Page 159 of The Playboy

“Isn’t that fancy?” Jesse said. “Are you excited?”

“I’m all the things.” I reached the first light, knowing I had to turn at the next one. From there, I’d be about a mile from the office. “Excited, nervous, anxious, overwhelmed, humbled.” I tried to take a breath, the anxiety increasing so much that I could no longer fill my lungs all the way. “Once I get my first meeting behind me, I’m sure I’ll be a little calmer.”

“Who’s that one with?” Clem asked.

“My boss.”

“Ooh,” Jesse sang. “And then what does the rest of your day look like?”

“More meetings,” I replied. “For the first week, I’m going to be analyzing all the numbers for each department at the Beverly Hills hotel. Week two, I’ll be working inside the hotel to evaluate their processes.”

“And that’s where you’re living, right?” Jesse asked.

“Right.” I turned at the second light. “I’ll be at that hotel for probably a couple of months. Then, assuming I do a good enough job, I’ll be moving to another property.”

“My sister is such a fucking badass,” Jesse said, “with a big corporate job and an awesome new Jeep—”

“It’s notnew, new,” I said, laughing, “but the Jeep is new to me.”

“It’s new to us,” Clem added. “And once Jesse and I arrive for our visit, we’re going to be driving that baby everywhere.”

“I can’t wait.” My voice quieted. “I miss you guyssooomuch, it hurts.”

“Us too, babe,” Jesse replied.

“In ways you can’t even imagine,” Clem voiced.

I could see the building up ahead, so I said to the girls, “I’m going to pull in at any second. I’ll try to text during the day, if I can. If not, you’ll hear from me when I head home.”

Home.

For tonight, that was Macon’s house, where, last night, he’d told me he had something special planned for this evening to celebrate my first day.

I didn’t know what I had done to deserve that man, but my love for him was growing by the minute.

“We love you to the moon and back,” Jesse said, Clem almost instantly mirroring her words.

“I love you both too.”

We said good-bye and hung up, and I drove around the back of the high-rise to the employee lot, going down several rows before I found an open spot to park. I grabbed my bag from the passenger seat and hurried to the entrance. Since I didn’t yet have my ID badge, I showed my credentials to the security guard, and once I was cleared, I took the elevator to my floor.

HR had sent a map of the layout, an arrow pointing over the spot where they’d assigned me, so I knew which direction to head in as soon as I got out of the elevator. It was a busy area. Employees were everywhere—at their desks, walking through the sections of cubicles, inside the private offices that ran along both sides of the floor.

Born with no sense of direction, I took a couple of wrong turns before I found where the arrow was pointing.

And when I did, I stopped in front of the door and checked the map and the number that was printed on a plaque right outside to confirm that what I was seeing was correct.

Because what I was seeing couldn’t be right.

There was no way they had assigned me an office.

Of my own.

It wasn’t even possible …

“Welcome, Brooklyn,” I heard from behind me.

I quickly turned around. The woman from HR—who had given me a tour the last time I had been here—was standing there, smiling.

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