I walked to her office, my confidence buoyed by the day’s successes. She gestured for me to take a seat, her eyes on her computer screen.
“I just wanted to touch base on the lapsed donor project,” she began, all business. “Your initial approach seems sound. I’ll expect a preliminary report on your top ten prospects by the end of the week.”
“Absolutely,” I said, relieved. “I’ve already identified several promising leads based on some... spending inconsistencies in the old files.”
For the first time, she looked up from her screen and met my gaze. A flicker of something unreadable passed through her cool eyes. “I have no doubt you’ll be very thorough. That will be all for today.”
“Thank you,” I said, standing to leave, feeling a surge of pride. I was doing it. I was proving myself.
I was at the door when her voice, quiet and controlled, stopped me cold.
“Oh, and Elisabeth?”
I turned back. She was looking directly at me, and for a split second, I saw a glimmer of what looked suspiciously like amusement in her cool grey eyes. A tiny, almost imperceptible smile touched the corner of her lips before vanishing.
“Let’s try to keep the more...personalcalls to a minimum during work hours, shall we? We wouldn’t want any distractions from this important project.”
The air left my lungs in a single, silent gasp.
FLUSH.
The sound popped back in memory; my mind instantly replaying a highlight reel of the phone call.Soaked.Touch yourself through your panties.Pound into me.My intimidatingly professional, impeccably polished boss had been in the next stall. She had heardall of it.
My carefully constructed composure, my triumph from the day, all evaporated in a cloud of pure, cringe-worthy humiliation. I stared at her, my mind a blank wall of horror, certain my face was the color of a ripe tomato.
“Yes, Ms. Henderson,” I managed to choke out, the words feeling like sand in my mouth.
I practically fled from her office, hoping for the floor to open up and swallow me whole. I grabbed my bag, my movements stiff and robotic. As I scurried out of the foundation, my triumphant adrenaline was gone, replaced by a single, looping, mortifying thought:
How am I ever going to look her in the eye again?
That evening,I met Sean for dinner at a cozy little Italian place in the West Village. The restaurant was a warm bubble of candlelight and the rich aroma of garlic and wine, a world away from the cold, hard data of my day.
“You seem different tonight,” Sean said, his green eyes searching mine across the table. “You’ve got a glint in your eye I haven’t seen before. What’s going on?”
I took a sip of my wine, a real smile playing on my lips. “Let’s just say my day was far more interesting than stuffing envelopes.” I leaned forward, lowering my voice conspiratorially. “I think I’m onto something at the foundation. A bit of a scandal, maybe.”
I told him everything—the lapsed donor files, the suspicious expense reports, the overlapping trips between Garrett and Kyra. I didn’t draw any final conclusions, just laid out the facts, the patterns.
Sean listened intently, his expression growing more serious with every word. “My cousin Fury’s people are looking into him,” he said finally, his voice a low, protective growl. “But this is good. This is concrete. This is ammunition.”
“His ‘people’?” I asked, my brow furrowing. “What does that mean?”
“It means he has a team,” Sean said carefully. “Very discreet. They can find out things. One of them is a data specialist—a hacker, really—who is taking a look at Garrett’s digital footprint. Phone records, that sort of thing.”
A jolt of alarm went through me. “Sean, is that… legal?”
He reached across the table, taking my hand. “It’s a gray area,” he admitted. “But this isn’t for a court case, Beth. This is for you. It’s to find out exactly who we’re dealing with, who is sending you anonymous gifts, who is trying to get close to you, and why. It’s about keeping you safe.”
His sincerity, his fierce determination to protect me, sent a wave of warmth through me that had nothing to do with the wine. Still, the thought of having hired some shadowy hacker to dig through Garrett’s life, was a little unsettling.
Sensing my unease, Sean changed the subject. “On a lighter note, you’ll never guess what your landlord said to me when I dropped you off the other night.”
I laughed, the tension easing. “Oh god. What did Ziggy do now?”
“He told me my aura was a ‘rather aggressive shade of chartreuse’ and that I needed to meditate with a piece of amethyst to ‘balance my masculine energies.’” Sean did aperfect imitation of Ziggy’s earnest, spacey tone, making me giggle. “He then tried to sell me a ‘karmically cleansed’ dreamcatcher for fifty dollars.”
“Did you buy it?” I asked, laughing.
