Chapter 15 #2
Not to Dyer, should he get it in his head that he’d be better off with a less ambitious assistant who was happy to spend her days schlepping paperwork and planning charity galas.
Not Kent, who would love nothing more than to hear how miserable the city made her, how delightfully not cut out for the Big Apple she was, and use it as ammunition to reel her back to the farm.
And she certainly didn’t make a habit of telling handsome strangers in coat closets her innermost thoughts.
He didn’t laugh or lower his eyes with pity. All he said was, “And what is your name?”
“Fletcher Spence.”
His gaze softened. “You could do it, Fletcher Spence.”
Fletcher’s eyebrows shot toward her hairline. “Do what?”
“Move to a new department. Become a photographer. Get everything you want.”
There was something so genuine in his words that she believed him. It warmed her up, head to toe, like she’d downed the last of his bourbon. Suddenly, she couldn’t remember the last time someone truly believed in her.
Some magnetic pull dragged Fletcher deeper into the man’s orbit. He smelled like liquor and leather, tobacco and pine. His hand rested on her hip. Not too low, but not too high. Steadying. For a fraction of a second, she wondered what it would be like to kiss him.
He read her thoughts like the morning paper. Leaning down, tilting his head, splitting his lips. A breath apart. Maybe less.
Before the first brush, Fletcher arched back and blurted, “Wait! I’m sorry. I—I have a boyfriend.”
The man’s head cocked, but he stepped away. Studying her. This time, when he laughed, it was a cold wind. Sheepishness instantly replaced by stinging nettles. “Right. Of course.”
What had she been thinking? She hadn’t been thinking. That was the problem. This job had reduced her brain to a fine pulp. “I can’t do—whatever this is. I love him.”
Didn’t she?
“Kind of like how you love your job?”
“Excuse me?”
A challenge manifested in the square of the man’s shoulders, the set of his jaw. “You’re crying in a closet, working a job you hate, and where’s he?”
Nebraska, Fletcher thought with a grimace, hating the pinch of bitterness. Her skin prickled beneath her rental dress where the man’s touch had glanced. Her tone turned defensive as she said, “You don’t know him, and you don’t know me.”
“Don’t I?” he asked. “It all seems pretty straightforward.”
“What are you even doing here?” Fletcher crossed her arms around her binder in a feeble attempt to hold herself together. Flustered was an understatement.
“What everyone does at these things. Kissing people’s asses and donating heaps of money to charity.”
“I mean, here. In coat check.”
He drank his bourbon to the dregs. “Hiding from my father.”
She looked at the man again, really looked at him.
Tall. Handsome in a scruffy, I-don’t-care-what-you-think way. But, in this light, he had a hint of Dyer’s angular jawline and an all-too-familiar sense of entitlement.
The realization hit her like a glass of spilled champagne. “You’re Waylon Cartwright.”
“Guilty.” He raised his empty glass in mock salute.
Embarrassment flamed over Fletcher’s skin. Embarrassment and something hotter, angrier. “You’re Waylon Cartwright.”
One of his eyebrows lifted. “I am.”
“You have a fiancée. And reporters watching your every move. And you ignored my RSVP, so you shouldn’t even be here. And this—this is the most important night of my life. If you ruin tonight, I’m going to get fired…” Fletcher inched backward. “I can’t get fired.”
She had to get away from him. Immediately. But instead of grabbing her coat to make a fast break for downtown, Fletcher leveled her shoulders, clutched her event binder tighter, and pivoted toward the ballroom. With a deep breath, she pushed through the double doors and dived back into the fray.
She couldn’t walk away from Cartwright Media. Not now. Not before she finished what she came here to do. Not until she got a byline.
But Waylon—Waylon could ruin everything. If he told his father what she’d said, Dyer would have her in an exit interview faster than she could say Dry cleaning only. He’d sit her in a middle seat on a flight back to Nebraska before they finished serving the canapés.
That couldn’t happen. This was her one chance.
She had to make herself indispensable. She’d work twice as hard.
Three times. She’d learn every name. Memorize every calendar.
Nothing would stop her from proving to herself and everyone else that she had what it took to succeed at Cartwright Media.
Who needed sleep? Or three meals a day? Not Fletcher Spence.
Whatever Cartwright Media needed her to be, she would become. Right now, that was an executive assistant. But there would come a day when a spot on the Jet-Setter staff would be hers.
“Maybe I was wrong about you.” Waylon’s voice trailed after her, and she really wished it wouldn’t.
“Unsurprising, given we met ten minutes ago,” Fletcher cut back through gritted teeth as Waylon sidled up next to her with sloppy steps. She ironed a smile to her mouth like it belonged there. Like she was completely and totally unbothered by Waylon’s presence.
His arm slung around her shoulder. Much too convivial a gesture for someone he’d briefly met among pea coats and scarves.
With a whisper pressed close against her ear, he said, “You’re just like everybody else.
Dying to be close to the Cartwrights. Satisfied to let my dad push you around, deciding your life for you.
Too afraid to go after what you really want. It’s pathetic. Embarrassing.”
“And you’re better? You get everything you want handed to you, whether you deserve it or not.
You’re exactly as entitled and arrogant as everyone says you are.
” Fletcher extricated herself from his grasp.
Her momentary lapse of judgment in the coat closet dissipated beneath the ballroom lights.
She had a boyfriend back home and a job to do.
A flash stopped Fletcher in her tracks. The reporter. Thankfully, the khaki-clad journalist was currently preoccupied snapping photos of chatting socialites, but with the scene Waylon was starting, it wouldn’t take long for his lens to point their way.
With a sharp spin, Fletcher one-eighty’d right into Waylon’s chest. She shoved her binder against the buttons of his twill shirt. “You can’t go over there. You. Really. Cannot go over there.”
Waylon smirked. “I’d like to see you stop me.”
He didn’t slow. So, Fletcher pushed him harder.
Right into the champagne tower.
Crystal flutes crashed around him as Waylon slammed against the table. Soaking wet in the wreckage, Waylon scowled up at her. Next to her, a camera flashed. Again and again. The reporter whispered into his phone. Tomorrow, she’d surely see this on the front page.
Waylon lifted his hand, like he expected her to help him out of the mess. She ignored it, crouching next to him. “I won’t always be an executive assistant,” Fletcher spat. “But you will always, always be a Cartwright.”
To her surprise, he laughed. A laugh that seared into some hidden corner of her brain, only to slither out in the darkest nights to torment her. Harsh and biting as a winter wind.
Dyer didn’t mention the gala the next day or the day after.
He greeted her every morning with a smile, and eventually, she became Fletcher instead of Francesca.
It wasn’t a miracle that she’d excelled and impressed, molding herself into the perfect assistant.
It was short nights and second espressos and sheer determination.
As weeks passed and the tabloids went to press, the headlines boasted news of Waylon crashing the party (literally), dumping his fiancée, and a slew of subsequent scandals, each further solidifying that he was exactly as scumbaggy as Fletcher expected.
Waylon didn’t come into the office, and she didn’t go looking for him.
As far as she was concerned, running into him again in this life or the next would be too soon.
None of that changed the fact that on that December night, Waylon had seen her for exactly who she was when it felt like no one saw Fletcher at all.