“There are no cracks,” I said, a notch louder than I needed to. I pinched the bridge of my nose and got myself under control. “I can handle this. I can find someone for you. Just let me take care of it. You’ll see what I can do.”
Catharine shrugged. She slid her papers across the table to me. “I’m willing to see what you can do, if that’s what you want. But I’m not signing a contract until I’m satisfied.”
I got it. Again, she was only doing what I would do in her position. But it still burned, because reputation was everything in my business. If word got around that my executive assistants were too horny for their own good, I could kiss my hard-won business goodbye. “How confidential are these findings?” I asked, picking up the papers and putting them in my Italian leather bag.
“No one has seen those except me and my investigator,” Catharine said. “I run a tight ship.”
Unlike me. She didn’t say it, but her meaning was crystal clear. There seem to be a lot of cracks.
I thanked her and walked out of the boardroom. Got in the elevator like nothing was wrong. Like I wasn’t panicking.
Chin up, Riley, I thought. I hadn’t gotten this far by freaking out when things went wrong. I could salvage this situation. I’d talk to Helena and Tricia, cut them from the roster. I’d go back over my current list of recruits. Go back over the applications I’d gotten in the last month. Get my own investigator and come up with someone that would make Catharine Knowles think she was dreaming. After all, no one knew about these latest indiscretions, and no one ever had to know.
I walked out of the building into the warm, late afternoon. I was tired, hungry, and—Jesus, it was hot. Now the cold sweat on my back was just damp and uncomfortably warm. I should probably get an Uber back to my hotel, which wasn’t very far from here. But all the energy went out of me as I inhaled the smoggy breeze. There was a small courtyard around the side of the building, probably made for employees to take lunch and smoke breaks. It was empty at the moment. I walked to it and sat on one of the benches, feeling my body deflate.
Five minutes. I had five minutes to feel sorry for myself, and then I had to be Emma Riley again. Because I was the Boss Bitch, the one with all the answers. Everyone who knew me knew that I was smart, ballsy, afraid of nothing. A man-eater.
I pinched the bridge of my nose again, closing my eyes as a headache tried to crawl up my skull. I should probably get laid, I thought. Find a man and fuck him, see if that would clear my head. I didn’t have a boyfriend, just one-night stands. A girl didn’t need a boyfriend when she had Tinder.
But as usual, on the heels of that thought—which I had often—was a twinge of something darker. An uneasy feeling in my gut that almost felt like fear. Whenever I felt the loneliness creep up on me, the uncertainty about the life I was living, I always opened Tinder, found a man, and fucked him. I always told myself it was something I wanted to do, that I was living my life to the fullest as an independent woman. That I was free and single and could do what I wanted, and my Tinder record proved it.
Sometimes, I almost believed it.
It wasn’t that I was pining for a relationship. God, no—I had no time for that. I wasn’t going to go all sappy over one man, like my sister had. Samantha was very happy with Aidan, and to be fair he was pretty hot, but what she had wasn’t for me.
But I wanted something. I couldn’t put a name to it, but whatever it was, I wanted it pretty badly. So badly that maybe—just maybe—I wasn’t thinking straight. Maybe I wasn’t making the good judgment calls I thought I was making. Maybe, like Catharine had said, there were more cracks than I had thought.
And why was I even thinking about my sex life right now, when I had bigger problems to worry about?
My phone rang in my handbag, and I pulled it out. I didn’t recognize the number, but almost no one had my cell number, so I answered it. “Hello?”
“Emma Riley?” The voice was male, smooth as malt whiskey.
“Yes.”
“This is Noah Pearson.”
As soon as I heard the name, I remembered. “Aidan’s business partner,” I said. Aidan and his partners ran Tower Venture Capital—Aidan from New York, with another partner in Chicago, another in Dallas, and this one, Noah Pearson, in L.A. Samantha had told me before I left New York that she would give Pearson my number, “so that he can show you around L.A.” I’d nodded at her, fully intending to dodge the guy, and then I’d forgotten she said it. Until now.
“I’m the L.A. one,” Noah said. His tone was a little dry, as if he was as pleased about this phone call as I was. He was also in a car, by the sounds of it. “I’ve been instructed by Aidan to take you out so you aren’t all alone in the city. Where are you now?”
“That’s really nice, but I’m not in the mood,” I said.
“Neither am I,” he said, surprising me. “But maybe I can get in the mood. Where are you?”
“I just finished a meeting. I’m at a building called the Mulvaney Building. I haven’t been back to my hotel. Maybe we can meet in an hour.”
“Maybe we can meet now,” Pearson said. “I’m hungry, and I’m sure you look fine. I’m actually not far from there. I’ll be there in ten.”
“You really don’t have to.” I wanted to go back to my hotel room, soak in the tub, and come up with a plan to revive my business and crush my enemies.
He sounded resigned, but his voice was relaxed, and it really was smooth. A hell of a nice voice, to be honest. “We’ll never hear the end of it if we don’t do this.”
“So we’ll make something up,” I said. “We’ll tell Aidan and Sam that you took me out for a burger or something, it was nice, the end. They’ll buy it if we sync our stories.”
He laughed, and the sound made a sensation go down my spine that I wasn’t used to—pleasure. And actual interest. I realized I’d never seen what Noah Pearson looked like, but from the sound of him, he was hot. “Look,” he said. “You’re standing in front of an office building—”
“Sitting,” I corrected him.
“Fine, you’re sitting. Your meeting is over, it’s dinner time anyway, and you don’t know the city. Why don’t I pick you up and take you for an actual burger, and then we won’t have to worry about inventing anything? It can be relatively painless.”
I was hungry. My plan had been to gorge myself on room service while feeling sorry for myself in isolation, but suddenly that seemed pathetic. “I should warn you,” I said to Noah Pearson, “I have had the worst fucking day. I’ve just finished a shitshow of a meeting. Most men think I’m a ball-buster. And even when I’m not in this shit-tastic mood, I’m honestly a bitch.” I paused. “Oh, and I swear. A lot.”
“I love a dirty-talking woman,” Pearson said. “It’s music to my ears. Are you the hot redhead sitting on the bench, wearing two-inch heels?”
I turned toward the street. A silver BMW pulled up to the curb, slowing. Traffic behind it started to honk. The passenger window rolled down and in the depths of the car I could see a man with dark blond hair and aviator sunglasses leaning across the passenger seat, his phone still to his ear.