“Hey y’all,” he said, looking over Drue’s and Ben’s shoulders. “If the dragon lady sees all three of us in here with the phones unattended, she’ll ream us a new one.”

“I’m already on her shit list for being late,” Drue said. “So I’m not too worried.”

“Yeah, what’s she gonna do? Fire her stepdaughter?” Jonah taunted.

Drue felt herself flush. “I’m not her stepdaughter.”

“Let’s see now. Wendy is married to Brice Campbell. Brice Campbell is your daddy. Doesn’t that make Wendy your stepmother? Or is there some technicality that I’m overlooking here?”

“Wicked stepmother,” Ben corrected. “World’s biggest cliché.”

“Just brew your stupid coffee and get out of our way, okay?” Drue snapped. She went to the refrigerator, got out the container of half-and-half and found her mug in the cabinet while Ben unwrapped a granola bar, which he managed to wolf down in two bites.

Drue watched Jonah watching the coffeepot, silently loathing him.

She loathed his looks: his unruly, sun-bleached hair, his wide-spaced hazel eyes, his rangy, athletic build. She loathed his casually expensive-looking clothes and the perfectly polished penny loafers he wore, sockless, as if to show the world he could get away with that kind of thing. She loathed the class ring he wore on his right hand, she loathed his alma mater, the University of Florida, loathed that he’d finished college and law school, and was only working here because he was killing time, waiting to take his bar exam again.

Most of all she loathed the fact that Jonah Kelleher was aware that she hated him and didn’t give a rat’s ass.

Jonah took his obnoxious orange and blue mug and flashed Drue a mocking smile. “Guess I’ll head back to the salt mines. Coffee machine is all yours, gorgeous.”

Wendy had turned her chair toward the wall of windows in her office, her back to the doorway, where Drue now stood. She was on the phone, her voice low, strained. “You’re sure? Maybe we should get a second opinion?”

Princess, Wendy’s French bulldog, poked her snout from under her mistress’s desk and eyed Drue suspiciously. “Grrrrrr.”

The desk chair spun around. “What?” Wendy demanded when she saw who her visitor was. “Hang on a sec,” she said, speaking into the phone before placing it facedown on her desktop.

“You said we needed to talk,” Drue said, her face and affect deliberately flat.

“Not now, for God’s sake. Can’t you see I’m busy?”

“Okay. It’s just, the phones are pretty busy. This is the first time I’ve been able to get away from my cubicle.”