“You ready for this?” he asked, concern flickering over his otherwise affable face.

“Ready as I’ll ever be. And just think—tonight, we will be through with the Felixes.”

“What if they have another event?”

“They do, an anniversary party for Alexandra. But Addison has already taken it over—she informed me this morning. I’d like to think it wasn’t to throw me today, of all days, but I know better. But want to hear something funny?”

“Always.”

“I’ve never been so happy to have a client stolen out from under me.”

He chuckled, leaning over the wide space between the captain’s chairs for a kiss, which I happily provided. And with that, we stepped out of the van.

I could already feel the hum of action that waited for me inside, but there was also a buzzing anxiety—my interns weren’t waiting for me and weren’t answering my texts. So once Kash had the first cart loaded, we headed inside to see what the holdup was. The elevator ride was quiet, which was unlike us on its own. But he seemed to know I needed to roll through a string of paranoid fantasies about what had gone wrong just to get it out of my system. Like maybe there was a fire. Or a salmonella outbreak. Or the cake had exploded. Or a flock of pigeons had kamikazeed into the skylight and busted it into a trillion irreparable pieces.

But what I found when the elevator doors opened was far, far worse.

Addison Lane wore that cruel smile of hers, the superior one she liked to don when I was in trouble. Her dark eyes shifted from me to Kash, taking a moment to look down the length of him slowly enough that I fantasized about flying at her like a bat to scratch her eyes out.

“Look at you, riding the service elevator like a plumber.”

“What are you doing here?” I said with a false smile as I strode toward her, back straight and the facade of confidence firmly in place.

“You didn’t actually think I’d let you do this alone, did you? This is one of the biggest accounts at Archer, and I’m not about to sit back and wait for you to screw it up.”

Kash stiffened beside me, cart in his big hands and his brows holding back thunder.

But I just kept smiling, my concern clutched in a headlock. “Do what you have to do. Where are my interns?”

“I’ve got them directing the staff as they set up the tables in the ballroom.”

“Thank you. Now, if you’ll excuse me—”

“I mean it, Lila. This event reflects on me just as much as it does you. I’ve already found discrepancies with the linens”—she glanced at Kash’s cart—“and I’ll need to have a look at those centerpieces.”