The Hone-Don't List the sweetest new romcom from the bestselling author of The Unhoneymooners - Christina Lauren Page 0,25
but maybe they should be.”
She’s still staring. “Who are you?”’
“Who am I?”
“Why are you here?” she asks. “Why do you even have this job? Why didn’t you quit the second Robyn told you we had to go on tour? Actually, why didn’t you quit the first time Rusty asked you to get his coffee or clean his golf balls?”
I wince and press a hand to my stomach. “There’s something about that phrasing that really doesn’t work for me right now.”
She ignores this.
I watch as she carefully coaxes a handful of crinkly dollar bills into one of the vending machines. Her movements are stiff and unnatural, and I’m on the verge of offering to help her when the machine finally takes the cash. I glance away as she presses the button for a granola bar.
“Seriously, though,” she prompts, “why are you here?”
For a moment, I briefly consider telling her the truth and then decide evasion is easier. “That’s a long story.”
“We’ve got,” she starts, looking down at her phone, “eleven minutes until our Lyft is here.”
“It’s also a depressing story.”
“I live for other people’s drama.” Depositing the bar inside her bag for later, she grins up at me.
I blink away, looking across the lobby to the reception desk, where one employee is on her phone and her male counterpart is asleep in his chair. I don’t relish the idea of telling Carey about all of this. It’s not that I worry it makes me look bad, but I worry it will make her pity me, and few things are more emasculating than pity. “My last job—the only job I’d had in the four years since I finished my master’s—was at Rooney, Lipton, and Squire.”
Carey’s eyes narrow and then go wide in recognition. Blue-green. Neither blue nor green, but a pretty blend of the two. “Wait. What? Seriously?”
“Seriously.”
Thankfully, her expression isn’t pity, it’s fire. “Isn’t that the firm that funneled all that money into—”
“The very one.” I reach up, scratch my chin, feeling uneasy in that nauseated way I always do when I remember that the four years of endless workdays and stress-induced sleepless nights were essentially supporting a completely corrupt company. “So, I really need to build my experience and contacts here. I can’t just bolt.” I reconsider. “Or, I suppose I could, but then I might have a hard time finding something else. Rusty promised me an engineering role. Ted promised me an engineering role. I’ve been Rusty’s de facto assistant so far, but if I can just hold on until season two starts shooting, I think I might actually like what we’re doing here. Plus, I admit I’m thrilled that no one here seems to be breaking the law.”
She whistles. “Wowza.”
Yeah, wowza. There’s also the fact that my plan only works if Rusty and Melissa can keep it together. Wanting to change the subject, I ask, “If you don’t mind my asking, why do you still work for them?”
Her answer is immediate. “Melly needs me.”
I believe that’s true, though from what I’ve seen Melissa also doesn’t treat Carey particularly well, so it seems awfully generous of Carey to prioritize Melissa’s needs over her own.
But surely she wants my pity even less than I wanted hers. “You don’t think she would manage, after a while?”
Carey turns her eyes up to me, and given the freedom to look directly at her, I’m struck by the awareness that not only is she a warm-blooded woman, she’s disarmingly pretty. More than pretty—she’s beautiful. Her skin is flawless, cheeks always flushed. I like her mouth, the way it curls up on one side before the other when she’s amused. The strong angle of her jaw, the hint of dimples in both of her cheeks.
Danger, James. I look away, trying not to stare. It’s part of Carey’s job to blend into the background, but now that I’ve seen her—really seen her—something heated turns over in me that I’m not sure I can turn back.
“What else would I do?” she asks. “I feel like I’ve given everything to the Tripps. I know it doesn’t seem like it, but I’ve helped them build all of this.”
“Oh, I’m sure you have.”
“I don’t really want to start over.”
I want to say You’re only twenty-six, but she takes a deep inhale over her Styrofoam cup, seeming to refocus and possibly even relish the smell of what can’t possibly be good coffee. The moment has passed.
“At least they weren’t terrible last night,” she says, a subtle subject change.