I glanced over my shoulder and caught Kathryn glaring after me. If she could blow smoke out of her ears, the fire alarms would be ringing.
I grinned and made for my office, knowing I’d said the right thing. There was nothing Kathryn hated more than a person thinking her work was easy.
Chapter 3
Kathryn
The office was quiet. This was my favorite time of the day. Once everyone left, the place felt like it relaxed after a gentle exhale. Nobody ran to and from each other’s desks with notes and requests and urgent messages. No phones rang. No laughter competed for attention against the more important conversations happening in the workplace. No coffee machines hummed.
It was pleasant, peaceful, still.
The only sounds were that of my fingers flying over my keyboard and the occasional bubbling from my water cooler tucked in the corner between my filing cabinets and liquor cart. Jon had given liquor carts to those of us with our own private offices for Christmas last year, insisting nobody could be taken seriously in business if they didn’t have booze on hand for the hard days—or for the celebratory ones. Since that day eleven months ago, I’d touched my stash three times.
All three of them had been hard days.
I supposed this was a day worth celebrating. Perfect Pairings was a massive account and I’d secured it singlehandedly. Jon had been there, poised at the ready like a serpent ready to strike if it looked like Mrs. Pratt wasn’t feeling my pitch. But lucky for me, she had been feeling it, and Jon was able to sit back and watch me work.
I’d done well. I knew that. Hell, everyone knew it.
Even Ethan Collinder.
A smirk curled my lips at that thought. I loved how he squirmed whenever he felt intimidated by me. He and I were both competitive and merciless, so having a leg up on him as we closed in on the end of the year felt incredible.
I leaned back in my office chair. The soft white leather creaked as if reminding me the workday was over and it was tired of hosting my butt. With a sigh, I turned off my computer screen and stood to stretch my back and crack my neck. I’d been at the office since just before eight that morning and we were closing in on nine o’clock. My apartment would be waiting for me, serene and dark, and I intended to return to it with the final paperwork completed for Perfect Pairings so I could hit the ground running tomorrow morning.
At the gold-frame liquor cart, I perused my selection: bourbon, scotch, and vodka.
I’d never been much of a fan of vodka. I chalked that up to a bad drinking experience when I was in high school and thought I could handle my liquor at a party when I most definitely could not. There was something about the smell of it now that still made my stomach churn. I experienced the same thing with Ferris Wheels—the stomach churning. It was the height and the not-so-subtle reminder that all that stood between me and the ground was a metal bucket and a bunch of bolts and screws.
No thank you.
Opting for the scotch, I took one of the crystal cocktail glasses from where it sat neatly stacked by the cleaning crew that swept through the office every night. The glass cork came free of the neck of the scotch bottle with a little encouragement from my thumb and I poured myself about two ounces of the rich brown stuff. I swirled it around and let it kiss the edges of the glass before taking a whiff.
It was sweet smelling with notes of caramel. The first sip lingered on my tongue and teased my taste buds. The second warmed my belly and soothed the aches and pains of the workday. My feet hurt from being in heels for nearly thirteen hours, and upon realizing this, I stepped out of them and tucked them beside the liquor cart.
As I sipped my scotch, I looked out of my own office into the shared office space on the other side of the glass walls. After much insistence, Jon had finally agreed to let me put blinds in my office. How was I supposed to work with people looking in on me all day, or me being distracted by what was happening out in the office? Jon hadn’t understood that. He liked being able to survey his