Chapter 5 #2
"You're Cassidy, right?" The man broke into a slow, easy grin. "I'm Adam Foster."
He held out his hand and she shook it right away. Adam leaned his shoulder against the wall and settled into a casual pose that had probably won him a lot of admirers, watching her with open curiosity.
"Nobody warned me a new coworker was coming," he went on, blinking slowly before leaning in with a conspiratorial air. "And that doesn't usually happen around here — everything gets announced like it's the end of the world."
Cassidy let out a laugh that released the tension in her neck for the first time all morning. "I hope that's not a problem." She brought the coffee to her lips and realized her answer had left the door wide open.
Adam tilted his head and ran a hand through his hair to push his bangs aside.
"Quite the opposite." He raised the corner of his mouth. "We're glad you're here."
Then, without warning, everything seemed to slow.
The clatter of keyboards, the muffled laughter from nearby coworkers, the scattered conversations — all of it dropped away, as if someone had turned the volume down on the whole room.
Adam was still smiling, but the expression faltered in an instant, and it took Cassidy a second to understand why — until her nostrils flared and the scent of dry wood and cool musk slipped into her like something she hadn't known she'd been waiting for.
She drew a slow, deep breath, drinking in that darkness, just as she heard the footsteps that landed like a hydraulic press descending on stone.
Diane Carter wore a full black suit today with a white blouse that set off her deep blue eyes, which right now looked like the bottom of a cenote.
Cassidy's gaze locked onto her face — not by choice, but because her body had moved without waiting for an order.
Diane's eyes barely grazed her for a moment before landing on Adam Foster in a way that made the man shrink back like a five-year-old, and when they swung back to Cassidy, there was a fierce blaze in them that the intern would have loved to put out with every drop of saliva she had.
"Thompson," she murmured without slowing down, and Jason — walking a step behind her — widened his eyes as if bracing for a shot. "If you don't have enough work to keep your team busy, then we have a problem."
Jason instantly turned into an air traffic controller, arms waving like he was trying to prevent a disaster. Adam vanished, and Cassidy barely held back a scoff, because her direct supervisor struck her as the most pathetic little man she'd ever seen.
"Find somewhere to take notes — we have a meeting," Jason told her under his breath, then quickened his pace to keep up with Diane.
The intern drained the rest of her coffee in one go, then stopped to drop off the cup she'd promised Tanya, who sat in the exact same position she'd left her in a few minutes ago.
"See you later." Cassidy picked up her notebook and headed toward conference room two. Tanya had confirmed she wouldn't be needed in this particular meeting.
Diane knew the moment the girl walked in, but she ignored her completely.
It wasn't just the way she'd shown up in her department that bothered her — now she was out there flirting with other employees.
But the worst of it was the way she held her gaze, the way she seemed to challenge her at every turn, the way none of Diane's usual reactions landed on her the way they landed on everyone else, because Diane had watched senior executives buckle in front of her with a single raised eyebrow.
Not Cassidy. And that made her furious.
"This is the final proposal that'll be delivered to the Gales board." Clara Fitzgerald took the head of the table and opened the meeting, projecting one of the main slides onto the screen. "It's been reviewed, and the client will have it in their hands next week."
The marketing director moved through each slide and explained the changes made to the disastrous version Levi Hall had originally produced.
No one said anything, even as Clara kept asking whether anyone had something to add — the seven people in the room might as well have been dead, they were breathing so shallowly.
Cassidy bit the inside of her cheek, and her leg started bouncing under the table. There were two percentages — exactly two — that, by her admittedly inexperienced judgment, had no business in this proposal. She knew she shouldn't say anything. Her lips itched with the need to open anyway.
"Jason, anything to add?"
The man blinked. A beat of silence. Then he smiled and shook his head.
"It's perfect, Clara. I think we've done a great job here."
We.
Idiot.
"If everyone's in agreement —" Clara clicked off the screen and Diane pushed back her chair — "we can go ahead and —"
"Clara, I'm sorry —" Cassidy cut in, and out of the corner of her eye she caught that vein in her boss's neck she'd love nothing more than to press her lips against. "On slides three and five, there's a specific figure we're essentially promising the client, and it's something that isn't entirely in our control — it depends on how their stock fluctuates. "
Jason had gone pale. Cassidy noticed because the man cleared his throat and she turned to look at him.
He looked like he'd just seen the devil come to collect what he was owed, and she half understood it, because Diane Carter's expression said she'd like nothing better than to walk out of this office, lock the door, and burn the building to the ground.
Clara was a different story. Surprise crossed her face and she turned the screen back on to find the data point Cassidy was referring to.
"There." The intern stood and pointed to the percentage. "When the client sees these numbers —"
"When they have them in hand, they'll know they're signing with someone who has their back," Diane hissed, every inch the Cobra she was, driving both blue eyes into the girl's face.
"They'll probably accept the proposal — but we'd also be gambling our credibility," Cassidy shot back.
By now Jason Thompson had almost certainly ruined his pants.
"We wouldn't just lose them as a client.
There's a real chance they'd tell people in their professional circle that Whitestone didn't deliver on what it promised, and those people would think twice before working with the firm again. "
"We always deliver on what we promise." Diane planted both hands flat on the long table.
Cassidy tilted her head. She knew she should stop. She didn't.
"If the market tanks, I doubt we'd be able to hit those numbers."
Diane slammed her fist on the wood, her face twisting with fury.
Clara was on Cassidy's side — but saying so out loud would mean undermining Diane in front of everyone, and that was not something she would ever do.
She'd tell her in private. She was about to speak when Diane's clipped voice filled the room.
"Get out of this room and collect your things." Diane barely moved her lips. "You're done."
Cassidy froze for what felt like an eternity before she fully grasped what had happened. She lifted her chin, walked along the side of the table to the door, pulled it open, and disappeared.
No one said a word, and Clara — who knew her well — watched her with quiet curiosity.
"Tatiana, notify HR and have them handle Collins's exit." Diane smoothed the lapels of her jacket as she tried to steady herself. "Clara, come to my office."
Diane Carter walked out of the conference room like a lit fuse — jaw tight, neck aching from the pressure she'd been holding all morning.
She'd spent fifteen years running this department with an iron hand, putting in more hours than anyone else, studying every client who came through to make sure she didn't make mistakes.
In all that time, very few people had dared to do what the intern just had.
Diane made mistakes like every human being — but not like this, and she certainly didn't accept being spoken to that way, as if someone had any kind of power over her.
She pressed her fists together, because she knew she'd been distracted lately, and she refused to admit why — she wouldn't even let herself think it. The only thing going on was that she was tired. She hadn't taken a vacation in years, hadn't let herself unwind the way she probably needed to.
It had nothing to do with the fact that her mental chaos had begun at the exact moment Cassidy Collins walked into her office.