CHAPTER TWO
Summer
I pack up my laptop whilst keeping one eye on the clock. One minute. One minute until I’m out of here and I can go home.
My office had once been a small glass room that had a beautiful view looking out over the town. I kind of regret not using it as much as I could have. Now all I have is four walls, one of which has a door. I feel trapped in here, tethered to the building that is slowly sucking the life out of me.
Life is meant to be lived.
Not to feel trapped.
Not when the rules of society already have us on a leash.
But this... this is ten times worse.
I pick up my bag and stand as the door to my new office is pushed open. The she-devil herself walks in, her tight black pencil skirt clinging to her skinny frame, making her look starved. Her Botox makes her face look like she’s had an allergic reaction to something.
“Katherine, I’m just heading out,” I greet.
“No, you aren’t. I need you to compile a file on the land called Bluebird Meadows. I want background information on the new family that occupy the residence. I want whatever we can use against them, and on the land.”
My spine stiffens, but something inside of me warns me to keep my mouth closed about my connection. Because that land belongs to my cousins.
“Bluebird Meadows?” I ask, just to be sure I heard her right.
She glances up from her phone, her lip curling. “Yes, Summer. With our competitors planting those false allegations about me, we have lost some investors. Now we need to secure that land.”
“I... I don’t understand. Why would securing the land have anything to do with the investors?”
I’ve heard the rumours about Katherine. She can be ruthless.
I’ve been warned by others in the building that she gets what she wants by any means necessary.
People in the office are still talking about her little embezzlement arrest. Everyone believes she’s paid her way out of the charges.
Before I started as her assistant, I was neutral.
Now, I believe the bitch has done more than embezzle.
My cousins are still grieving the loss of their parents and grandparents. They don’t need to be inconvenienced by this.
Her nose scrunches up as she leans forward. “I pay you to do a job. Not to question me. Just do it.”
“I can do this from home,” I whisper, having no plans to do any of it.
“Did you finish up going through my emails and sorting them into spam, scrap and urgent piles?”
My heart sinks at her question because she gave me the impossible task of going through all her emails that I don’t think she’s opened since she was a teenager. I’ve never seen an inbox so full. And I have to read each and every single one to see what pile they belong in.
“I’m getting there.”
“I was told you were efficient,” she scolds.
“Respectfully, I have already gone through thousands of emails, and have already sent over urgent piles to your personal account for you to address. That isn’t including the ones I have already replied to on your behalf and am awaiting responses for.”
“Well, you can consider this your first verbal warning, and if you don’t change your hair by Monday, that will be going down as a written warning.
We need you to move quicker or your entire job will be put in review,” she remarks, before letting out an exasperated sigh.
“Have everything you find out about the land sent to me straight away. We have plans to develop a new housing estate and we cannot waste any more time. It’s the perfect location. ”
My eyes bug out. “But what about the wildlife in that area? The surrounding farms still have livestock on them.”
She arches a brow. “Then I guess they should sell up before the work starts,” she states sharply.
“I want as much as you can compile together by the morning, and I’ll expect those emails done by Monday.
Oh, and you will stay until seven to wait until my meeting is done so I can send you the notes to type up. ”
She leaves the room, and my heartrate skyrockets as I drop my phone and bag on my desk. I lean back, wondering what on earth I am going to do.
One, there is no way I am searching for information on the land my cousins own. I wouldn’t betray them for anyone or anything.
Two, there’s more than likely a chance I’ll be fired on Monday because there is no way I’m getting through all of those emails. Unless I slack at my job and just erase a bunch at first glance.
This shit is something you give to someone you don’t like.
I grab my phone and call Malia. She answers on the first ring. “Yo! Are you on your way home yet? Dinner is done and then the girls are getting ready to go to the spa opening.”
“Yeah, you’re going to have to go ahead without me on both accounts. Cruella is making me stay late.”
“Again? But it’s Friday. Can she even ask you to work overtime?”
“I think she believes she can walk into a court and ask the judge to change their verdict,” I sigh.
“I have to go. I’m going to get as much done as I can before she comes back with her notes from her meeting.
Notes she could type just as quickly in the meeting instead of writing them.
Or even have me sit in on the meeting to do it instead of making me do it after the fact. ”
“Slow down. It will be fine.”
I close my eyes. “No, it won’t. But I can’t talk about it here in the office. I wouldn’t be surprised if the office is bugged.”
“Well if it is, she’ll know you know now,” she surmises. “We will meet you at the party and you can tell me all about what’s happened then.”
I want to say more, to explain the seriousness of the situation, but I wasn’t joking about the possibility of the office being bugged. It’s the only thing stopping me from blurting it all out.
“Okay, see you soon.”
“See you soo—” she stops with a breath. “Milly, put that cookie down. They’re for the party.”
“Like you will share them,” Milly yells back.
“I might,” Malia snaps.
I chuckle down the phone. “I’ll let you go sort that out. You know she’s already eaten at least two with that response.”
“Yeah,” she breathes. “I’ll see you later.”
She ends the call, but before it shuts off, I hear her yelling Milly’s full name, using her mum voice. I surprise myself by laughing.
*** *** ***
I gaze up at the beautiful bed and breakfast, admiring everything from the plotted plants, to the old farm sign hanging at the side of the door, to the stone step leading up to the door. Everything is detailed, even the barrel they are using as a flower pot.
This place is giving off Hallmark movie feels. The warm kind. Although, I cannot wait to see this place when it snows. I bet it looks beautiful with the ground untouched, the snow covering all of the bits and bobs she has around.
My stomach flutters as I give myself a moment. I’m nervous to be here, and not just because I have to share the bad news with Malia.
But because I know there is a high possibility I may run into Reid Hayes whilst I’m here, since he’s one of Paisley’s brothers.
An infuriating, big-headed, arrogant fool of a man.
I don’t care if his body is covered in beautiful art.
Or that he has muscles upon muscles.
Or that his grin could strip the knickers off any woman.
That man is the bane of my existence.
And even though there’s only a slight possibility I may run into him, my stomach is still turning. I’m used to running and hiding when it comes to that man.
I don’t normally run.
I don’t normally hide.
But it beats getting arrested for the murder of Reid Hayes.
“Don’t think about him,” I whisper to myself.
I brush thoughts of him away since nothing good ever comes from thinking about him. And unless I want to get prodded with questions I’m too embarrassed to answer, I will need to put on my game face.
A scream tumbles out of my throat when I hear a tap on the window. I turn to see Charlotte hold her hands up.
“I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you,” she yells from the other side of the window.
I push open my door. “It’s okay. I was in my own little world.”
“I thought you had run over the duck, but he’s fine. He’s just waddled back to his little pond Paisley had Landon build.”
I glance around, and sure enough there’s a duck heading toward a pond. “What’s that in its mouth?”
“Rex’s lead,” Charlotte sighs. “Landon will blow a fuse when he realises he’s taken another one.”
“Charlotte, don’t you dare try to get the lead off that damn duck,” Hayden yells. “You’ve already spent half the night trying to get back the thong it stole from your bag.”
Charlotte’s shoulders slump. “She’s right. But in all fairness, I forgot they were edible. I thought they were in case of emergency knickers.”
My eyebrows shoot up to my hairline. “You keep edible thongs in your bag?”
“They go with the strawberry lube stuff,” she answers, like that’s a normal thing to say. But having already met her twice, I know it’s normal for her.
“Do you know where my cousins are?”
“The last I saw them, they were with Amelia, trying to come up with a plan not to kill Maddox.”
“She said that?” I ask as I grab my bag.
“Not in those words, but it was implied when she said he couldn’t touch her food and that Amelia needed to stress that point to him otherwise he wouldn’t be coming home.”
I chuckle. “She really loves her food. She won an eating contest once without meaning to.”
She pauses at the side of the house, where I can hear music flowing. Hayden joins us. “How can you win something you didn’t mean to?” Charlotte asks.
I shrug. “She smelled the food and got hungry, so she signed up on the sheet and then beat everyone. It was the world’s hottest spicy wings or something. I don’t remember. I just remember her telling me she won five thousand pounds.”
“Wait, there are eating contests?” a male voice asks from behind me.
I freeze and slowly turn to Hayden’s dad, Max. “Um, yes.”
“Good job she wasn’t up against me then because she would have lost,” he asserts, his eyes glazed over.