Chapter 5
Cassidy slept badly, restless, as if something were coming.
She hated feeling this way, unable to shake the sense that something was about to happen without knowing exactly where it would land.
She called Payton the moment she woke up — her sister was at a lawyers' conference in Houston, and she wanted to make sure everything was going smoothly.
"Don't worry, Cass," Payton told her, over the background noise of what sounded like a running shower. "I'll be back tonight."
Then she called Kenny — her eternal headache — but as usual he didn't pick up, as if answering his phone at seven in the morning were a mortal sin.
She eventually reminded herself that if anything had happened to him, she would've already heard about it, because she was his emergency contact and the person the police always called when Payton wasn't available.
She stopped in front of the mirror, wrestling with the button on the blouse she'd picked out for today.
Cassidy had a full chest, something that had been her burden for as long as she could remember.
She used to struggle to find decent clothes she could barely afford, and her entire life she'd had to put up with every kind of remark and shameless stare — mostly from men who could easily be her father's age or older.
But now, at twenty-eight, she'd learned to work what everyone else seemed to find so attractive, and she couldn't complain about the results.
The blue fabric wrapped around her elegantly and fit her body almost perfectly, but the small gap her curves created made it look a little too casual, so she reached for the piece that always saved her in situations like this: a knit vest, white this time.
After giving herself a once-over, she left her apartment and walked to her car.
Her trusty Toyota Corolla was waiting under the bright sun that had finally shown up today — unlike yesterday — and it started on the first try, rewarding its owner with a soft purr.
If it weren't for Payton, Cassidy never could have bought it.
It wasn't exactly a car that matched her personality, but it was what she could afford at the time, because living in California, working two jobs, and going to school wasn't possible without your own set of wheels.
"Ready?" Tanya greeted her when she arrived at the entrance to Whitestone Consulting Group after a forty-minute drive from North Hollywood, having managed to dodge the massive backup on the 405.
"I'm not so sure." Cassidy pressed the elevator button at the far end of the lobby.
Tanya smoothed her short hair — curlier today than it had been yesterday — in the metal door that threw her reflection back at her, twisting sideways to check that her violet floral blouse sat perfectly.
She was nervous too. Despite her years of experience and her deep knowledge of the projects she worked on, walking into a meeting with Diane Carter always gave her a stomachache, because you never knew what kind of mood the Cobra would be in.
The two coworkers walked down the hallway, and as always, Cassidy moved with her eyes fixed straight ahead, not registering anyone else's expressions.
It wasn't that she was rude — it was a reflex that kicked in whenever she was in public, because when she was little she'd hated the stares of people who couldn't seem to take their eyes off her.
"Don't look at them," Mrs. Hayes told her once. "Always keep your eyes straight ahead."
And that's what she'd done ever since, even if it sometimes worked against her, because she couldn't always tell who was watching her or following her steps. Like right now.
"You've caused quite a stir in the office," Tanya whispered as she leaned over to turn on her computer, making a strange gesture with her eyes that Cassidy took a moment to decode.
Trying to be as subtle as possible, she followed her coworker's gaze and found herself looking at a man who seemed a few years older than her. Handsome — square jaw, short hair, fair complexion.
"Adam." Tanya shifted her body so the man in question wouldn't realize they were talking about him.
"Single, a couple of office hookups, nothing remarkable except for Mandy — one of the secretaries on the sixth floor — who got a little hung up on him, which means lunch with her is a nightmare whenever she decides to rehash the one night they spent together. "
Tanya wrapped up her detailed report with a bright smile and a flirty little shoulder shimmy.
Cassidy glanced at him again from the corner of her eye, and she'd have to admit he was the type she found attractive.
It wasn't that she loved men, but she didn't dislike them either, and after years of wrestling to figure out where her tastes actually landed, she could comfortably call herself bisexual.
The last time she'd gone out with one — Tim, black hair, honey-colored eyes, hooked nose — was three months ago.
A great dinner and a satisfying night. She never saw him again; Tim was way too intense.
By the second date he'd wanted to introduce her to his mom.
"Not my type," Tanya went on in a conspiratorial tone, "but if he were, I wouldn't think twice. Word is he's very well-equipped."
Cassidy caught her own smile. She genuinely liked Tanya.
The conversation wound down as both of them turned back to their work.
The first thing the new intern did was review the agenda items for the eleven o'clock meeting and jot down several notes, because she could see again what she considered gaps in the presentation.
Then — reluctantly — she got up, walked over to the corner table, and put a new filter in the coffee maker to brew a fresh pot.
Once she confirmed that dark drops had started falling into the glass carafe, she turned around to head back, but a thick, masculine voice stopped her.
"Cassidy, I need a summary before eleven on the return on investment for the Alalu project," Jason called out, smiling at his phone screen without looking up. "You've got the file in your email."
The man continued on his way without a care, as if asking Cassidy something like that at nine thirty in the morning were the most trivial thing in the world.
She returned to her seat and dropped into her chair with a sigh. Beside her, Tanya was chewing furiously on a blue pen while she typed, her frown deepening with every keystroke. A few seconds later she turned to her coworker.
"What did Jason ask you for?" Cassidy noticed that her curiosity was unfiltered, but it didn't bother her — Tanya asked straight out instead of dancing around with pointless comments the way a lot of people did when they were fishing for information.
"A summary." She moved her mouse to the email her boss had sent and scrolled to the bottom, realizing the man had simply forwarded her a task someone else had asked him to do. "I can't believe this."
Tanya leaned over toward her coworker's screen and skimmed the email, shaking her head.
"Doesn't surprise me — classic Jason." She shrugged and rolled her chair back to her own station.
"He has no idea what we actually do here.
He survives on summaries he farms out to one of us and then strings together half-coherent words at every meeting.
I have no idea who the hell put him in that position, or how Diane ever signed off on it. "
Cassidy's jaw tightened, and she couldn't help thinking about Payton.
Her sister was the kind of lawyer who had the law memorized cold, who never missed a conference or a training to stay current.
She'd won more criminal cases than anyone else at her firm, and she'd been waiting two years to be named team lead for her practice area — yet three different men had sat in that chair in the meantime, none of them with half of Payton's knowledge.
She could smell the misogyny from here, and she was starting to pick up the same scent at Whitestone.
She did her homework. She read everything she could find on the project, asked Tanya questions — because she knew Tanya was the one who'd worked most closely with this client — and took notes.
Lots of them. Because Cassidy worked by dumping everything onto paper and letting her brain sort it into bullet points so she could spot the loose threads she always found.
She put on her headphones — today she'd chosen the black over-ear pair — and started drafting the summary, using clean, direct sentences that cut straight to the point.
She added three recommendations to bring Alalu's return on investment in line with the stated objectives, so resources could be prioritized and costs optimized at the same time.
She finished by adding the metrics as a pie chart, reviewed everything, and hit send.
Not in a new email — she replied in the same thread Jason had dropped in her inbox, but with "Reply All" selected.
Cassidy needed the job, and she knew any one of her coworkers would happily pull the rug out from under her to get their hands on the opportunity Samuel Barnes had given her.
And even if she didn't end up landing the marketing role, having a top consultancy on her résumé was a real asset.
But she wasn't stupid. In barely two days she'd figured out who actually knew what they were doing, who was full of it, and who the witch was — and Cassidy wanted to be in the first group, which meant she wasn't about to let anyone undercut her.
"I'm going to grab a coffee." The intern nodded toward the same table she'd been at a few minutes ago. "Want me to bring you one?"
Tanya bobbed her head in time with her typing, pen still clenched between her teeth.
Cassidy stood and grabbed two paper cups stacked in the corner of the table.
"Hey." She closed her eyes for a second — it seemed like nobody was going to let her breathe today. She turned her head and found herself looking into a pair of eyes almost exactly the same color as her own.