been searching for all this time. I love you, and I’m an idiot for not seeing it sooner. Don’t marry him, marry me.”
A swoony sigh leaves my lips at the deep rumble of his voice. Sexual healing straight to my ears.
I prop my chin in one hand and scroll up the screen with my mouse. I squint as I spot a typo.
“Hey!”
Cold air hits my ear as my friend and colleague, Chloe, whips my earbud out and holds it up to her ear.
“Again?” She rolls her eyes and clicks her tongue. “You’ll turn into one of those voice recognition AIs. Able to identify him from one syllable.”
I pull my other earbud out and hit pause on my audiobook. Nate Black’s voice disappears, and my stomach sinks at the loss.
“I bet he’s old and bald. Probably wears crocs too… with those clip decoration things on them.” Chloe shudders, making me laugh as I retrieve the earbud from her outstretched palm.
“He’s not, and he wouldn’t.”
“You don’t know that,” she sings, raising her brows as she leans against my desk.
I glance around the open plan office of In Sync, the online magazine I’ve worked at since graduating from university with a degree in English Literature two years ago. Everyone else is working with earbuds in or chatting in small groups around their desks.
“I do. A voice like that…” I drift off, a goofy smile spreading across my face before Chloe snaps her fingers, bringing me out of my head. “A voice like that,” I continue, “most definitely has a body to match.”
“You hope?”
I bite my lower lip. “Plus, I might have, you know… seen his new narrator headshot that Eve got through.”
“You didn’t?” Chloe’s eyes widen. “Was he—?”
“Completely gorgeous with eyes that penetrate your soul? Yes.” I sigh, conjuring up the mental image I’ve safely stored away. Short, dark hair, warm brown eyes, an open smile… and the deepest, smoothest voice in the history of all human voices…
Nate Black is perfection.
“Fuck.” She blows out a breath before eyeing up my earbuds. “Maybe I should listen to these books. It’d drown out the ogre.”
I scoop them off the desk and drop them into my purse on the floor. “Frankie’s back on the scene, then?”
She drops her head back to groan at the ceiling at the mention of her housemate’s on-and-off boyfriend, whose snores are loud enough to make the walls vibrate. “Yeah, and he’s sleeping over again. Until the next time he fucks up, anyway.”
I click back into the document in front of me. “You staying at mine again tonight, then?”
She presses her hands into a prayer sign. “Yes! God, you’re a lifesaver… well, a sleep-saver. I hate not getting eight hours. I need my sleep.”
I laugh as she leans down and hugs me.
“Thanks, Maddy.”
“Anytime.”
Chloe glances at the literary roundup I’m working on. She’s a features writer. And at two years my senior, her extra experience gets her the juicy stuff like politics, which isn’t my thing. But I’m still jealous that she gets to write full length feature pieces. It’s what I’m working toward. I love the literary column I have control over, where I get to share all the latest book releases. But I want more. I want to interview authors and publishers, and the teams behind the audiobooks that I love listening to. I want to delve deeper into the industry. See behind the scenes. But so far, our editor, Eve, hasn’t given me any more online space, despite lobbying for it at every team meeting.
But I’m not giving up.
“Um, breaking news entering at two o’clock.”
I turn to see what’s gotten Chloe’s expression resembling a dog that’s been thrown a prime rib-eye steak.
“Ugh. You have got to be kidding me!” I drop my head into my hands, raking my fingers back through my hair before raising my eyes and plastering a fake smile onto my face.
“You all right, Mads? Your face looks weird.”
I abandon my forced smile for the glare that comes naturally in his company.
I flick my gaze up and down his immaculate, overpriced, designer suit. “And you look one hundred percent buffoon, as per usual.”
Chloe’s quiet, watching our exchange. This happens whenever Drew’s best friend appears. Logan Rich. Ugh. Even his name gives me the ick. But women get awestruck and silent as is the situation with Chloe right now when he’s around. Or they get all flirty and start swishing their hair around.
Logan smirks, causing two dimples to pop either side of his cosmetically perfect smile. No braces for him as a teen. Logan bypassed teenage awkwardness that every normal person endures. He went straight from cute kid that grandmas would coo over to apparently a devastatingly handsome man, judging by the way even the sanest of women react in his company.
It baffles me. This is the guy who told all the boys in my class at school I had crabs.
I didn’t get asked out for two years… and I had to go to the prom without a date.
He thought it was funny.
I didn’t. I still don’t.
His eyes cast over the piles of wrapped packages on my desk, and I shift in my seat so he can’t read the labels.
He smirks as I narrow my eyes at him. “You checking me out, Mads?”
“As if,” I scoff. “I’m swallowing back my lunch that’s threatening to reappear. And what the hell is with the mud-colored tie?” I study the deep brown fabric against his crisp white shirt. It’s nice. Like the spine of a classic book. But I’d rather eat my own tongue than admit as much to Logan.
He glances down at it, and his green eyes glow with mischief as he brings them back up to meet mine. “I don’t mind a bit of dirt, Mads. Maybe you should try it sometime. Live a little.”
I snort. I’m not falling for it. He does this. Makes little jabs about the fact that I’m not out every night of the week living this extravagant, glamorous lifestyle like him. He thinks I’m boring. But I couldn’t care less.
He’s Drew’s friend, not mine. And since my brother finds it amusing that I hate Logan so much, and he just shakes his head when I ask him why he’s friends with him, I guess I’m stuck with him being around.
“Hang on. Why are you here?” The only other time Logan’s ever been to my workplace is to drop something off from Drew for me. “Is Drew okay? Is he—?”
Drew’s working on some skyscraper project with his business partner, Tanner Grayson, in San Francisco. Together, they run a multi-billion-pound design and building company that has its head office in London. The two are due to land home today. Drew called me before they took off, but I haven’t heard from him since.
“He’s fine. I’m here for a meeting.”
“Oh, thank god.”
I let out the breath I’m holding. Drew might be five years older than me, but we’ve always been close. He’s a good guy, despite getting in with a bad crowd and ending up in a juvenile detention center for six months when he was sixteen.
Logan was in that stolen car, joyriding too. But he got off with a slap on the wrist and community service. The benefits of Daddy’s money.
Those were the loneliest months of my life. A prime example of Logan being an asshole. He followed me home from school every day like a creeper. It was enough to scare off the three boys in my class who lived in my road, who I could have befriended and walked with.
Instead, I walked alone.
Logan Rich has never, and will never, be my friend.
“Hold on. You said meeting.” I frown up at Logan, towering above my desk chair. “You work with engines and tinker with weird eco-fuel stuff. What are you doing here? Is it about Project Vex?”
“You listen to me as well as take interest in my wardrobe choices now, then?” He grins.
I shake my head and turn back to my screen, but Logan spins my chair back around. My eyes are level with his tie. It’s nicer than I first noticed. It’s got a fine copper thread running through it. I doubt he picked it himself. He’s probably got a personal stylist that does that for him. That’s what rich people have, right? And a personal chef and trainer.
He runs his hand down his tie, then puts both hands in his pockets, which causes his suit pants to pull across his groin area, and… oh god… dick outline. I choke back a gag and avert my gaze.
“I’m here to talk to Eve about the eco-fuel stuff I tinker with.”
“So, you mean you’re not here to finally sell your story?”
His brow furrows.
“About what it’s like to be the first human trial patient for a personality transplant with a baboon?” I smile sweetly.
The corners of his lips twitch. “Oh, Smiles. Your investigative powers need some work… It’s a walrus.”
His green eyes hold mine as if he’s daring me to continue our little spat, or whatever this is. I don’t know why, but I get drawn into them whenever he’s around. It’s like he gets a perverse pleasure out of trying to push my buttons.
But not today.
Logan Rich is not winning today.
Chloe’s shrill laugh cuts between us, and Logan turns to her. She flicks her blonde hair over her shoulder.
Here we go.
“I can show you to Eve’s office and let her know you’re here?” Chloe offers with an over-enthusiastic smile.
I don’t point out that Logan will have checked in at reception and been offered to be shown to Eve’s office. And he likely declined because he already knows his way around from his previous visit.
Chloe knows this.
“That’s really kind, Chloe. Thank you.” Logan smiles at her, and she lights up like a Christmas tree.
I rein in my disgusted grunt. Even my intelligent, political correspondent friend isn’t immune.
Logan looks at my phone on the desk faster than I can bat him away or cover it. His lips twitch and one eyebrow quirks as he reads the title of the audiobook I was listening to—My Hot Billionaire Daddy.
I bite back the excuse on the tip of my tongue about it being the story of a father/daughter relationship during a freak tropical heatwave. I will not allow Logan Rich or anyone else to make me feel embarrassed about what I read or listen to. This is a modern female right of empowerment. Besides, it’s an amazing book.
I arch a challenging brow at him, waiting for his smart retort. But instead, he winks at me.
“See you later, Smiles.”
He walks away with Chloe, leaving some fresh and spicy smelling expensive cologne lingering behind him. Her giggle rings out around the office as they stop in front of Eve’s door. Eve opens it with a flourish and sweeps Logan inside after a kiss on each cheek like she’s greeting a lifelong friend.
I glance around the office. All eyes are on Eve’s office doorway. They drop away the minute the door clicks closed.
Ridiculous.
I pull my earbuds from my purse and put them back in again.
“Don’t marry him. Marry me. I’m nothing without you. I’ll trade every dollar I have to see you look at me again the way you once did.”
I sigh, a smile settling on my face as I get back to work.
