As I closed my eyes, I could picture her dark eyebrows furrowing together. She’d never been overly pleased with my decision to move to the East Coast. It wasn’t that she didn’t want me to grow or explore other parts of the world; she did. It was the idea that I had moved here solely for Tyler, she’d argued.

I’d tried to sell her on New York and its many advantages, and sure, she and my father understood a large city had a lot to offer someone my age, but they’d never quite given their blessing.

“My boss,” I began, trying to find just how to explain Mr. Cavenaugh, “he’s”—intense, insanely hot, kind of an asshole—“difficult.”

There was a pregnant pause as I waited for my mother to gather her thoughts. I knew what she was doing—trying to decide the proper course to take and exactly what should be said to comfort her distraught daughter. I’d experienced this particular bit of silence many times before.

“Well, I did look him up on the computer.”

Not the Internet. Information was always gathered on “the computer,” according to my parents. And it was painstakingly gathered over a dial-up Internet connection and a computer that probably predated the dinosaurs. Our neighbors had had DSL when I was in high school. Me? AOL dial-up. It was maddening.

“Oh?”

“He’s…” she spoke slowly.

I smiled, just thinking of my mother using Google.

“Well, he’s quite handsome.”

“Mom!”

“Oh, sweetheart, as if you didn’t notice,” she nearly scolded me. “You’d have to be blind not to notice that man, and even then, I think he’d still be able to charm the panties right off a woman.”

Shaking my head, I didn’t even know where to begin.

“He’s kind of mean,” I retorted before licking a glob of caramel off my finger.

“Maybe he just needs a little help.”

“From the looks of it, he had the best assistant anyone could ever ask for. And, now, he has me, an overpaid work-study student,” I huffed, sinking further into the sofa.

“You are not a student anymore,” she reminded me. “And you have to stop thinking like one. You told Daddy and me that you wanted new experiences. You wanted to move to that great big city to discover the world and become an adult. Well, get out there and do it.”

“But—”

“Not buts, Cara. So, your boss is mean. Figure out why. Maybe he’s really just plain mean, but you’ll never know if you don’t figure it out.”

“You’re telling me to research my boss?” I asked, a little more interested. I liked research. I liked research a lot.

Get to know him? Roman Cavenaugh?

That didn’t sound exciting. That sounded downright terrifying.

The next day, I decided to show up to work bright and early.