“He talked about you constantly. ‘Skye’s so hot. Skye’s so smart. Skye’s gonna write the next big craze in kids’ books.’ Why would any of that drooling adoration have been an act?”
“Because he wanted you to think he was a nice guy?”
“He could have accomplished that without being so damn annoying. I don’t think he would have taken off without a plan to hook up with you again in a few months when the police have forgotten about the two of you.”
“Why wouldn’t I have just disappeared with him?”
“He’s trying to protect you by making it look like you weren’t involved.”
Skye looked at the bra on her desk. Clearly not hers and apparently not one Nico recognized as a garment he’d removed from any recent dates.
It was just her luck that when she found a guy who was crazy about her, he was also crazy enough to clean out her savings account—not to mention that he was a crazed sex hound who would hump anything in a skirt.
“You’re wrong. He was so crazy about me he just couldn’t resist taking some other woman’s bra off.”
“Look, I never said he wasn’t a scumbag. But he didn’t talk about other women. He talked about you. Constantly. Until I wanted to puke.”
Skye blinked away an unwelcome dampness in her eyes. She’d been crazy about Martin, too. Crazy stupid. It was the story of her love life: Skye meets a guy she thinks is great, Skye dates said guy, then said guy takes off with all her money or, at the very least, her dignity.
She’d learned her lesson this time though. Now she knew for absolute sure that all her instincts about men were dead wrong. And she’d vowed that from now on, whenever her instincts told her a guy was right for her, she’d better run in the opposite direction.
For the rest of her post-Martin life, she would live by the rule of opposites. Whatever her instincts told her to do about a guy, she had to do the opposite.
“I don’t know what to tell you.”
“You’re not getting off that easy. Don’t you think your employer ought to know what kind of person is working here? Either you cooperate with me, or—”
Skye’s temper flared. She hated being backed into a corner, but the truth was, she needed her job, and recent cutbacks at Dynalux surely meant she was being looked at. Sooner or later, the powers that be were going to figure out she wasn’t exactly essential to the company. “Or what? You’ll get me fired?”
He leveled a gaze at her that was neither friendly nor hostile. “I don’t have any control over what your employer decides to do with the information I have.”
“What did Martin steal from you?”
“About twenty grand and my favorite motorcycle.”
“Isn’t that like a drop in the bucket for a racecar driver with a house in Malibu?”
“Former racecar driver. And twenty grand is twenty grand.”
No point in arguing that. She could, after all, understand his frustration.
He continued. “It wasn’t what he stole so much as how he stole it. He acted like we were friends, and he lied to me.”
“Tell me about it.” He’d lied his way into her bed and into her heart. “So what? You’re going to hunt him down and demand an apology?”
“I’m going to hunt him down and get my money back, then turn him over to the cops, since they don’t seem all that interested in the case.”
“He’s probably left the state.”
Skye dropped her handful of papers back on her desk, giving up the ruse of having work to do elsewhere.
“You want to know the truth? I think I know where he is. But you do, too, don’t you?”
“Right, because I’m his accomplice. I’ve been looking all my life to hook up with a guy who has five wives in three different states.”
Nico shrugged. “I just need some more information to be sure I’m looking for him in the right place.”
Dottie Kuzoski got up from her desk three cubicles away and came toward them, her permed ash-blond hair taking on a weird green tinge under the fluorescent light. She slowed her pace as she passed, staring in unabashed lust at Nico. Just when Skye thought she’d leave, she stopped in her tracks and turned around.
“Skye, is this our new rep from the southwest region?”
“No,” Skye said and shot Dottie a look.
“Oh. Well. You know, we’re not supposed to have personal visitors on company time.” She gave Skye a snotty smirk, then smiled at Nico in what must have been her attempt to look seductive. He continued to stare at Skye. “But I won’t tell Mr. Rudderman if you don’t.”
“Thanks, Dottie. I’ll be sure to put you in my will.”
Skye and Dottie were natural enemies, mainly because Dottie didn’t like anyone who got higher sales numbers than her on a regular basis. Not that Skye had ever tried—it was simply a fluke that, without much effort, her mediocre sales numbers consistently topped Dottie’s.
Dottie flashed Nico another smile and scurried off, her brown skirt bunching over her ass in an entirely unappealing way.
“Rudderman—that’s your boss?”
Skye sighed. “I believe his official title is Big Kahuna.”
“I’ll give you one last chance to tell me what you know.”
He expected her to grovel, to do whatever he demanded? He was messing with the wrong office drone. Dottie had wiped away the last shred of Skye’s good humor.
“You can’t march in here and accuse me of being an accomplice to a crime and expect me to do whatever you want.”
“Maybe I’ll just go have a talk with that Rudderman guy then.”
He stood and left the cubicle, heading straight for the office Nelly—as she referred to Rudderman when he was out of earshot—occupied near the entrance of the office suite.
“Go right ahead,” she blurted to Nico’s back, sounding as ridiculous as she felt.
Across the aisle, John was pretending to work, but for a talented wannabe actor, he wasn’t doing such a good job of faking it. He had on his headset but hadn’t said a word to a customer since he’d returned to his desk. He glanced over at her, and she turned away, ashamed of the misery he might see in her eyes.
Alone in her cubicle, she noticed the red lace bra lying on her desk, mocking her in all its full-figured splendor. She was a 34B on a bloated day, and normally she couldn’t have cared less, but at that moment, the bra made her feel somehow inadequate.
She flopped into her chair and saved her manuscript to a disk that was already in the floppy drive, then removed the disk and put it in her bag. She deleted the document from her hard drive, thus eliminating the evidence of her misuse of company time.
So much for her characters finding happily ever after today, or even next month, for that matter. At the rate she was going, she’d end up having to go back to the waitressing work she’d done in college and never again have enough energy to write anything more creative than her yearly holiday see-my-life-doesn’t-suck-that-badly newsletter.
Who had come up with the idea of happily ever after, anyway? Probably some giddy lovesick girl back in the Middle Ages when people lived to the ripe old age of thirty-five, and “ever after” wasn’t such an ambitious concept. These days, happily never after was far more realistic.
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