Page 60 of The Serendipity

“Fine. What’s your phone number?” he says.

Though I know he’s not asking for personal reasons, I still have a nervous, fluttery feeling as I recite my number. Immediately, my phone buzzes with a text.

“Now you have mine as well,” Archer says. “Also, I sent my grocery list. You can start with that. Just bring the groceries up to my apartment when you get back.”

And without giving me even a moment to respond, Archer turns on his heel, leaving me with his jacket, a grocery list, and an ogling pair of lobsters. Oh, and a new job I might really regret—namely, because of my new boss.

Chapter Twelve

Archer

I have metand surpassed my quota for mistakes this month, so hiring Willa cannot be anything but a success. This is what I tell myself after the first hour of her first day.

This must work. It will. I will adjust and it will be just?—

“Hey, boss?”

I cringe at the term, which Willa has been using exclusively from the moment she waltzed into my apartment this morning. I technically am her boss and the boss to—by last count—a few thousand employees. But no onecallsme boss. It makes me feel like we’re two twentysomethings running a sandwich shop in a beach town on summer break.

Not that I have any idea whatthatwould be like. But Willa calling me boss in that cheeky tone gives me some faint idea.

I walk across the apartment to my office and hover in the doorway. “Archer is fine,” I tell her, not for the first time.

Her smile tells me she knows it’s fine and is choosing to call me boss because she knows I’d prefer that shenot.

Willa is sitting in my chair with her feet up on my desk. Technically, I suppose it’s Galentine’s chair and Galentine’s desk. But seeing Willa there stirs up a sense of possessiveness. But oddly, in a way that makes me like thinking of those thingsas mine and seeing her using my things. In the same way I liked seeing her in my jacket yesterday at the grocery store. I was sad when she brought it back but telling her to keep it might have seemed weird.

“For the exterminator, do you want services set up on a schedule?” she asks.

“As opposed to having him come whenever he wants to?”

She laughs, but I wasn’t joking. I don’t know how exterminators work. Do they usually set up an annual or semi-annual schedule? I have no idea how often buildings need to be sprayed to keep out pests.

Willa misses the seriousness of my question at first. Then, she seems to realize I’m legitimately asking and quickly straightens out her expression. “As opposed to us having to call him whenever the building is overrun with possums. Or roaches.”

She makes a face, one that seems to indicate that she finds roaches worse than opossums. I would disagree. Not that I want either in the building or anywhere near it.

“What do you think?” I ask.

“I vote schedule,” she says. “Most people schedule quarterly services.”

“Schedule it is.”

“I’ll set it up.” Willa scribbles a note on her pink clipboard. Seeing my hard stare, she waves a hand. “Don’t worry. I’ll make sure there are digital records. This just makes it easier for my brain. Using pen and paper helps me process. I’m tactile. I need to touch things.”

Her cheeks burn a sudden, bright pink. I hadn’t read anything into her words. But now I am.

Especially as the pink spreads over her cheeks and down her neck. I find my gaze tracking the rise of color, wondering how far the blush extends on her skin.

“Like, notallthings. I don’t go around touching everything or everyone. I didn’t mean anything weird or …”

She trails off here, and I find myself mesmerized and suspect I’m also a little red-faced.

Willa at no point indicated that she wanted to touchme. Yet that’s where my mind went. Where my mind still is. Those slender, delicate fingers on my jaw or curving around the back of my neck and dragging up into my hair.

When was the last time I had thoughts like this?

I don’t know the answer, and it disturbs me that it’s this woman, Willa, I’m having them about. Though I meant what I said about her precision and attention to detail, outside of her impossibly perfect cookies, Willa is chaos personified.

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