from: [email protected]

to: [email protected]

date: June 10, 8:56 PM

subject: Wow

In case you heard a clanging sound from the south, that was my jaw hitting the floor. You look spectacular.

from: [email protected]

to: [email protected]

date: June 10, 8:59 PM

subject: Equal Opportunity

Send me a picture of you.

from: [email protected]

to: [email protected]

date: June 10, 9:03 PM

subject: Now?

I’m just wearing a shirt and a tie. Nothing special. But I’m about to have a meeting with my COO about New Zealand. It would look weird for me to send a selfie.

from: [email protected]

to: [email protected]

date: June 10, 9:04 PM

subject: Later then.

I’d hate for you to look . . . weird . . . *shudders.* So send one before you go to bed.

from: [email protected]

to: [email protected]

date: June 10, 9:07 PM

subject: Later it is.

I promise.

She waited an hour. Then another one. Sure, she had emails to answer, and product details to approve, and plans from Nelle to review. Through that all, she kept checking her phone as she worked in bed on a hot Friday night with the windows open. She twisted her hair on top of her head and stabbed a pen through it to get it off her neck. Why did she even want Nate to send her a picture? Hell, she knew what he looked like. She didn’t need a photo before she fell asleep.

But he’d said he’d send one, and he was a man of his word. Now it was eleven. Okay fine, a meeting could last long. Very long. So long in fact that when she finally fell asleep after midnight he must still have been with his COO, and maybe even at two a.m. too when she woke up in the middle of the night to pee. Because there was no picture.

When she returned to bed, she checked once more. Still nothing.

Maybe he wasn’t meeting with his COO. Or maybe he had met with him, and they’d gone to a club, and danced with some women, and one of those women was all over Nate, her long nails trailing along his strong arms, her hair falling against his chest, and her breasts in his hands.

She burned inside at the pictures that flashed before her eyes, but the reel wouldn’t stop. It ran faster, and unspooled more scenes as she saw him pushing the elevator button, stepping into it with a beautiful brunette, pressing her up against the wall, and kissing the stranger the way he’d kissed her. Squeezing her eyes shut, she tried to block out the foul images, but they didn’t end until she was seeing him in a dark and sexy room, stripping off his belt, undoing his shirt, and fucking this nameless, faceless woman who was surely with him tonight.

Finally, she fell back asleep, the pit in her stomach eating away at her.

When she woke up to the sun streaming through her window, she found a new message. From Grant Abbott.