Start With Me - Kara Isaac Page 0,56

publishing house loved him.

It wasn’t because he was putting on a front for her because he saw her “no dating clients” rule as some kind of challenge. Men like that had short attention spans. He would have moved on by now. Especially when his signings had had no shortage of ski bunnies suggesting he sign their cleavage rather than his book.

Beckett Hodge was, by all accounts, a good guy. And those were few and far between in her world.

Her mind flashed to a certain blond with a scar. To the second she had momentarily lost her self-control and leaned her head against his chest and found it felt just as solid and safe as she had imagined it would.

But solid and safe had been her dad once. Had been Mitch once. And look where that had gotten her mom and Betsy.

She looked down at the tickets in her hand. Then at the man standing in front of her, patiently waiting. She always had a cocktail dress in her office closet, just in case. She looked at the calendar on her screen. Janna had blocked out the evening with a cryptic note that she hadn’t gotten around to asking her about. The man had gotten help from the inside. And she had always wanted to see The Book of Mormon. “Okay. Pick me up from here at six.”

“Great, see you then.” Beckett leaned against the doorway, the pink from his ears now spreading to his cheeks.

He left her doorway casually enough, but she could see the grin and fist pump as he walked past her window.

A date. With Beckett Hodge. Lacey tapped her pen against her lips as a smile threatened. She supposed there were worse things to do on a Tuesday night.

Since Victor couldn’t get into his computer until IT sorted out some update they’d accidentally set to run across the company twelve hours early, he had might as well do something with his time.

Well, something other than think about the woman with crazy hair who had given him a tight smile and a brisk wave goodbye at JFK. She headed home, he to his connecting flight for London.

Victor dropped into the chair across the table from where Donald sat doctoring his coffee with four sugars.

“Welcome back.” The man didn’t even look up from stirring his concoction. He’d had a haircut since Victor had last seen him, his grey follicles now shorn back to a number-two cut.

“Thanks.”

“You made it to a meeting yet?”

“Not yet.”

At that, the man lifted his head and a bushy eyebrow.

“I know. I will.” He’d only been back in the country for forty-eight hours, for goodness sake. And a third of that he’d spent sleeping. And when jet lag had him awake … well, there weren’t many meetings going on at four in the morning. “I did fine. I’m still sober.”

“Staying sober when you’re in the wilderness with no access to alcohol is hardly a feat.”

Victor bristled. “It’s not like that was all there was. There were also minibars, booze on the planes, and a cocktail party.”

Don took a sip of his coffee, regarding Victor over the brim. “I’m not trying to downplay the temptation you did face. It’s just this is the danger zone. Take it from someone who knows.”

“What do you mean?” He didn’t know why he felt so defensive with the man who had been with him for every step of his sobriety since he first got out of rehab.

“How long have you been sober?”

“Three years, six months, two weeks.” Give or take a couple of days.

“And you feel like you have it in the bag.”

Victor couldn’t deny it. It wasn’t that alcohol didn’t call to him anymore. But he felt confident in his ability to withstand the temptation. He’d been doing it for years. Saying no to drinks at every kind of event imaginable. Plotting his routes home to avoid liquor outlets when he’d had a hard day. Calling Don when the idea of a stiff drink started feeling a bit too alluring.

Don steepled his fingers. “I’m not criticizing you. It’s human nature. You’ve gone this long. It’s easy to think you’ve got a handle on it. So you go to a few less meetings, then stop going at all. You check in less frequently with your sponsor. All is well.” Don shrugged. “Until it isn’t. And it’s never the things you see coming that take you out. It’s the things you don’t.”

A waitress placed Victor’s tea in front of him, and he

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