A week later, Miranda felt as if they were turning a corner, at least professionally. She sat at the little table in her breakfast nook and looked around. Through the kitchen window, she saw one of her neighbors playing with his dachshund in the common area. Her stainless appliances gleamed in the early morning light. The dark granite of her countertops played off the rich hardwoods. It was just a small, galley kitchen, but it was hers. The peanut butter in the cabinet, the grapes in the fridge, and the wine in the cupboard all bought with her money and because she liked the brand. It was the best feeling in the world.
It was too soon to tell if the advertisers would fully come back to Reeves Pub, but the readership numbers were steadily ticking up, and she had fielded a few calls from casinos that wanted to make sure Vegas Nightly would cover their events.
Not bad for her first full week doing more than fetching coffee and filing old papers.
Not bad for her first, real, professional job.
Advertisers would follow readers, she knew. It was what she’d learned not only in college, but also in watching her father run Clayton Holdings most of her life.
Now she just had to make sure they didn’t turn a corner personally. Taking Connor up on that bet at lunch was silly. She didn’t want to spend a Saturday night riding the escalators along the Strip while they people watched. It was too dangerous, and not just because the escalators had a tendency to break down at the oddest moments. In all the time she spent people watching, everyone seemed to be with someone. Young lovers held hands and sometimes stopped right in the middle of the crowd to kiss. Older couples held hands as they pointed out the sights. Moms and dads held on to their children’s hands. All that hand holding and kissing, and seeing it with Connor, the man she couldn’t stop thinking about kissing or touching, was asking for trouble.
So she wouldn’t bring it up. March Madness was still several months away. Chances were Connor would forget all about their deal if she just didn’t bring it up.
Low music played from her iPod, and the coffee she sipped was amazingly good. Thank God for those one-cup coffee makers. There was nothing to mess up by opening a single pod and adding water. Miranda finished the coffee, rinsed her mug in the sink, and gathered the tote she used as a briefcase. Before she could exit the front door, the phone rang.
The image on her smartphone screen was her father. And he wasn’t just calling, he was video-chatting. Miranda caught her breath. William Clayton hadn’t spoken to her since she’d moved to Las Vegas. Her mother made excuses, but Miranda knew why he was cutting her out: she’d gone around him to get what she wanted.
So why would he bother calling her now?
She hit the connect button and pasted a smile on her face. “Hi, Dad.”
“Miranda.”
He didn’t say anything for a long moment. Miranda ordered herself not to speak first. It was one of William’s favorite mind games: make the person he called speak first, thereby asserting his dominance. Her father shuffled a few papers and didn’t look directly at the screen. Miranda fidgeted at the counter.
She clenched her jaw, but couldn’t stop the words from pouring forth. “How are things in Denver, Dad?”
“First snow of the season is expected before Thanksgiving, and your mother is running herself ragged trying to keep up with your responsibilities at the Foundation.”
“So things are good,” she quipped. William and Trina weren’t so much in love as in sync. Trina loved being the center of attention, and William’s status in the community ensured she was always in the middle of things.
“Things would be better if you would come back here. Claytons have responsibilities, you know.”
“I have a job, Dad.”
William took his gaze off the papers in his hand and skewered her with it through the screen of her phone. “Making up logos for a gossip rag in Las Vegas isn’t the same as making sure the homeless in Denver are clothed and fed or that our returning service members have access to rehab facilities.”
Miranda bit back the sarcastic, Don’t you mean so that the officers have plush leather seating in their private club? She kept her voice cool. “The last thing Clayton Foundation needs is another fundraiser. It already sponsors thirty events each year. I’m using my degree here, Dad. I’m helping to build something, and it may not seem as important as—”
“You’re working for the competition.” His words reverberated through the phone and seemed to echo off the walls. “It is bad enough that you simply disappeared without a word to your mother or to me, but to find out that you took a job with Connor Reeves’s outfit is a slap in my face. Do you know the kind of damage control I’ve been doing for the past few months?”
Not nearly as much damage control as Miranda and Connor had been doing, trying to right the path of Vegas Nightly and the other publications.
“I wanted to work for you, but you made it eminently clear that my talents weren’t needed.”
“You were needed at the Foundation.”
“I didn’t want to work at the Foundation,” she said, and before he could keep going down that track, she changed the subject. “I want to do more with my life than plan parties or attend balls.”
“And you think Las Vegas, with the neon and the gambling and the tourists running around drunk, is the serious work environment that will make you happy?”
Miranda swallowed. He made the town sound like some kind of Girls Gone Wild episode, but Vegas was more than a party town. There was the desert, a growing art scene, and Connor’s brother, Jase, was building one of the biggest gaming companies in the world. She’d done her homework on all three brothers over the past week; she’d had to do something besides obsess about those kisses in Connor’s office. The next tech boom could be in Vegas, but even if it weren’t, there were other opportunities.
“Did you call just to make me feel badly about the choices I’ve made for my life?” she asked, her voice quiet. William would see the question as weakness, but Miranda stiffened her spine. In her heart, she wanted her parents to approve of her choices. They never had to this point, no matter how hard she’d tried. Maybe it was time to stop trying so hard to impress them and simply live her life the way she wanted to lead it.
“I called to tell you to come home. The work we do at Clayton Foundation is just as important as whatever logo you have to design for Connor Reeves.”
“Did you plant a spy at Reeves Pub?” she asked, and for the first time in her life, her father blinked.
He stared at the screen for a long moment, not speaking. His dark eyes narrowed, and his mouth frowned. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said after a moment, and although his voice was filled with as much anger as before she’d asked the question, she thought she also detected a slight quiver. Somewhere deep inside, William was shaken by her question.
Miranda felt her heart break a little. She knew William wanted Connor’s company. She knew how hard he fought to take the things he wanted. She didn’t want to believe he would plant a spy in the enemy camp; that he would embarrass Connor by hacking the Nightly’s websites with cartoon penises and breasts. It was just so juvenile. Her father was supposed to be bigger than that. Undercut advertising? Of course. Throw his weight around? To be expected. Use a junior high hacking trick? Miranda sighed.
“Don’t lie to me, Dad. We haven’t been able to trace the hack to a specific computer, but it had to come from inside the company, because whoever did it accessed the new layout templates, and those were under tight security. No one outside the building would have access.”
“I already told you, I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he blustered. “I’m not interested in hacking.”
“But you’ve been undercutting our ad prices for several months—”
“Our ad prices?”
“Connor is my employer. I designed the new layouts and have a hand in the new online programming so, yeah, our, ad prices.” Miranda leaned the phone against the kitchen backsplash and planted both hands on the granite countertop. “When the price gouging didn’t work, why didn’t you go after our talent? Try to hire our best employees away? What made you so mad that you had to hack our sites with penises and breasts?”
“I will not have this conversation. You’ve crossed the line, young lady.”
Miranda shook her head. “You’re the one who crossed the line, Dad.”
“If you continue working for Connor Reeves, you’ll have no place at Clayton Holdings. Not ever.”
Miranda smiled wryly. “From where I’m standing, I’ve never had a place at Clayton Holdings.” She tapped the end call button, and her father’s face disappeared from her phone.
The man would never admit to planting a corporate spy, but that didn’t mean he hadn’t done it. Or that he wouldn’t use the spy again, and maybe the next time he wouldn’t stop at cartoon penises or dancing breasts on a computer screen.
Miranda put her phone in her bag and slung it over her shoulder. It wasn’t her job to go digging into the employee records, but if there was a spy—and she was confident her father had someone inside Connor’s company—they needed to know sooner rather than later.
• • •
“This is something you should be talking about with Connor,” Lila said as she finished the last of her coffee.
She and Miranda had been going over the company’s recent hires for the past few hours, trying to find the spy, but neither knew what they were looking for.
“Connor is putting the last of the new templates online this morning. Besides, you’re the human resources expert.”
“The human resources expert who would like to have a job past tomorrow,” Lila grumbled.
“He knows who I am. Your job isn’t in danger.” Miranda paused. “But speaking of that, how many people know?”
Lila glanced up, her dark eyes shadowed. “Know what?”
“Who I am. My last name.”
“I don’t think anyone has put out a press release.”
Miranda cocked her head to the side. “I’ve heard the conversations stop when I walk into the bullpen, and they aren’t stopping because of my layout templates.”
“One of the investigators came across a picture of you from Denver, with your father.”
“God. And they think Connor should fire me?”
Lila frowned. “Maybe some. The others … are waiting to see what you do.”
Miranda straightened in her chair. If they were waiting to see what she would do, how she would sabotage Reeves Pub next, she would show them just how committed she was to the company. She would find the spy.
“We’re looking for someone new to the company, someone that my father would approve of, and someone who would have access to the computer systems.” Miranda chewed on the end of her pencil. “What about this one?”
“Nathan Burke? He sweeps the floors in the press room. He’s never even been to the second floor, as far as I know.”
“All the better to fly under the radar.”
“You’re losing it. None of these names look to me like the corporate spying type. Most of them have never been outside Nevada, and your father isn’t the type to entrust corporate spying and sabotage to a person he’s never so much as shaken hands with.”
“There has to be a clue here somewhere,” Miranda insisted, but all the files seemed legitimate to her, too.
“Why don’t we talk about why you’re really doing this?”
She shot a Lila a confused look. “Because I like my job, and my father made it clear that I’m no longer welcome in Denver?”
Lila shook her head. “It isn’t like William and I ever had any in-depth, heart-to-heart talks, but you know he’d take you back in a heartbeat. He’s just angry you finally struck out on your own. This is about Connor Reeves and all the late nights the two of you have been spending in the office.”
Miranda put the file folder in front of her face. This wasn’t about Connor. It was about finding the saboteur. Protecting the company. So her job description said nothing about espionage or detective work. Connor had a full plate, and as VP, even if it was only marketing and not the company as a whole, she had a bit of seniority. She was part of the executive branch.
Lila reached across the desk and with the eraser end of her pencil pushed the file folder down. Her clear, green gaze caught Miranda’s, and Miranda couldn’t look away.
“Connor Reeves. Late nights at the office. This sudden urge to fill your desk with file folders that have nothing to do with your job.”
Miranda laid the file folder on the desk and then crossed to her office window. “My father made it clear—”
“Uh-uh.” Lila shook her head. “For the past few days, you’ve been either holed up in this one-hundred square foot office or tiptoeing around so that no one can hear you. You told Connor the truth about who you are, and he didn’t fire you. There have been two late nights, and last week the two of you hauled out of here just before noon, and no one saw you again until the big advertiser meeting at three o’clock.”
She tapped her fingers against her upper arms, keeping her gaze focused on the street below. “We were working on the new layout and templates, and prepping for the new sales pitch.” And kissing. She couldn’t forget about the kissing.
Then, at lunch, he hadn’t so much as brushed a hand against hers. His foot didn’t tap against hers under the table. It made it hard to breathe. A week later, and she still couldn’t remember what they’d eaten or talked about. If they’d spoken at all during those two, long hours when all she could think about was how his mouth had felt on hers, and how she wanted to try just one more kiss, to make sure she hadn’t imagined either of her reactions before.
“Fine. Business dinners, business lunch. Connor spends more time looking out his window now than he ever has in the past, and you’re so antsy you can’t sit still for more than two minutes at a time, but there’s nothing going on.”
“I’m not antsy,” she said with a shake of her head.
“You’re making up work, Randa. That’s antsy.”
“I’m just doing my job.”
“Playing detective, scoring a path in the hardwood with your heels, and watching his office door from the little window in your own door are not items in your job description.”
“I don’t watch his door from my office.” Miranda whirled.
“Yesterday. Two p.m.,” said Lila with a smug look on her face. “I was in his office for ten minutes. When I went in, you pretended to look through a file, and when I came, out, you were looking at that same file. Standing in that little sliver of a window on your office door.”
“How do you know it was the same file?”
“There was a hot pink sticky note stuck to the back.”
Damn. Damn, damn, damn. She hadn’t been watching Connor’s office so that she could run into him. She’d been watching his office to make sure he wasn’t coming out. After that lunch, she twice caught herself looking at him longingly across his desk while he talked about design problems and advertising numbers. Once, she exited her office just as he exited his, and the two of them stood there, half in the hallway and half in their respective offices, just staring at one another.
She was almost positive she’d drooled a little bit over his navy pinstriped suit and wingtip shoes. That was when she started watching for him. Not to be near him, but to avoid him. To put a little more distance between them because he was keeping up his end of the bargain.
No kisses in his office. No looks across the table. Not even the brush of his hand at lunch that day.
Meanwhile, all she could think about was kissing him. Touching him. Smelling that woodsy aftershave he wore that tickled her nose in the most erotic of ways. Before kissing Connor, she never imagined her nose could be an erotic body component.
“Why are you really looking into the employee files?”
Because he hasn’t, and if I find something it will give me a reason to go back into his office, she nearly said. She bit back those words. Lila suspecting she had a crush on their boss and Lila knowing she had a crush on their boss were two very different things.
“I’m just trying to make up for the name thing,” she said, praying Lila would let the subject drop. “He didn’t fire me, and he won’t fire you, but I still feel badly about how I coerced you into helping me and how long I lied to him about my real identity. Now, it looks like my father might actually be behind some of Connor’s business troubles, and I just want to help Connor.”
“Randa, you can’t make him forget who you are. You shouldn’t want to do that. You’re a smart woman who saw the opportunity to change her life for the better and took it.”
Miranda shook her head. “It isn’t as simple as that. Was my life so horrible in Denver? I lived in one of the biggest mansions in the city. I worked when I wanted and messed around when I wanted. I had full access to my parents’ home in Aspen and the beach house in Mauritius.”
“And you were bored silly with party planning and gown fittings. It wasn’t wrong of you to want a career.”
“Clayton women handle the family foundation. It’s the way it’s always been.”
Lila rolled her eyes. “I’m pretty sure that is the same excuse men used when the Suffragettes fought for the vote. ‘Men vote. Women don’t. It’s the way it’s always been,’” she said, a mocking tone in her voice.
“I was bored silly,” Miranda admitted.
“You don’t have to invent work here to make him see you as something other than the socialite you were bred to be. You don’t have to find the spy, if there even is one, and you don’t have to sell a million dollars worth of advertising with this one, new campaign.”
Miranda returned to her desk and sat down, putting her chin in her hands. “I like him, Li. He hired me, and I lied to him, and he gave me a second chance, and I like him. I want him to like me.”
“How could he not?” Lila gathered the file folders, straightened the stack, and picked it up. “You work hard; you’re dedicated to your job. Just give him time to wrap his head around those things, and you’ll see that he likes you,” she said and left the office.
Miranda didn’t bother to correct her friend. It was probably better if human resources didn’t know the VP had a crush on the CEO. It was definitely better if Miranda’s only friend in Las Vegas didn’t know she had a crush on her boss. Lila, who had dated not only other college students, but also two grad assistants and one middle-aged professor, would tell Miranda, who dated only one guy in all of college, to go for it.
That would be the biggest mistake she had made to date. Forget basically running away from home at the age of twenty-eight. Forget lying to get a job. Forget not seeing sleazy Riley as the ladder-climbing jerk he was. If she dated Connor, how could she ever know how he felt about her professionally? It would all get clouded and murky. She’d spent her life trying to become her own person. Wouldn’t dating her boss put her right back under the control of another?
Vegas was the last stop on her map. There were other cities where she could find work, but she wasn’t sure she could start over yet again. Miranda sighed. It had taken all the courage she’d had to walk out of her parents’ home five months before. The thought of leaving Las Vegas, of messing up the fragile working friendship she had begun building with Connor, made little sweat bubbles break out over her forehead.