“What is it that you’re doing tonight?”
She blinked up at him, as if trying to figure out why he was asking. If she had even half a guess, it was more than he had. It wasn’t his business. He wasn’t about to ask her out—if she’d shot down Daniel that fast, he could only imagine what she’d say if he tried. And he definitely didn’t want to try.
But maybe that was the part that got him curious. Whatever it was, it was more important than the chance to have dinner with Daniel Alvarez. His impression of Lauren had always been that she had very little life outside of work, but maybe he was wrong.
“I’m—” She grabbed her coffee mug, standing so abruptly she sent her chair flying back against the wall. “I’m going to get more coffee, since this morning was such a disaster. I look forward to seeing what you come up with for your proposal.”
The last part was delivered so stiffly that it was obviously more a formal send-off than a genuine expression of interest. And before Asa could come back with a retort, she was gone, leaving him standing alone in her own office.
Also leaving her notepad completely unguarded, sitting next to her keyboard. He slid it closer, his eyes scanning the rest of the entries after the cryptic cat pants. It was clearly a to-do list, mixed up and abbreviated in some trademark Lauren way. He was lucky it wasn’t in binary.
Grinning, he grabbed a pen.
Chapter
Three
It had been Lauren’s every intention to leave work a few minutes early, but of course that meant she ended up stuck on a call at five minutes past five.
“Your payment does show on the ledger, Mr. Stockard,” she said, trying to keep her voice patient. “If you look at it again, you’ll see we applied three fifteen to the overdue balance on October’s booth rental, and one eighty-five toward this month’s bill. That’s why the amount due is—”
“Yes,” Mr. Stockard cut in, “but where is my five-hundred-dollar payment! I brought it in myself. And I don’t see it on the ledger!”
Mr. Stockard was one of Cold World’s vendors who rented space along Wonderland Walk to sell their wares. In his case, it was adorable hand-whittled woodland creatures that were surprisingly popular among hipsters. He also insisted on paying his rent via check, which he brought in person, always for a number that was not listed on the ledger that Lauren had to provide him to try to get him trued up . . . and then the cycle continued.
He was still ranting, and Lauren doodled little circles in the margins of her notepad, waiting for the moment when she might be able to cut back in. When she’d come back from getting coffee earlier that morning, Asa was gone. Which, of course, had been the entire point of her leaving. But afterward her office had smelled like him, and then it turned out he’d left behind something else, too—a new entry on her notepad, no number next to it. Just INITIATE HOLIDAY SPIRIT SEQUENCE! written in blocky capital letters, bold and surprisingly neat. Whatever that meant.
Messing with someone’s to-do list should be illegal. Like opening someone’s mail or stealing their identity. Or reading their diary—it felt as bad, to Lauren. Not even that he’d written something on it, but that he’d seen it at all. It made her read back over every entry, wondering if there was anything incriminating, how each one might look through his eyes.
Cat pants was a definite low point.
She realized Mr. Stockard had paused to take a breath, and she’d been tracing over Asa’s letters with her pen, building them up with scratchy lines of ink. She set her pen down and tried to make her voice firm.
“I’ll look into it first thing in the morning, Mr. Stockard,” she said. “And have a new ledger ready when you open your booth this weekend. How does that sound?”
“Well, I suppose—” he started to grumble, and she cut him off before he could go into another rant.
“Great,” she said. “You have a wonderful day, Mr. Stockard. Thank you for trusting Cold World with your business.”
She hung up the phone, glancing at the digital clock on the display. If she left right now, she could still make it by five thirty, but it was going to be cutting it close . . .
“Oh, good,” Kiki said, stopping in the doorway. “I was hoping to catch you. Listen, do you still have my red off-the-shoulder dress?”
“Yeah,” Lauren said. “Sorry, I—”
She’d borrowed it from Kiki six months ago, for a date that had never ended up happening. Kiki had insisted she hang on to it until the date got rescheduled, but it got pushed back twice more and then eventually the guy had stopped responding to messages on the app, and somehow that stupid dress was still in her closet, a reminder of what a failure her romantic life was.
You could’ve been wearing it tonight, at dinner with Daniel, a voice in her head reminded her. She didn’t know how long this visit was going to go, but she probably could’ve met up with him after. Why hadn’t that occurred to her in the moment?
Kiki waved off her apology. “It’s fine,” she said. “But I’m going to have to go to Marj’s holiday party this year and I promised her I’d show her all the options. I think she’s seriously afraid I’ll show up at a swanky law firm shindig wearing a negligee or something.”
Kiki’s girlfriend, Marj, was a brand-new associate at a law firm downtown and apparently had become a huge stressball over navigating the hierarchies and networking events. It was even harder given that they were in an openly gay relationship and Marj, who was Korean, was the only associate of color at her law firm. Lauren knew it had been causing tension in their relationship, which sucked because Kiki seemed to really care about Marj, from everything she’d heard.
“I can bring it to work tomorrow,” Lauren said.
“I was hoping to get it tonight, if that’s not too much trouble,” Kiki said. “When does your thing end? Text me and I can come over.”
Lauren hesitated. In theory, that sounded fine. Nice, even. She’d never had anyone from work over to her apartment. She’d barely had anyone not from work over to her apartment, unless you counted her landlord that time her faucet kept leaking.
Kiki must’ve read her reluctance, though, because she said, “Or you can stop by my place. Asa won’t get home from his shift until after nine, if you’re worried.”
Lauren made an incredulous expression that she knew without a mirror just looked like bad acting. “Why would I be worried about that?”
“Um,” Kiki said. “Okay. Maybe I misread into why you didn’t come to our Thanksgiving, even though I totally invited you and I happen to know you spent yours watching that documentary about the McDonald’s Monopoly scam again.”
“The again seems unnecessary,” Lauren muttered. “Anyway, I really have to get out of here—but text me your address and I’ll drop by later.”
She thought about Kiki’s words all the way to her car, though, and kept thinking about them as she pulled onto the highway and let her phone’s GPS guide her to the address where she would be meeting her guardian ad litem kid for the first time. Maybe knowing that Kiki and Asa were housemates had been partially behind her decision to skip Thanksgiving over there, although she hated the idea that her antipathy toward him was that obvious. Or that she might’ve hurt Kiki’s feelings by turning down an invitation that had been made in friendship.