Chapter 4
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Plotting is hard. How does August do this?
Alister
“I have no idea how you’re going to become August’s enemy,” Wynnter grumbles, eyes barely open as he hunches over his kitchen table and shovels his breakfast into his face. “She was bullied a lot in school. Didn’t bother her.”
I freeze with a spoonful of oatmeal halfway to my mouth. “She was…what?”
“Bullied. Loads. She’s pretty unflappable.
” He crunches Frosted Mini Wheats, fixing the weary brown slits of his eyes on me.
“Kid’s’d start rumors about her, and she’d write them reports on the plot holes, offering smug guidance on how to make the stories better.
Literally nothing seemed to faze her. If someone hit her?
She’d laugh, call them pathetic, and begin describing ways to really hurt someone, in chilling detail.
I’ve stepped in to cover her more times than I can remember, but to be honest…
she’s scarier than anything I’ve faced on her behalf.
There was a whole season where she said she was trying to find her archetype, and I didn’t know which sister I’d wake up to.
Some days, she was a saint. Others, she’d go the villain route.
She literally once bought a teacup from a thrift store so she could dramatically dump the contents on one of her bullies’ heads when they inevitably started something with her at lunch.
I watched it happen. Her eyes glittered.
For a hot second, our parents worried she was clinically insane and had her tested for all sorts of disorders in high school.
Every single time, she interviewed the doctors in case she wanted to, and I quote, write a medical professional someday. ”
My heart thuds, a flurry of emotions making their peace in my stomach. “You don’t say.”
Wynnter’s shoulders sag, and his brows pull together as he regards me. “You’re…even more in love with her now, aren’t you?”
I can only imagine how I look—eyes wild, face beet red. Of course I’m more in love with her. How could I not be? She’s the most riveting woman I have ever met. “She writes, does she?” I ask.
“Yeah. I think it’s safe to say all she does is write.”
“She wants to be an author, then?”
Wynnter’s eyes drift toward the ceiling. “I’m pretty sure she already is an author.”
An author already.
That means she’s written books.
Books I can read.
“You wouldn’t happen to know her author name, would you?” I ask, poking at my oatmeal. “Or the genre she writes?” If it’s romance, I might just have access to a template that clarifies her deepest wishes.
Unfortunately, before he can reply, the doorbell rings, so Wynnter mutters, “Go ahead and ask her yourself.”
My heartbeat trips, and I turn my head in the same instant the front door flies open.
There, across the living room and bathed in sunlight, August stands in a yellow sundress, which bares her freckled shoulders.
The brilliant rays caress the dark bundle of her messy bun as she scans the space to find her brother and me beyond the kitchen bar counter at the small table.
Ravishing, a smile melts over her soft features, and she enters, kicking the front door shut behind her.
“Morning, Wynn.” Her sunshine voice grips my soul.
Wynnter grunts, resting his cheek against his fist as he continues crunching away on his Mini Wheats.
She heads directly for him, taps his head, and says, “Sit up straight.”
Immediately, he obeys, and she draws a sewing tape across his back from one of his broad shoulders to the other. “Twenty-six. Snug…but fits.”
Her brown eyes strike me, and I straighten my own shoulders.
“Dominic,” she greets, using the middle name our grandmothers and Lynn determined would make a fine alias.
My stomach lurches as she bends into my space, drawing the sewing tape across my chest, from one shoulder to the other.
“Twenty-four,” she murmurs, moving back.
Pushing a straying strand of dark hair over her ear, she examines the number she’s just ascertained, then her blinding smile hits me between the brows, and I feel heat rising to my cheeks when she says, “You’d fit comfortably. ”
“In what?” Wynnter mutters.
Her dress flares as she whirls toward him, perfect and pretty and precious and— “In a casket.”
…and she’s measuring us for a casket.
I bite my lip hard to keep from laughing.
My insides riot, but I somehow just barely manage to keep a rein on my composure.
Prince types don’t lose their composure this early in the story unless they’re in private with the female lead.
It’s a rule, or something, which means I’m going to calmly sit here, and probably not breathe for a little while.
Oblivious to the torture she’s putting me through, she explains, “The casket I ordered is twenty-seven and a half inches wide. You’d juuust squish inside.”
“Ah.” Wynnter reaches for the box of cereal and refills his bowl. “Is that so?”
“You are more than welcome to sleepover once it arrives.”
“I’m good, thanks.”
“It’s pink, your favorite color.”
“Pink is not my favorite color.”
August’s eyes widen, and she tosses her hand in front of her freckled face, aghast. “It isn’t?”
Wynnter regards her dryly—freckles and scruff meeting freckles and drama.
I force down a swallow of oatmeal.
Realizing Wynnter isn’t going to play with her, August loses her brilliant smile and drops her arm. “Anyway.” She pads out of the kitchen, heading across the living room. “Bye.”
“Later,” Wynnter grumbles.
The instant the front door closes, I lose it, collapsing against the table as laughter explodes out of me.
With every gulp of air I get down, she lingers, coating my lungs in sunshine and fresh rain—the scent of her.
She’s a summer day. An August day. Warm.
Full. Safe. A blessed hint of possibilities yet to be realized.
Tears in my eyes, I battle to control my smile. “She’s…wonderful, isn’t she?”
“She’s…” Wynnter grimaces. “…my sister. So.” He takes me in, then he enunciates, “Yeah… I have no idea how you’re going to enemies-to-lovers this situation.”
“I’ll figure it out,” I say, wiping a tear. “I’m determined to.”
Because while I may not know exactly how I’m going to pull this off, I do know that I adore August Renee Winslow.
I have for a good long while.
She first started working as a virtual assistant in my company three years ago when I confirmed her hire purely because her home address was where my grandmother lived.
She quickly became my favorite, and best, employee.
She never missed a deadline or warranted a customer complaint. But that wasn’t all.
Unprompted, she reached out and added a levity to my day that stripped my workload down, making it lighter as if by magic.
For years, I respected and appreciated her; however, it wasn’t until a month ago that I learned she was a she.
Despite our frequent friendly email interactions, I’m the CEO of Mont Business, which isn’t a small operation, and she’s just one of many low-tier assistants.
I say I confirmed her hire because of where she lived, but before I ever saw her resume, she’d already interviewed with other members in my company.
I picked her out of a small pool of acceptable applications because I, in short, have control issues about who I let work for me, even distantly.
And August and I work about as distantly as one can get.
We’ve never been on a phone call or in a meeting together. We shouldn’t even be talking to each other in email. All she’s supposed to do is filter through the more menial jobs of my subordinates’ subordinates.
Which is to say, there’s not a single logical reason for us to be in contact. Except for the fact that shortly after she was hired, she looked up my email address in the company and sent me a greeting that was so hilarious I’ve been hooked on our budding friendship ever since.
Until recently, there was no way for me to know August was a girl.
It’s illegal to ask for gender during an interview process, her resume was entirely text-based, and I received no such detail from the employee who interviewed her.
August is a gender-neutral name, and, in this day and age, I’m not going to assume that someone is female just because they managed to recommend half a dozen romcom animes in their opening spiel.
From the first greeting—Hello, hopefully benevolent top one percent, allow me to introduce myself as your most recent peon—August fascinated me, but I refused to let myself breach our professional relationship on fascination alone.
I held to that belief…until about a month ago.
When she signed an email: Actively menstruating without chocolate.
That’s all it took for me to toss our already quite thin professionalism into the void, send her chocolate…and look her up on Leopard.
Her account, while private, had a public profile picture.
And that’s how I learned that my hilarious, sweet, and dramatic underling…was exactly my type.
I stared at her beautiful freckled face for an hour, then I called my grandmother to tell her I was in love and would need to visit as soon as I calculated the least disturbing way to explain the process of how I’d fallen face-first into feelings.
I didn’t expect my grandmother to know August personally.
I also didn’t expect my grandmother and her friends to be waiting on a binder specifying August’s perfect male lead at that exact moment. Needless to say, I rearranged my schedule, packed a bag, got in my car, and drove.
Normally, I don’t act on impulses like these. Normally, I have a better plan before I make a move.
But, normally, I’m not in love with a woman who entices my very atoms into doing her bidding, whatever that bidding might be.
“You’re probably regretting this already, huh?” Wynnter mutters. “Y’know, it’s never too late to take that stupid wig off, explain everything, and just tell her you like her.”
Wouldn’t that be simple?
I’m terrified if I just tell her that I adore her to no end, she’ll think I—a regular white-collar businessman—am beyond dull, just like everyone else in my life always has.
She deserves effort. A whirlwind romance.
She deserves to have someone do their very best to meet her in the magic where she lives.
She deserves to be shown that someone is willing to try, for her.
Nevertheless, I still ask, “Would that work?”
“Absolutely not.” He points his spoon at me. “But once she stops laughing, this insanity might get featured in her next book. And then you’ll have something to hug while you mourn your lost love.”
I believe that’s what one might call a bad ending.
Sighing, I poke at my instant oatmeal. “Speaking of her next book, I didn’t get a chance to ask for her pen name, what with my inability to breathe and all. Do you think your grandmother would know it?”
“Yeah, probably.” Crunch. “But also she doesn’t have a pen name. It’s just her name. August Winslow.”
Slowly, I lift my attention off my food and pin it on August Winslow’s brother.
He bares his canines in a wolfish grin.
Shaking my head while I retrieve my phone from my pocket, I say, “What’s this address?”
“Why? What are you doing?”
I find her on . Author August Winslow. So precious. So…prolific.
Steadily, I add every single one of her paperbacks to my cart and murmur, “Obtaining research.”
Like any good secretly evil male lead should.