was about a woman—a gorgeous redhead, who was a virgin and most likely weighed ninety pounds on a bad day—who was trapped in a stairwell. (There was something about locked doors that wouldn’t open.) And she feels a panic attack coming on, and she’s starting to feel faint, so she calls 911 and a few minutes later someone is banging the door open, and it’s—
I shut the cover on my Kindle again. “Nope,” I said aloud, and then I’d gone back to my cubicle to compare toner prices.
Now I had my Kindle in my purse, though I didn’t have the courage to open it. Maybe I never would again. Maybe I’d have to put it in a lead-lined safe and sink it deep into the bottom of the ocean so I wouldn’t have to think about Taken Hard by the EMT ever again. I knew it was a digital file, but maybe if I got it far enough away from me, it wouldn’t make me think of Holden, and his chest, and the way his ass had looked in those uniform pants, coming down the ladder toward me. Those were not safe thoughts at all.
I was approaching the corner of Fifty-Third and Sixth, and I could see that the light was about to change. I sped my pace to try and make it. From the corner of my eye I saw movement, but it was too late. I slammed chest-first into someone getting out of a cab at the curb.
“Oof!” I said as I stepped back. I had bumped into a suit. A very expensive suit. A suit that you might say was intimidating, terrifying, or—if you were feeling particularly brave—stuck-up. Because it was Graham Morgan’s suit. I had just bumped into the CEO of Morgan Financial.
His handsome, arrogant face looked disgusted as he brushed himself off. “Watch where you’re going.”
“I’m so sorry, Mr. Morgan.”
He looked at me again and narrowed his eyes as he realized I’d call him by name. He really was terrifying, though I had to admit he was also good-looking and obviously far from stupid. “I know you,” he said, staring at my face and trying to place it.
“Not really,” I said. “Not in the personal sense.”
It clicked, and he nodded. “I’ve seen you in the halls of my office. You work for me.”
“Again, not really. I work for someone who works for someone who works for you. Or there are a few more layers in there. Who knows?”
He looked like he was considering firing not only me, but whoever had hired me. “What do you do for me?”
I stepped closer to the curb, avoiding the flow of Manhattan pedestrians, who were looking annoyed at the two of us standing here. “I’m the office supply girl,” I said. “Actually, office supply person, since girl is politically incorrect. At least for you. I’m probably allowed to say it.”
“Do you always talk this much, Office Supply Person?”
“Only when I’m nervous. Which I already was, because I’m on my way to see the guy who broke my heart ten years ago. I mean, really broke it. So I’m nervous about that. But seeing you makes me even more nervous.”
Mr. Morgan scowled harder, which I hadn’t thought possible until that moment. He ignored my verbal vomit about my personal life. “I make you nervous.”
“Sir, you make everyone nervous,” I said. “The assistants, the accountants, even the janitors. Literally everyone.”
“People need to have a stronger backbone,” Mr. Morgan said. “My secretaries are particularly weak. The other day one of them said she was going to the ladies’ room and never came back.” He shook his head. “Well, Office Supply Person, I won’t fire you for bumping into me because I’m in a good mood today.”
The words were out before I could think better of them. “This is a good mood?”
Mr. Morgan’s eyes narrowed again. “Don’t push it.”
Right. Job, paycheck, rent payments, food. I needed those things. “Sorry. I apologize for bumping into you. Have a nice evening, Mr. Morgan.”
He was already walking away. Talk about arrogant.
The encounter with Mr. Morgan had made me five minutes late. I peered around the dim pub-style restaurant, looking for Holden. He wasn’t here.
He wasn’t here.
Don’t panic, Mina.
I wasn’t going to feel bad. I wasn’t going to be that teenage girl again, standing at the top of the stairs in her dress, afraid to sit down because it would put wrinkles in the belly of the skirt, wondering when the guy she’d been secretly crushing on