Page 30 of Kissing the Boss (Fairy Tale Quartet 2)

For a split second, I wanted to storm in there and drag her away from my man by the hair. But then I realized, he wasn’t mine. He wasn’t anything to me, and letting Lana know I had any interest in him would be my downfall.

Ezra smacked her hand away, thank God, and I could practically hear his teeth grind. “Is there a point to this summons?”

“Of course.” My stepmother airily turned away from him and tossed something onto her desk before rounding it to face him. As I ducked back out of sight, she continued. “Your grand plans to boost employee morale with your pathetic little party tonight has backfired. That’s my point.”

Ezra let out an irritated sigh before answering, “I hope you don’t actually expect me to understand what that means, because I don’t.”

“I have a security alarm set in my office. And tonight, it went off. Someone broke into my desk. I’m guessing they used your party as a diversion to cover their theft.”

“Did you have the door locked?” Ezra sounded suddenly alert. “What was taken?”

“It shouldn’t matter if the door was locked or not,” Lana snipped. “Would it make their violation into my privacy more right if I had the door hanging wide open? How dare you victim blame me!”

“God, you are impossible. Was anything taken or not?”

A slight pause followed before she admitted, “No. Nothing’s missing. They must’ve noticed the light blinking on the silent alarm and fled before they could swipe anything.”

Ezra seemed calmer when he asked, “Do you know who it could be?”

“Not yet.”

And… The irritation returned to his voice. “Then why did you call me in here? If nothing was taken and no locks were broken, I can’t exactly bar the doors and forbid everyone from leaving until the culprit confesses.”

“Actually, I wanted to know where you’ve been for the last forty-five minutes, Nash. I have it on very good authority you were missing from the ballroom for approximately that long.”

I set my hand over my mouth, unable to believe she would so openly accuse him of riffling through her drawers. Knowing who’d really been in her office, I was tempted to charge in there and set the record straight, defending him.

But revealing myself now would cause all kinds of problems. First of all, Lana wouldn’t believe me, and secondly, it would only alert her to my new standing with Ezra. Thirdly and worst of all, it’d reveal to him who I was.

And now that I was near my stepmother, freshly reminded what a viper she was and how much she could hurt both me and Ezra if she knew what we’d been doing together, I was back to wanting to keep my identity a secret from him. For both our protection.

“Keeping your moles busy tonight, I see,” he said to Lana with bitterness thick in his voice. “I’m surprised you didn’t just have one of them follow me to find out where I went.”

I tensed, waiting for him to add, Or did you? as if he suspected I was one of her moles. But thank goodness, he didn’t.

“Did you break into my office or not, Nash?”

I darted another quick peek through the doorway to see him folding his arms over his chest and bracing his feet wider apart. “Why don’t you just pull up the video on your handy little security system and find out?”

There was a lengthy pause before Lana reluctantly admitted, “Because I didn’t have a camera installed. It’s motion-censored only.”

“Ah. So it could have been a draft, or a mouse, or a fly that set off the alarm. Not an actual human being.”

“It was a human,” Lana bit out stubbornly.

Ezra snorted. “We’re done here.”

He was still barefoot so I didn’t hear footsteps but I knew in my gut he was headed my way. Dashing back toward the shadowed spot I’d hid in from Hayden earlier, I ducked down just as Ezra entered the hall looking murderous, his jaw clenched and eyes narrowed.

He didn’t notice me, didn’t even look for me, so I held my breath and watched him storm away.

From inside my stepmother’s office, I heard her throw something against a wall and growl a curse before the sound of breaking glass followed.

This was my best chance to get out of there without being spotted. Acting on impulse, I took off down the hall, once again grateful for my light, padded slippers.

When I rushed into the ballroom seconds later, my gaze was frantic, searching for two men: Ezra, in the hopes he wasn’t here and didn’t see me, and Brick, hoping he was here and did spot me.

I couldn’t find either, and my distress mounted. Where the heck was my stepbrother?

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