Annabelle

21

“Thank you all for making Lexi Brewer’s project a priority,” I said. “I know it’s a tight turnaround, but I’m confident we can do amazing things. We’re Vasquez Squared.”

Christian, ever the competitor, let out a roar and raised his fist in the air. This was greeted by laughs from the rest of the staff.

I was standing in front of the whiteboard in the meeting room at the office. I glanced around the big table and smiled at my coworkers. Their enthusiasm for Lexi’s project was off the charts, and I was genuinely excited to see what they all came up with.

Because there was so much to be done, we’d broken everyone into teams. So Christian, a graphic designer, and Shanna, a copywriter, would prioritize working on the materials for the gala, while Booker and Luz took on the overall branding of the housing development with their team of designers. Carson and I would oversee the execution of the deliverables in our capacities as art director and creative director. Sophie and Miguel as chief creative officers and owners of the studio would act in an advisory capacity as needed.

I handed out the creative brief as well as packets of information to the teams that explained what Lexi’s project was all about. As a net-zero housing development, the goal was to create a self-sustaining community that required little to no support from the utility companies for power or the city for waste management or water. Lexi was utilizing fascinating technologies in her structures like gray-water harvesting for irrigation and toilet flushing, and green roofs for insulation and temperature management. She even planned to use electrochromic glass, which tinted as needed like sunglasses. Composting both food waste and human waste were to be incorporated as well. I saw Luz make a face when she read about that, and I had to hide my laugh.

“If there are no more questions—” I began but Carson interrupted me, because of course he did.

“I have one,” he said.

I felt the entire room watching me. I pasted a smile on my face and said, “Sure, what is it?”

“How did you meet Lexi Brewer?” he asked. He was reclining in his seat in a casual pose, but I could see the tension in him as he fidgeted with his pen, twirling it between his fingers.

“I’m sorry, what?” I asked.

“I just find it interesting that you’re brand new to Phoenix, don’t know a soul, and yet here you are, bringing in a huge new client with quite the generous budget.” He paused to tap his pen on the proposed budget for our work for Lexi, the budget Nick had signed off on under her name, and then back up at me. He was smiling but it left me cold.

I supposed I should have expected this. My bringing in a huge client threatened all of Carson’s plans to oust me. He was going to do anything he could to undermine me, including questioning the Golden Goose I’d brought to the table.

I had a moment of uneasiness. Did he know? Did he know about Nick and Lexi? About me and Nick? I could feel my face get warm and my heart was racing. This was crazy. I hadn’t done anything wrong. There was absolutely nothing suspect about my landlord introducing me to his sister and her hiring me to do design work for her.

Except Nick didn’t want anyone to know that Lexi was his sister or that he was paying for the work, and I definitely didn’t want anyone to know that I was sleeping with Nick. Fair or not, I knew it would damage my credibility in bringing in this client. I knew that I’d have gotten the job whether Nick and I had hooked up or not, but it wouldn’t appear that way from the outside looking in and there was nothing I could do to curb the speculation.

I glanced around the room. Everyone was watching me, some wanting to see how I handled Carson and others looking for an explanation.

Miguel glanced at Carson, looking irritated. He was about to say something but I jumped in, knowing that if I didn’t answer Carson, his question would linger in people’s minds. I was not about to let him sow seeds of doubt about me.

“I know, it’s crazy, right?” I asked. I decided to brazen it out. As has been noted before, I am a terrible liar so I stuck as close to the truth as possible. I forced a laugh and hoped it didn’t sound like I was choking on it. “Lexi and I have a friend in common who introduced us and we clicked. I guess it was sheer luck, being in the right place at the right time.”

Carson stared at me. He looked like he wanted to push for more details, but Sophie interrupted him.

“It was lucky for Vasquez Squared, that’s for sure,” Soph said. “But then Annabelle has always made connections so easily. I’m not surprised at all.”

She brushed a speck of lint off of her suit coat. Everyone was watching her, but I was looking at Carson, and I saw his eyes narrow with a blast of hatred that made me catch my breath. For the first time, I wondered if Carson’s problem wasn’t with me so much as it was with Soph.

The thought made me very uneasy, but not as uneasy as the summons I received later. Trent called me into his office just after lunch. I left the preliminary mockups for the logo for Lexi on my worktable and hurried to his office. I was feeling very connected to the project and had some ideas I wanted to flesh out before bringing them to the team, but when the business department called, I answered. This reminded me of why I had liked working for myself. No interruptions.

I knocked on the doorjamb and waited for Trent to call me into the room. He was seated at his desk, and a frown marred his usual jovial appearance. I wondered what was up.

“You wanted to see me?” I asked.

Trent waved me into the chair across from his. “Come on in, Annabelle, this should only take a moment.”

I sat, and Trent smiled at me, but I noticed it didn’t reach his eyes. I started to get a bad feeling.

“I just need to go over some expenditures with you,” he said.

“All right.” As far as I knew, I didn’t have any. We were all issued company credit cards for taking out clients, but I hadn’t used mine as yet.

Trent handed me a sheet of paper. I looked at it and blinked. It was an itemized list of expenses billed to the credit card that had been issued to me. The sum at the bottom made me gasp. It appeared I had charged over a thousand dollars’ worth of food and drink at several restaurants in Phoenix. Restaurants to which I had never been.

“I don’t understand,” I said.

“This is your billing statement for the past few weeks,” Trent said. “Looks like you’ve been working the client connection hard.” He laughed as if trying to make light of it, but I didn’t return it.

“But I haven’t used my card,” I said.

Trent stopped laughing. “Are you sure? You’re not in trouble. It’s just that we try to keep the monthly totals to a quarter of what’s listed here, but with the client you’ve brought in, I’m sure Miguel and Sophie will be okay with it.”

I nodded. “Soph told me that when she gave me the card, but I’m telling you the truth. I haven’t used my card. Not once.”

Trent’s eyebrows drew together. He glanced down at the copy of the bill that was in front of him and said, “On March seventh, you weren’t at Durant’s on Central Ave?”

I shook my head. “I’ve never even been to Durant’s.”

“Oh, you should go,” he said. “It’s like walking back in time. You enter through the kitchen and the chefs all greet you. And the dining room is totally vintage with red leather booths, paneling, and red velvet wallpaper.”

“I’ll keep it in mind,” I said. I glanced down at his desk and Trent glanced down, too.

“Right,” he said. “Okay, how about Tarbell’s on Camelback on March ninth?”

“Nope.”

“Pizzeria Bianco downtown on the thirteenth?”

“Never been there.”

“That’s a pity. You should check it out. Do you still have your card?” Trent asked.

“As far as I know, it’s in my wallet,” I said. “Do you want me to go get it?”

“Yes, please.”

I hurried from Trent’s office back to my own. I opened the door and rushed to my desk. Even knowing I hadn’t made those charges, I felt sick to my stomach. How could this have happened? Had I lost it? Had it been stolen? I opened my wallet. Sitting right in its place was the business credit card. I thought I might throw up.

I took the card back to Trent. Sheepishly, I handed it over and he examined it against the balance sheet as if he thought it was an imposter.

“It’s your card all right,” he said. He scratched his head as if boggled. It was clear. Somehow I’d been hacked.

“Annabelle, it’s not that I don’t believe you—” he began but I interrupted.

“But it seems weird since I’ve never used it,” I said. “How did someone get the number?”

“Good question. Do you remember where you were on those evenings?” he asked.

I tried to remember. “Home alone, out in the desert watching a meteor shower, and—” I paused. I’d been having mind-blowing sex with Nick on that third date. This was not something I planned to share for a variety of reasons. “Again, home.”

“Can anyone corroborate your whereabouts during those evenings?” he asked. He sounded hopeful then quickly clarified. “For the credit card company.”

“No,” I said. I was not dragging Nick into this. Full stop.

“It’s clear someone made fast and loose with your card, repeatedly,” Trent said, and sighed. “I’ll cancel this card and have them issue you a new one.”

“No,” I said. I studied his face, wondering if he’d hear me out. “Listen, I don’t know what happened but I promise you, I haven’t used my card, not once, so there’s no way a stranger hacked my number.”

“What are you saying, Annabelle?”

“I think it was someone in-house,” I said. His eyes narrowed. He didn’t like that any more than I did. “Is there any way we can put an alert on it, so that when it’s used, it will tell us when and where?”

“I can track it online,” he said. “The credit card company will flag suspicious charges, but you’d have to be in Paris or something to trigger that.”

I rather wished I was in Paris at the moment. Paris is always a good idea, after all.

“What if we leave it open just to see if we can catch them?” I asked.

“I don’t know, they could rack up thousands in debt,” he said. “I don’t want to risk it.”

“Could we put a cap on the amount?”

One eyebrow went up higher than his eyeglass frames. “Meaning we make your maximum low enough that whoever wants to run up a huge bill gets rejected and has to use another form of payment?”

I nodded. “I hate to even suggest this, but if it’s someone in the office, then they’d likely use their business card to cover it, tipping us off to who it is.”

Trent handed my card back to me with a calculating look. “There’s going to be an email, announcing to the staff to be more conscientious with their business expenses. It would help if you look duly chastened by it.”

I smiled at him. “We’re going fishing?”

“That’s right, shark bait.”

I laughed. I had my suspicions about who had hijacked my card, but I was willing to wait until he was outed for certain before I threw any confetti in the air.

“One question,” he said. “How would you feel if there was a security camera installed in your office temporarily?”

“Whatever it takes is fine with me,” I said.

I arrived back at my office and stored my card back in my wallet. I hadn’t been in the habit of locking my door, although I usually kept it shut when I wasn’t here. I was going to have to rethink that while still giving the thief access to my office. Hmm.

I glanced at the room and noted that something was different. The mockups on my worktable weren’t as I had left them. I crossed the room and studied them. Nothing was missing, but it was clear they’d been moved, as if someone had picked them up and studied them. I felt a chill run down my spine. I had no doubt it was Carson West. Now I just had to prove it.

---

My raft floated by Nick’s, and I felt as if I were caught in a dream, floating around a gorgeous aqua pool with a hot guy on a Sunday afternoon as if I didn’t have a care in the world.

Ha! If only. Despite the margarita in my hand, I was not relaxed. Anything but. The gala for Lexi’s housing project was coming up fast, and I was being hypervigilant about every single aspect of it. With so much work to be done, it was exhausting, but I didn’t dare take my eyes off the prize.

Carson West being on the design team was a stressor I did not need, but I couldn’t figure out how to get rid of him without a truckload of office drama. The pleaser in me didn’t like making waves, but I didn’t trust him not to sabotage the project intentionally and make it look like my fault. Add in my suspicion that he was also the one tampering with my corporate card, and tracking his every move at the office was becoming an obsession.

I was still unsettled by his questions about how I’d met Lexi and managed to bring her in as a client. The man gave me bad vibes, and they were creeping into my off time, too, which I mightily resented.

“All right, what’s going on?” Nick asked.

He caught my raft as it came alongside his, keeping me from floating by.

“What do you mean?” I asked. I sipped my margarita, playing it cool.

“You keep making these exasperated little noises while you’re staring off into space so it seems something is bugging you,” he said. He closed the paperback book he had in his hand and gently tossed it onto one of the lounge chairs beside the pool. “I thought you’d consider it a victory to have the tenant ban from the pool lifted.”

I grinned at him and made a V for victory with the index and middle fingers of my free hand. I had been quite stoked when he told me the pool and hot tub were at my disposal whenever I wanted.

“Which is much appreciated,” I said. “I’m just having a hard time leaving work at the office.”

“Can I help?”

I considered him. “That depends. Do you have any experience with disgruntled narcissists?”

“Carson West?” he asked.

I was impressed that he remembered the name from our conversation on my patio the night he’d turned up in his wheelchair with Sir.

“Yeah,” I said. “I don’t trust him and he’s maneuvered himself onto Lexi’s project and my instincts are telling me he’s going to do something to sabotage it. He’s already started questioning how I, a new resident to Phoenix, managed to bag such a big client. I suspect he’s talking about me behind my back to other staff members, because there were just a few instances where I felt like something was off with colleagues that I normally get along with just fine. He’s trying to undermine me, and I genuinely don’t know what to do about it.”

I didn’t mention the corporate card because I didn’t have proof, but also I suspected Nick would be mad enough to talk to Miguel and I didn’t want anyone to know we were a thing. If we were going to last only a few months, then there wasn’t much point in going public.

“What’s your strategy been so far?” he asked.

“Watch him,” I said. “And try to anticipate what he might do to sabotage the project.”

“That’s got to be exhausting,” Nick said.

I let my head flop back on my raft. “Yes. I’m so tired. Although most of that is your fault.”

Nick let out a self-satisfied chuckle that warmed my heart. The same heart I had deep packed in ice so that it wouldn’t smash to bits when this fling was over.

“Okay, you’re playing a solid defense, but what you really need to do is move to an offensive position,” he said.

“Man-to-man or zone?” I asked. He lifted an eyebrow in surprise. “What? I played basketball.”

“Then you should know how to establish a fast break offense,” he said. “You need to soften Carson into thinking he’s got you figured out and then you kick into high gear and charge right around him. Nothing but net.”

“Our sports analogy is no longer working for me,” I said. “Is this how you managed your business when you were a builder?”

“Absolutely. I gave people enough work to break them. They either got it done or they got a new job,” he said. “Fast break offense means fast. You need to keep Carson off balance all the time. How much work are you putting on him?”

“The absolute bare minimum,” I said. “I don’t want his sticky fingers making a mess of things.”

“That’s a mistake,” he said.

My mouth dropped open. “Mistake?”

“Yeah. From what you’ve described, Carson is a user. He’s the Tom Sawyer of the office, getting everyone to do his work for him.”

I nodded. I’d seen it in action.

“He doesn’t have enough to do. That’s why he’s always looking for trouble. You need to bury him,” Nick said.

“In what way?” I asked.

“In all the ways,” Nick said. “Give him every assignment you can think of in regards to Lexi’s development.”

“Ah! But what if he messes it up?” I asked. “I’m quite certain he’ll try.”

“He can try, but since you’ll be doing the real work and he’ll just be doing busywork, who cares?”

I stared at him. It had never occurred to me to take control of the situation like this. I was in charge of Lexi’s project. I called the shots. As senior art director, Carson was on the team, but he reported to me. Ever the pleaser, I’d tried to placate him by having him oversee the creation of the logo but gave him nothing substantial to keep him occupied, guaranteeing that he had plenty of time to mess things up.

I was an idiot. I had to rethink everything. Nick was right. I could give him so much work, Carson wouldn’t have a minute to spare.

Nick was watching me while I turned this idea over in my mind. “I think you might be a genius,” I said.

He shrugged. “Best-case scenario, he actually comes up with something usable. Worst case, he messes up, but it doesn’t matter because you’ve got it covered already anyway. Besides, imagine his face when you dump a load of work on him.”

I laughed. The mental picture of Carson being forced to work instead of prowling the office looking for trouble brought me great joy. I reached out and placed my plastic margarita glass on the cool deck. Then I slid from my raft into the water. I popped up on the side of Nick’s, and he smiled down at me.

“Would this be considered a fast break offense?” I asked right before I kissed him. His hand cupped the back of my head and held me still while he returned my kiss with enthusiasm. When we broke apart, we were both breathing heavily.

Nick slid off his raft, and we stood in the waist-high water, facing each other. There was so much I wanted to say to him but I didn’t know how. The weeks were slipping by so fast, and our three months would be over before I knew it. How would I manage to live here when we were no longer together?

“What are you thinking?” he asked. His hazel gaze was intent on my face, which I was desperately trying to keep blank. I didn’t want him to see my angst.

“Nothing,” I said. I shook my head. I wasn’t going to ruin the time we had by wishing for something more.

“You look pensive,” he said.

I felt like ducking under the water to avoid his scrutiny. Instead, I went right to my default setting.

“I’m sorry,” I said.

He shook his head. “No apology necessary.”

“It’s just work on my mind.”

“Is it?” he asked. “Are you sure there’s nothing else?”

I got the feeling he knew. My heart started to beat really hard. Did he know that I was having feelings that would complicate things? Should I admit it?

“Canonball!”

The universe saved me from my own stupidity in the form of Jackson, leaping into the air and tucking himself into a ball, before he splashed down into the pool beside Nick and me, sending a sheet of water over us and breaking the moment, saving me from probable disaster.

As water dripped off the two of us, I heard Nick mutter, “I definitely need to fire him.”