Chapter Seventy
Miranda
I was just so… happy.
God, that word wasn’t good enough.
New shoes made me happy.
Good coffee made me happy.
Brock made me… enraptured. Euphoric.
Blissful.
Those were the only words that even came close to how I was feeling as I woke up in his arms, as I shared coffee in bed with him, even as I moved away from him to get dressed.
Blissful.
It was the most at peace I’d ever felt.
I hadn’t checked my work email.
I hadn’t even thought about work.
I was just… in the moment.
With him.
I was actually kind of bummed that I’d agreed to a lunch date with Cam and Ritchie actually. Which made me immediately feel guilty since I really loved Cam. And, well, he loved Ritchie.
I didn’t want to make it sound like I hated Ritchie. I didn’t. I loved him for making Cam happy. I just… I never understood the appeal, I guess.
Cam was driven, intelligent, cultured, and put-together.
Ritchie was the antithesis to everything Cam was.
He was a little lazy, dull, slovenly, and really only interested in his TV shows and manga.
I just always figured that they were a real-life example of how opposites do, indeed, attract.
They’d been together forever. And I figured that maybe Cam had changed over time to become the man I knew him to be, someone who was no longer as compatible with his old flame, but he loved him, so he was going to make it work.
Then, well, then the whole advertising shitstorm happened.
I had always been very careful never to mix my work and business life. I didn’t hire friends.
But Ritchie had all but cornered me one time and talked for almost an hour about how he could do something great for my company.
I normally didn’t feel a lot of guilt for turning people down. When you ran a company as big as mine, you had to crush dreams almost on the daily.
But this wasn’t just anyone.
This was Cam’s somebody.
I’d actually agreed before even discussing it with Cam, who’d looked absolutely horrified when I’d explained the situation to him.
At the time, I thought maybe the horror had been because his boyfriend had been so inappropriate with his boss.
It wasn’t long, though, until I realized the true reason for it.
Because Ritchie didn’t know a damn thing about advertising or marketing. It had been a horrendously underwhelming ad that would have actively hurt the brand instead of brought positive attention to it.
But I hadn’t been the one to pull the plug on it. I’d felt trapped in that situation, not wanting to hurt Cam by hurting Ritchie, not wanting to strain our relationship.
It had been Cam who’d walked into my office, sat down across from my desk, and let out a hard exhale.
“We can’t run Ritchie’s campaign,” he’d declared. “It would be PR suicide. We have to fire him.”
I’d never been more uncomfortable with a business decision as I had been that next day as we both waited for Ritchie to make his way into the office, excitedly spouting off about new—even more awful—ideas he had.
I couldn’t even clearly remember what I’d said to him since I’d been trying so hard to be gentle.
But I was pretty sure it was about needing to go in a more traditional direction, about the brand being a little too young still to take big, risky moves with the advertising, that we were not as advanced as he was yet.
That kind of thing.
He’d seemed to take it well.
And Cam had never made a comment to suggest otherwise.
So I’d never brought it up again. I figured it was a buried issue. But I also did notice that there were fewer outings with the three of us.
In fact, now that I thought about it, there hadn’t been any, save for a corporate dinner party that he’d attended.
So I was excited to see that we were making some progress toward things going back to normal. Especially since he and Cam had to be thinking about rings and vows soon. I had to be on good terms with my assistant’s husband.
Lunch was going to be good.
Though I did find it mildly odd that it hadn’t been brunch, which was much more my and Cam’s style. But who was I to judge? Maybe Ritchie didn’t like breakfast foods and endless mimosas.
As I walked away from Brock, though, I couldn’t shake this almost desperate urge to turn around, to run back into his arms, demand he take me back upstairs, then not get out of bed with him for weeks. Months. Until the end of time.
But that urge was exactly why I had to keep walking, why I couldn’t even let myself look back.
Sure, things were going well. We were clearly enjoying each other. That didn’t mean, though, that Brock was having the same sort of feelings that I was.
He’d admitted, more than once, to having enjoyed the company of many a woman. In casual ways, but more than one-night stands.
Maybe, to him, this was just another of his casual flings.
Meanwhile I couldn’t help but think about how much more pleasant my next formal dinner party would be if he was there at my side.
If, maybe, I could persuade him to rush into the forbidden second floor, find a little bathroom, and fuck away the night in it.
Or waking up with him every morning, drinking coffee in bed while we discussed our days ahead.
Or sneaking off to an Italian villa for a week or two.
The thing was, objectively, even if that was the wish for both of us, it didn’t work in practical application.
His life was in Navesink Bank.
Mine was in the city.
Sure, yes, it wasn’t that far, but it was over an hour out of our days in both directions when we wanted to spend some time together.
And some cynical, jaded part of me knew that over time, it would get tedious, then old, until it eventually became untenable. Then fell apart.
It probably wasn’t great that my mind went to the end when we were just limbering up at the starting line.
But it was a defense mechanism. If I could look at all the potential ways things could get really ugly and painful, it made it possible for me to save myself from that. Or, at least, that was what I’d found so far in my life.
I hadn’t had much opportunity to try to apply that skill to relationships, seeing as I just… hadn’t had one in a long time.
Still, yeah, it seemed smart to hold myself back from being too needy, too clingy, too over the top with my feelings.
As a whole, I was someone who liked to lead, who enjoyed setting the pace and allowing others to fall behind. Just this once, though, I was going to follow Brock’s lead.
I guess it came down to not wanting to make a fool of myself. I didn’t want to get vulnerable, have him shoot me down, and need to live with that embarrassment.
It was better to take it slow, to feel him out.
So it was good that I was taking a little time to myself, away from him, before we spent the night together.
It didn’t even occur to me that it was weird that Mitchell hadn’t come out to open my door. I guess I figured maybe he thought that Brock was with me, so he would get my door.
It wasn’t a big deal.
I could get my own door.
And my mind was on the menu at the restaurant that we were heading to, since I hated the pressure of having the server waiting to take your order, and not being ready.
So I didn’t immediately look up toward the front.
“Traffic is awful today,” I murmured as I took a long sip of the coffee that was waiting for me.
Mitchell didn’t always grab me coffee, but when he was getting himself one, he always grabbed me one.
“It might be smart to just leave the car parked, and take off on foot if you need to go run some errands or get food,” I added, drinking more.
It wasn’t until then, when I still didn’t get a response from Mitchell, that I looked up.
And like some damn horror movie, the doors clicked lock as I realized that the person in the driver’s seat wasn’t Mitchell at all.
Mitchell, after all, was a little on the shorter side with wide shoulders and reddish-brown hair.
Whoever this was, was tall and narrower with kind of shaggy dirty blond hair.
It didn’t click, not for a long moment, that I knew the driver. All I could focus on was the panic building in my system as my hand went to the door, and found that the child locks were on, and I couldn’t escape. And that I was likely trapped in a moving car with my stalker and would-be murderer.
“Let me out of this car,” I shrieked, slapping my hand on the window as if anyone could hear me, let alone see me with the dark tint on the windows. “You don’t have to do this!” I added, my heart hammering in my chest as a cold sweat broke out across my whole body.
“No, Miranda, I don’t,” a voice said. “But I want to.”
I was so consumed with my terror that I didn’t realize immediately that I recognized that voice, that I’d heard it many times over the past few years.
When it finally did click, though, my gaze shot to the rearview mirror, where I found his eyes looking back at me, crinkled at the edges like he was smiling, like he was taking pleasure in my fear.
“Ritchie.” His name hissed out of me as my mind raced with this new information.
Ritchie?
In what world could it be my assistant and best friend’s boyfriend who wanted me dead?
I mean, yes, I had fired him. But that was a while ago.
Had he been festering this whole time? Over a small advertising job?
When Cam was making the kind of money he was making, the kind of money that meant that Ritchie didn’t even need to work anymore.
And, as a verified slacker, that should have been exactly what he wanted.
To sit around and do nothing, but enjoy the fruits of someone else’s labor.
I guess I’d underestimated him and his anger about the loss of the job.
In my defense, though, who the hell would ever expect someone to try to murder them over a job?
“Surprise!” he said, voice full of that wicked glee like that guy in The Shining.
“Ritchie, open the door. You don’t want to do this,” I told him as I tried not to move my arm too much as I reached into my bag, trying to find my phone.