then gives a solid push that clearly strains the muscles in his arms.

Pop.It’s loose.

That was too easy. If this is a life advertisement to motivate me to use the employee gym, it’s working.

Not that I’ll see Hudson Owens there. The man probably has a gold-plated gym in his penthouse. He comes from Tennessee media royalty. Like, his great-grandfather started the business back in the thirties, and they’ve passed the company down onegeneration at a time, building wealth as they went like a money-snowball.

He proceeds to remove the tire, his bright blue eyes glancing at me over his shoulder. “You have a spare?”

I jump to action, pulling my spare from the trunk and rolling it toward him. My little Honda Accord isn’t as elegant as the sleek sports car Hudson parked behind me, but this baby is reliable and isn’t usually the cause of my sticky situations.

Knock on wood.

Hudson eyes the spare warily before fitting it on and tightening the lug nuts. I take the flat tire and heave it into the trunk. Workout for today: complete. No gym membership necessary.

“I can take it from here,” I say cheerily, though I don’t think my skin has stopped burning hot and bright red since Hudson arrived.

He hesitates, making me think he’s going to ignore me, but he sends me a nod and gets to his feet. The morning sunlight makes his eyes look bluer than Old Hickory Lake.

“Thanks.” What an inadequate word. What I really mean to say is,You’ve saved me from being stranded here, and now I can never look you in the eye again because I’m the reason your suit pants are trashed. Also, can I get a raise, because you don’t pay your writers enough? And if you could fire my cheating ex-boyfriend scum while you’re at it so I don’t have to sit at the desk across from him, that would be fab.

“Don’t worry about it.” He shoots me the smile that lands him in the social media tabloids on one bombshell’s arm or another, then pulls his coat from the hood and ambles back to his car.

I crouch and start to crank down the jack when my feet slip, making me land hard on my butt.

Hudson’s looking right at me when I peer his way over my shoulder, so yes, he did see that from the front seat of his car. Great. Super dignified. This is so much worse than the time my dad’s tire blew and we pulled over in the rain while he instructed me to change it step by step. I might have been cold and wet then, but at least I’d retained my pride. It was hard not to feel a little puffed up when your dad was beaming at you the way mine had.

No one is beaming now.

I finish up and jump in my car, plugging my phone in for the last bit of my drive. Hudson pulls onto the road before I follow him at a slower clip. There’s no time to take my car into the tire shop before work, but it can sit in the parking garage for the day.

My plan is to be at my desk and deep in edits, with a concentrated brow and noise-canceling headphones on, before Leo arrives so I’m not sucked into a welcome back conversation.

If he comes within arm’s reach, I might be tempted to cause bodily harm. It’s not enough to cheat on me in the office for who knows how long—he also sent little notes to Kyla in his email updates to the entire office while he was gone. I’m not sure why he feels the need to flaunt the relationship, or why he didn’t break up with me when he started seeing her.

Dirtbag.

Andrea is sitting at the front desk when I arrive on our floor. Her black hair is styled in a perfect blunt bob, and her eyes widen as they run over me.

“That bad?” I ask, cringing. Guess my rear-view mirror wasn’t enough to accurately assess the damage to my hair. It feels windblown, but I thought I’d tamed the frizzy brown mess. I smooth down my navy blouse and ignore my grease-stained slacks.

“Leo’s here,” she stage-whispers.

So much for setting up camp and loading my canons before the opposition arrives.

“Thanks for the heads up,” I say.

“Wait.”

I don’t have time or space in my brain for more office gossip, but Andrea’s expression makes me pause, lifting my eyebrows to urge her to continue.

“Ben’s not coming in today. Or any other day.”

Our boss? Cryptic. “What happened?”

She settles forward on her desk. “He got into a bar fight last night, but it was the second arrest this year, so they fired him. Not good for theimage.” She air-quotes that final word, leaning back to emphasize how unfair she finds it that we have to cater our outside conduct to something befitting a public image. Like bar fights should be totally okay in this honky-tonk-filled town.

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