Every time I got the prickly feeling that someone was watching me, I was doomed for disappointment when I surreptitiously checked the windows and saw no curtain twitch. It was all in my mind. I was being one hundred percent ignored and I didn’t like it, not one little bit.

Even more irksome, there was no note attached to my door when I headed out for work on Monday. I’d played music, quite loudly, after nine the night before. I let Sir come and go, leaving my door open, and I even jumped in the hot tub. And what did I hear after all of this bad behavior? Crickets.

It was maddening. I was bummed out and a tad surly when I arrived for work on Monday morning. Nyah greeted me with a big smile and a thank-you for the happy hour, as did the rest of the staff, and it occurred to me that I was beginning to consider them my friends. That helped. So what if my landlord didn’t like me, my crew did.

I tried to catch Soph before the weekly meeting, but she was mobbed by other staff. I had known when I took the job that her business was all-consuming. It shouldn’t have hurt that she had no time for me. I was a grown-up, after all, but still, I felt as if once she’d gotten me to take the job and move here, I’d been cut loose in a sink-or-swim sort of way. Honestly, it stung.

But now that I’d met Nick Daire, she really had some serious explaining to do. Like, what happened to him that he was in a wheelchair? And why had they let me believe he was an old coot when he was clearly the hottest man alive?

We gathered in the big meeting room for an update on all of our projects. I was still learning our client roster and what projects we had in the queue, so I was caught off guard when Miguel asked me for a status update on the Schneider account.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “Who?”

“Schneider,” Miguel said. “You know, as in Schneider Pretzels. They’re one of our biggest clients.”

I blinked. “I didn’t realize they were ours.” In hindsight, I probably shouldn’t have admitted this out loud in front of the entire staff.

Miguel frowned. Sophie bit her lip, which was her go-to anxious gesture. I could feel the eyes of the rest of the staff on me, which were sympathetic, well, all except for one. Carson West.

“Surely, you’ve been in touch with them,” Miguel said. “They want us to design all new packaging. It was one of the projects Carson delivered to you on your first day here. I’d hoped to see the creative brief by now.”