Chapter 4 #2
Thankfully, the capybara room deserved its own postal code. She’d hardly even know he was on the other side of her walls.
Also thankfully, the capybara room was not rodent-themed.
Jute rug, vintage trunks arranged like nightstands, fan blades designed like palm fronds. But it was not without the usual Cartwright elegance: a crystal chandelier; an en suite bathroom with a Jacuzzi tub and a double vanity; silk jacquard curtains framing a massive window.
And the view. The view.
From this vantage, everything glittered in the golden light.
She hauled open the windowpane, and below, there were courtyards dotted with bistro tables and dripping in bougainvillea.
The east wing jutted out toward the savanna.
Sunlight striped the grasses, sparkled against the sea beyond the salt-slicked cliffs.
No beach with pristine sands. The steep drop fed into churning depths.
Lights had been strung up over the pool patio, and a string quartet bowed their heads, tuning their instruments to the perfect pitch.
Silverware clattered and glasses clinked as dinner was being prepared.
Fletcher’s private-jet sashimi felt like lifetimes ago.
(How was she ever supposed to be satisfied by economy-class miniature pretzels ever again?)
A few of her colleagues were already down there, their laughter bubbling up like prosecco fizz. As the sun sank lower, watercolor pastels gliding across the sky, Fletcher found herself among them.
Attendants floated around the fenced perimeter with silver platters touting smoked salmon tartare and caviar on rosemary crisps and hazelnut-crusted, chocolate-covered strawberries. Fletcher snagged a piece of fruit, savoring it even as juice dribbled down her lips.
She could definitely get used to this.
Fletcher dipped inside her pocket for her phone. If her time zone math proved accurate, Ford would be brunching with Ricky, I Think and have his phone silenced, but some light gloating was in order.
Made it to the promised land!
You’d hate it here
Is what I would say if I were a LIAR. This is the most beautiful place I’ve ever seen. I’m never leaving. You think anyone would notice if I didn’t come back to the office next week?
After shamelessly triple texting, she hid her phone again, before Dyer could give it the DSLR treatment and smash it to pieces.
The team moved in predictable rhythms, and for the first time since landing on Lydell, Fletcher found her footing.
The Brians were both hidden behind their laptops, content to track SEO performance despite being on vacation.
Theo and Bertram joined the execs where they hovered around Dyer, no better than moths.
Molly, Opal, and Sheila giggled into glasses of chilled wine.
Waylon and Joplin lingered by the bar—the bartender handed Joplin something purple with a spear of fruit and a knuckle-deep amber swig to Waylon.
Waylon’s voice drifted across the patio, saying, “And a Manhattan for Spence.”
Fletcher’s eyes sliced toward his.
On any other day, maybe Fletcher would have ignored his existence like she had for the last three years.
But today, after setting the Guinness World Record for Most Jet-Lagged Human Being, she couldn’t stop herself from marching across the porcelain pavers until she was close enough to jab a finger at his chest.
“How?” she asked. His shirt was so soft. Was that bamboo cotton?
Not the point.
His lashes were long, a dark blond. And they batted like he’d done absolutely nothing wrong. “How what?”
“How do you know my usual drink order?”
Waylon’s head fell back with a laugh. “Do you know the first cocktail I learned to make?”
“I’m sure you’re going to tell me against my will.”
“A Manhattan,” he answered himself.
“It’s a classic.” Fletcher crossed her arms.
“Exactly. And that’s how I knew you’d order it. It’s safe. It’s predictable.”
“It’s reliable. The best judge of a bar is their Manhattan. There’s nothing wrong with being pragmatic.”
“It’s barely a step up from a Jack and Coke. It was probably the first real cocktail you ever ordered because you wanted to impress someone. Everybody’s had one, and they might even consider it their favorite. But you know what I think?”
He leaned perilously close to Fletcher. Close enough she could smell the single malt Scotch on his breath and the Tom Ford cologne on his neck. Not unlike the first time they met, but deeper somehow. Older. She’d say maturer, but that would be giving him far too much credit.
The next time he spoke, his voice trailed into a whisper. “I think people who order Manhattans are too afraid to ask for what they really want.”
Fletcher gulped, a shiver skittering over her skin from his proximity. The air between them buzzed with electricity. Like a blow-dryer a little too close to a bathtub. She took a step back for good measure. “And I think you should lay off the armchair psychology. You made a guess.”
“A damn good one.”
The bartender reappeared with her Manhattan before Fletcher could find her words—or, at the very least, words that weren’t expletives.
“May I?” Waylon asked the bartender, before reaching over the counter and retrieving a gold skewer with a plump green olive.
When he tossed it at her, Fletcher reared back to dodge its slimy arc.
Her drink sloshed, splashing onto her blouse, a dark stain blooming.
“That was how I knew you didn’t drink a dry martini. ”
“Okay, fine. I hate olives. They looked like eyeballs. Tiny, impaled eyeballs.” Her shirt clung to her skin as liquor dripped between her boobs. Humiliating. Through her teeth, she said, “You’re a menace.”
“And you’re on vacation,” he said as he downed the last of his drink. “Ditch the receptionist’s clothes.”
“For the last time, I’m not a—” Fletcher stomped as he walked away. Ugh!
Waylon stretched his arms overhead, tugging his henley off in one clean motion to dive in the pool, and suddenly her eyes were magnetized. Warmth spread across the high points of her cheeks.
It wasn’t like she didn’t expect him to have a private trainer and an entire wardrobe of swishy exercise shorts. Someone with as much disposable generational wealth as he had shouldn’t also have the gall to be hot. Like, abs in the double digits, bronzed-Adonis levels of hot.
Toned or not, it didn’t change his status as the bane of her mortal existence. A splinter digging under her skin. The titular vermin in the Whac-A-Mole of her most indulgent dreams.
Seeing him here, surrounded by people she knew, people she worked with, sent jealous flares over the trenches of her heart. He looked like he belonged. Belonged in a way Fletcher never had, and maybe never would.
She was about to pull herself away, really she was, when something clamped down on her shoulder. The hand belonged to Molly, the People team lead, who had never once in her life been seen without a pressed pantsuit. Tonight included. (But was anyone reprimanding her for dressing appropriately? No.)
Like Fletcher’s, Molly’s hair was red. But unlike Fletcher’s, Molly’s nearly radioactive hue came from painstaking hours in the salon.
Her roots had started to grow in, and Fletcher wondered if she noticed.
Molly straightened the tote on her shoulder.
Had she brought performance-review paperwork and boilerplate contracts, ready to sign?
“Truly the last person I ever expected to see on the Lydell trip,” she said, and it took Fletcher a few blinks to realize Molly wasn’t talking about her.
Her mascara-rimmed gaze was fixed on Waylon’s blond curls.
“I haven’t seen him at one of these things since he was still with—oh, what was her name? Tall, supermodel, perfect hair?”
It didn’t matter that Molly had described every woman Waylon Cartwright had ever entertained. Fletcher knew.
“Eliza Shelton.”
“That’s right!” Molly let out a low whistle. “Hard to believe it’s been three years.”
Three peaceful, Waylon-less years since the Cartwright Media Annual Gala for Impact disaster, a night involving a shattered champagne tower, the camera flash of a front-page photo being taken, and a little-known coat-closet encounter where Fletcher and Waylon briefly became allies before vowing to share a mutual hatred.
Back then, the ladies’ man with a fool’s gold smile had a fiancée. A living human being had agreed to marry him. Presumably of her own free will.
They’d broken up shortly after the charity nightmare, but as Fletcher watched Waylon shake the water out of his curls like a shepherding dog post-bath, purposefully trying to soak Joplin, she pictured the younger, scruffier version of him she’d met.
Drunk, hiding from his dad at the biggest party of the year, no sign of his betrothed in sight.
One foot out the door before he’d even dumped her.
Waylon left a string of broken hearts behind him, and Eliza was just another casualty. Fletcher’s heart ached for her with a pang of knowing guilt. It must have been a horrible kind of torture to be in love with someone who could never love you back the way you deserved.
“Heard it was a nasty break, but I can’t say I wasn’t jealous of the rock on her finger. Although, when you work like we do, who has time to settle down anyway?” Molly asked, a playful lilt to her voice.
“God, truly,” Fletcher said. Her thumb trailed over the bare spot on her ring finger. The spot Kent wanted to fill. “I’ll cheers to that.”
Their glasses clinked, and Fletcher tipped what was left of her spilled Manhattan down the hatch. Whiskey had soaked all the way through her bra, tacky and cold. She needed to get changed, but she couldn’t tear her gaze away from the pool’s deep end.
Joplin barely had time to kick off her espadrilles before Waylon dragged her beneath the surface. She reemerged, tangling her limbs with Waylon’s in a feeble attempt to dunk him underwater. The way their bodies pressed together…
Finally, Fletcher choked out, “I’m going to freshen up.”
Back upstairs, she unzipped a fresh top from the packing cube dutifully labeled Shirts.
(She was nothing if not meticulous.) This one was celery green with balloon sleeves tied in ribbons by her wrists.
Better suited for the air-conditioned office rather than Lydell’s sticky heat. But it would have to do.
“You’re too afraid to go after what you really want, Fletcher,” she mimicked Waylon’s unsolicited advice.
Standing in just her sales-rack bra while rinsing the Scotch out of her blouse in the gold-plated sink, she let herself hate Waylon.
She hated him for ruining her favorite shirt.
For having everything he wanted in life handed to him on one of the staff members’ silver platters.
For never worrying about getting evicted. For his stupid, chiseled abs.
He must have known the effect he had on her, like a schoolboy pulling on a girl’s pigtails, just to watch her get flustered.
And it was working. So, she also hated him for that.
Once the liquor had mostly been rinsed down the drain, Fletcher tossed her shirt over the shower’s glass door.
She blew a breath out through her mouth and situated the dry blouse over her shoulders.
Dyer’s promise cut through her spiral, and it straightened her spine: You play by my rules, Miss Spence, and you could have everything you’ve ever dreamed of.
The trouble with Cartwrights was that the rules were always changing, but with her jaw clenched so hard she’d definitely need a root canal when she was back in Manhattan, Fletcher nodded to herself in the mirror. Maybe everything with Dyer was a game, but, for once, she wasn’t afraid to play.
Jackie had said there could be a spot for Fletcher on her staff. That was why she’d come here. She would do what it took to prove she belonged at Jet-Setter. Whatever the cost.