Page 7 of Level With Me
“Did you learn that on the internet?”
I grinned. “I have a tween nephew,” Whenever I talked to Conrad’s ten-year-old on the phone, he threw in words I swore he’d made up. He thought it was hysterical when I used them on him.
Apparently, she did too.
“He teaches me all the cool words. Like pink blob.”
Her lips began to turn up and my stomach dropped. I knew, in this bizarre moment, that a smile might undo me, so I looked away.
“Unbelievable,” she said. I could hear it in her voice. The smile.
Don’t look. Don’t fucking look.
But it was impossible. I turned back to her like the absolute sucker I was. And when I did, she was grinning easy and wide. It changed her face completely, making her blue-gray eyes sparkle. My insides went to jelly.
But it wasn’t just attraction. I realized at that moment I knew exactly who she was. This was Cassandra Kelly, CEO of the Rolling Hills resort. The same Cassandra Kelly who Lila and I were meeting later this morning.
Fuck.
I could be wrong. I prayed, desperately, that I was wrong. In most of the photos in the dossier Brynn had compiled, Cassandra had worn her hair either neatly pinned or slicked back with some kind of hair gel, and she wasn’t normally smiling. I remember thinking that serious look was sexy as hell, but her expression was guarded. She looked like a sharky CEO, which she was. Or at least she had been when she worked in Manhattan.
But there was one candid photo Brynn had included that I’d halted over, returning to again and again. The photographer had caught her mid-laugh. Her hair was loose and wavy, her blazer undone, her face tipped up. She looked, I remembered, like Kelly McGillis in Top Gun, a woman I’d had a giant crush on from when I saw the movie as a kid.
No, I wasn’t wrong. This was Cassandra fucking Kelly.
I should tell her who I am. Right now.
But things would get awkward fast. Maybe she’d even want to talk about business, and I wasn’t prepared for that. I liked to make an entrance, to come in hot with the senior staff. But more than that, she’d stop smiling. She’d stop talking to me with that playful tone I’d only just gotten to hear. For the briefest moment—and the first time since getting into this mess, because that’s what it was, a mess—I thought about what it would be like if I had a normal life. If I was able to just take a woman out on a date.
A woman like Cassandra.
Fuck.
“You okay?” she asked, stirring me from my muddled thoughts.
I blinked.
The thing was, Cassandra was out of the question even if I wasn’t fake-married to Lila. She was a client, and crossing professional boundaries with a client was just… messy. I’d seen it happen to colleagues. Things never went right, either with the job or the relationship.
“I should be asking you that,” I said. “I never asked if you were okay.”
“That’s because I came out of the water accusing you of… saving me.”
Tell her.
“I told you, you don’t seem like the kind of woman who needs saving often.”
“You’re right,” she said. “I don’t. But I did then. I was scared and I took it out on you. I’m sorry. Thank you for jumping in after me.”
“Anytime,” I said.
Tell her.There’s still time.
“Though you’re still not forgiven for calling me a pink blob,” she said.
“If it helps, you’re the most beautiful pink blob I’ve ever seen.”
Fuck.
