basics of food, shelter, and Netflix. Well, mostly.
“Yeah right.” Hadley sighed and pushed off the fridge, going straight for her travel mug waiting for her on the counter because like it or lump it, she had to go into the office today if she wanted to get paid. “You need money to make money and in case you forgot, you’re still waiting for my half of the utility bill.”
Which was why she was depending on twice-run-through K-cups for her caffeine intake.
“Today’s your payday,” Fiona said. “I know it’s coming.”
Travel mug in one hand and phone in the other, Hadley gave her roomie and friend a quick hug, careful not to spill any weak coffee on her. And to think when she’d answered that ad for a roommate three years ago, her only hope was that she wouldn’t be rooming with a serial killer. For once, the reality of her life in Harbor City had far exceeded her hopes. If only the rest of her big city existence had lived up to her dreams when she’d left her small-town Nebraska home…not that she’d be admitting that to her family back on the ranch anytime soon. They already thought she was a few hay bales short for leaving in the first place.
“What did I do to deserve such a sweetheart of a roommate?”
Fiona squeezed her back. “Obviously something spectacular.”
It was true, and it had to have been in a past life because this one was kind of a mess—and definitely not the shiny, happy, perfectly Instagramable version she shared with her family. When failing wasn’t an option, a person faked it until they made it. That had been her game plan since she’d arrived in Harbor City, and she had no plans to change it. As long as she could keep up that perfect-life pretense, it would happen.
“I’m putting that out there in the universe,” she mumbled later as she rode the train to her office. “Again.”
However, when she walked over to her cubicle—ignoring the curious looks and barely whispered comments from her coworkers—and found an empty cardboard box on her desk, she knew the universe was team Evil Twin. It had to be.
The light on her phone blinked on a second before her boss’s voice came through on the intercom. “Hadley, can you please come see me?”
She didn’t have to ask what about. The box kinda made that pretty apparent.
“I’ll be there in just a minute,” she responded, calling up the reserves of her fake-it-until-you-make-it pride that she wasn’t sure she had enough of for this moment.
Then she packed up the personal items on her desk into her now-full box and carried it to her boss’s corner office, head held high and sniffles on lockdown because if faking it had ever meant something, it was right now.
The only thing that kept her from losing her shit right then was the memory of Will’s shocked expression when he’d realized what they’d done. If she could survive Will thinking for even a moment she was into him, she could survive getting fired.
She hoped.
…
The Holt family country home was two and a half hours north of Harbor City. It was also a million miles from the responsibilities of being one of the two most eligible bachelors and sole heirs to the fortune Jeremiah Holt had begun amassing during a crooked poker game in a half-burned-out speakeasy in the very woods Will was staring at while trying to figure out how to get his brother to ghost that woman.
She has a name.
No. He was not going there. Not again. He’d done that too many times since that kiss at the fundraiser and it had—without a single exception—ended up with him rubbing one out like he’d never made out with someone in a coatroom before. He had. Many times. Okay, that might be an exaggeration, but it wasn’t like Hadley was special.
Shit.
Her name. He ground his teeth, the ache in his jaw attesting to how much he’d been doing that lately. This time he would not give in. He would not remember. He would not think about her soft lips, her needy little moan, her silky-smooth thighs, her— Dammit, Holt. Get your shit together.
His brother, Web, cleared his throat as he glanced down at the cutting board in front of Will as they both stood in the kitchen. “Now, I’m not much of a cook, either, but I think that onion is chopped.”
Will looked at the minced-within-a-millimeter-of-its-existence onion for the chicken cacciatore. “Just making sure.”