First a party, then a child, now an assassination attempt.
I need a fucking drink.
2
Charlotte
I am so late.
Mom is probably half through a good ranting and onto a particularly disgusted raving to whatever stranger had the misfortune to choose the table beside hers. But once I sink my teeth into one of Bianchi’s avocado chicken paninis and all that cheesy melted goodness hits my tongue, it’ll be worth all the trouble she’s going to give me.
If only the line would move a little faster.
The smell of herbs and spices makes my mouth water. I’m distracted by the aroma, mid-drool, when someone taps on my shoulder. I almost jump into the ceiling as I let out a surprised little shriek.
“Excuse me, miss. Have you been here before? I’m trying to go vegetarian. I’m debating between the veggie panini and the herb spring salad.”
What I really recommend is not going vegetarian. But instead of shooting down his try at eating healthy, I clear my throat and look up at him.
He’s cute, in a Jim from The Office kind of way. His tie is slightly crooked, and it matches his smile. “Can’t go wrong with a panini,” I mumble. And then, like the dork queen I am, I spin away from him too quickly and bump into the woman in front of me. “Sorry.”
She shoots me a textbook Orange County glare from behind her not-quite-dark-enough sunglasses and huffs around to face the front.
The guy behind me, the one who tapped me on the shoulder, chuckles. “Some people, right?”
I would agree, but I probably wouldn’t have liked being accosted in a line that doesn’t seem to be moving, either. Instead, I give him a smile as my cheeks burn.
One of the women in the line next to ours looks him up and down and licks her lips without even a smidgen of humility. It’s a little over the top—okay, a lot over the top—but I can admit, he’s nice to look at.
And Lord knows I should be looking. I’m thirty-two, single without a prospect of changing it, and tired of going home alone every night. I blame it on my lack of sex appeal. And my social ineptitude. And the fact I can’t stop comparing every man I meet to my boss.
Stop that, I scold myself, in what has become a near-constant ritual that makes my grandmother’s ceaseless clacking of her rosary beads look like a one-time quirk. Fantasizing about Kostya Zinon is, at this point, a low-level mental hum that I’ve forgotten I ever lived without.
It makes sense, for a variety of reasons. After all, Kostya is a six-foot-four-inch sigh of a heartthrob with eyes that strip me naked every single time I walk into his office. I can’t even count how many seconds I’ve spent standing outside his doorway, steeling myself to walk in and not make a fool of myself in his presence.
Not that that ever works. Being near him is like taking a drug that turns the simplest action into the most complex athletic endeavor that anyone has ever attempted. I’ve become an Olympic gold medalist in stacking papers without knocking them over, in carefully delivering cups of coffee without spilling a drop on the pristine furniture.
I’ve been keeping notes of how many days I can go in a row without doing something stupidly clumsy. It was a personal record hot streak—thirteen days and counting—until yesterday, when I knocked over a cup of pens in his office, so awkwardly that I could swear he was about to ask me if I just discovered my elbows. That is a moment I’ve been dying to forget.
But, as hot as Kostya is, he is a bit of an asshole, too. When I tripped while helping him get tuxed up for the gala last night, he caught me and gave me the most sexual look that has ever been given by any man to any woman, ever, full stop. It shook me down to my core. That kind of look should be illegal. It sure as heck goes way beyond “workplace appropriate”—not that a man like him cares about a thing like proper decorum.
Then there was the whole thing that happened later. I’ve been wrestling with the call since the moment Kostya abruptly hung up on me. I may be deferential to a fault sometimes—blame my upbringing—but he went too far when he cursed at me, and before I could stop myself, I gave him a piece of my mind.
And what was all that about a kid? A dead ex-wife? I still remember his exact words: “A dead ex-wife I would have preferred to kill myself.” There was a tone in that that said he wasn’t joking. It sent shivers down my spine at the time, and as I recall the menace in his voice, I feel the same sensation again.
Shady. Very shady.
Still—he may be an asshole with a shady past, present, and future, but that doesn’t change the one enduring fact about our relationship: just thinking of him makes my panties wet.
Not a good thing when dining with my mother.
“Hey, aren’t you that girl from TV?” The guy behind me leans in to speak by my ear. His voice is low and sultry.
Oh boy. Here we go again.
I chuckle anyway because this is California, and we both know there’s a fifty-fifty chance that that line will work. Aspiring actresses want to be recognized and you can’t swing a dead cat around without hitting at least a half dozen girls dying to be the next Angelina Jolie.
Not me, though. I’m a secretary—an “executive assistant,” if you were to look at my job description, although an innocent bystander might confuse that with “indentured servant” if they happened to look at my paycheck. Either way, I am firmly in non-actress territory. “No. I think you must have me mixed up with someone else.”
He puts his
