Filed to story: Can’t Get Enough Of You
I frowned. I’d known she hadn’t finished her degree-I’d pored over her file when Austin had given it to me. But the way she said it, the look on her face, suggested something had happened.
“Why not?” I asked before I could think about it. What had changed her life so drastically, when before she had been such a dedicated student, such a good girl?
Her jaw tightened and her body language changed. Closed off. Damn it, it hadn’t been my place to ask.
“Life happens, you know?” she answered. Vague, but she wasn’t pushing me away.
“I know,” I said, nodding.
She shook her head slightly and glanced at her desk. “I can try to do all of this for you, but I have no idea where to start.” I liked that she was admitting to her shortcomings.
“I’ll help you,” I said.
She nodded and walked to her desk. She sat down and flattened her hands on the surface, looking up at me. Her smile was bright and glowing when she flashed it again.
“I didn’t think this was where I would end up.”
Again, I wanted to ask more questions about what her life had been like for the past five years, but I bit my tongue this time.
“I’ll send you the files in a moment,” I said. “Get comfortable in your office, and then go to see Hannah. When you’re ready, we’ll get moving.”
She nodded and I left her office, forcing myself to walk away.
Carey was back in my life. I struggled to wrap my mind around it. And this time, she wasn’t going anywhere. She’d been almost a figment of my imagination for so long, someone I dreamed about, someone that didn’t exist in my life anymore, that it was hard to think that this was real.
But it was. She was in the office just down the hall from mine. And even though she was terrified of the project-I was throwing her into the deep end in a big way-she hadn’t turned it down.
I was looking forward to working with her.
One thing I knew for sure-I was screwed. I’d believed she was perfect all these years. I expected to have a hard crash back to reality as soon as I got to know her, because there wasn’t a perfect woman out there.
What if she turned out to be just like the rest of them?
But now that I’d been around her, and she’d admitted that she hadn’t finished her degree, that she wasn’t qualified for her job, and I’d seen her nervous and panicked under her composed mask, I just liked her more for her flaws.
Carey
I was struggling to keep up with how fast everything was changing.
I’d had a few days to get my head straight, to celebrate the new job and arrange normal times for my mom to pick up Liam from preschool and help babysit until I got home from work. But I still felt like I’d been steamrolled.
And Nolan… God. I wasn’t sure what to do with all the new information that was being dumped on me.
Not only was he hotter than ever-and I remembered him being drop-dead gorgeous already-the sexual tension between us was as serious as it had been before.
If not more.
Not only that, he was suddenly my boss. How had that happened? I’d been sure that I would work with Austin Shannon. But Nolan had been there to receive me-cue the butterflies-and he’d put me up in an office that looked like it came straight from a movie set.
When I came back from Hannah’s office, where we’d taken care of my contract and account details, a young woman was waiting in my office.
“Hi,” she said brightly.
She had black hair that had been pulled back from her face, bright green eyes, and a slim, tall body.
“Hi,” I said carefully.
“I’m Felicity. I work in design, too. I heard you were new.”
I nodded. “Carey. Friends call me Izzy.”
Felicity grinned a row of perfectly white teeth at me. “Izzy. I like that.” She tilted her head to the side a little, studying me. “So, you’re the girl he poached from Derek, huh?”
“What?” I asked. I had no idea what she was saying.
“You’ve got to be some special kind of artist if Heaton decided to use you for himself.”
I blinked. “Nolan?”
“Oh, first-name basis. Wow.”
I shook my head, squeezing my eyes shut for a moment. “I’m a little lost.”
“Don’t worry about it, we all feel that way during our first month here at Appetite. Heaton is a hell of a boss to be working for. But you’ll learn as you go along. You just need to jump before he snaps his fingers, and you’ll stay off his radar.”
I frowned. Was she talking about Nolan? It didn’t sound anything like Nolan.
“Come with me, I’ll show you the kitchen,” Felicity said, looping her arm through mine as if we were best friends. “It’s literally the only place you’ll really want to know when you get into things here. You can meet the rest of our team, too. Heaton is having a staff meeting in half an hour, so you get to see him in action.”
“Oh,” I said. I felt like I was completely out of my depth. “I have to take care of a few things for him first.”
Felicity shook her head. “You don’t want to miss the staff meeting. When Heaton calls, you answer.”
“What do you mean by that?” I asked.
Felicity snorted and rolled her eyes. “You’ll get to know him. He’s an asshole.”