The quiet evening at home with the two most important men in my life was the perfect finale to my week.
I still had a silly smile on my face when I showed up for work on Monday. I was about to walk into Jake’s office to give him a morning kiss when I realized his door was closed.
Worry wiped the smile off my face when I heard raised voices. His office was practically soundproof so someone would have to be shouting to be heard. Not wanting to intrude on the intense Monday meeting, I sat at my desk, glancing at the door intermittently, wondering who was in there with him.
Midmorning, the door finally opened and a red-faced Jason Hughes stepped out of the office. He looked harried and irritable.
“Morning, Jason,” I said hesitantly, uncertain about his mood.
He shot me a sharp look, his eyes narrowed in contemplation before he spit out a curt greeting.
Taken aback by the hostility emanating from him, I was about to open my mouth to ask him what was wrong when Jake came out and said firmly, “I’ll talk to you later, Jason.” It was clearly a dismissal.
My gaze bounced between the two of them, wondering what they could have been fighting about.
“I’ll dig a little deeper, but I think I’m right.” Jason stalked out of the office.
“Is something wrong?” I asked, still staring after Jason.
Jake sighed. “Yeah. We lost the bid for the hotel in Dubai.”
“What? Who won it?” I tried to recall the proposal we had put together a few weeks back. With our company’s connections to the best suppliers, it was unlikely that another firm could have underbid us.
“Lakeshore Industries.”
I frowned. “Why do they sound familiar?”
“They’re a local company. You’ve probably seen their signs around. Their bid was just under ours, like Bauen’s for the North Side project. Jason thinks it’s the same person leaking the information.” Jake looked haggard.
“Damn! Is he any closer to finding the culprit? This can’t keep happening. Maybe we need to bring in the police.” I stood up, anger coursing through me.
“We have no evidence.”
I plunked back into my seat. “Damn. Do you know who had access to the file?”
Jake stared at me for a long moment. “Troy, Kayla, Wayne Smythe in legal, Tom Wexler, head of our international division, you and me.”
I paled. Everyone on the list had been with the company for over ten years except for me. Troy and Jake were automatically eliminated. Tom Wexler had not worked on the Bauen project so he was also off the list. Of the remaining three, I was the most likely suspect.
Did Jake think I was the leak?
I tried to read Jake’s expression, but his face was closed off. He turned around and walked into his office.
No smile. No kiss.
I couldn’t concentrate on work, my mind working through the situation.
God, did Jake think I was like Sophia Chandler?
The first leak with Bauen happened right after I came on as Jake’s assistant.
My stomach cramped and I put my head in my palm. My skin felt cold and clammy.
I walked to the bathroom and blotted my face with a wet towel. The woman who was walking on air this morning was gone. Now I looked like I was given a death sentence. My skin was ghostly white and my eyes looked hollow and dull. Even though I knew I was innocent, it was killing me that Jake thought I might be guilty.
When I walked by the front desk, Alana shot me a concerned look, but she didn’t ask and I didn’t volunteer any information. The less interaction I had with people, the better.
The hours in the day dragged. Jake was called into an emergency meeting with the board before lunch, but he told me to stay in the office.
“It’s going to take hours. Someone has a bug up their ass about something and they’ll spend hours dithering over what to do. I’m sure someone else can take minutes for the meeting.” He wouldn’t meet my gaze and left.
Bile coated my tongue. God, didn’t he trust me to even take notes at a meeting anymore?
At lunch, I got a call from Jamie.
“Girl!!!!!” She screamed so loudly, I had to hold the receiver away from my ear. “I heard you were seen holding hands with Jake Weston on Friday! How could you keep this juicy bit of news away from me?”
I rolled my eyes, wondering at her sources. She was better than the CIA at uncovering secrets. “Jamie, I haven’t even had time to process it yet.” Besides, it might have ended before it started.
“You have to go to lunch with me. I want deets,” she whined.
Feeling a headache begin to develop, I opened my mouth to decline, but abruptly changed my mind. It would be good for me to clear my head. “Okay, let’s go to our favorite deli.”
Ten minutes later, we were sitting at our usual table.
Jamie was practically twitching with inquisitiveness as she leaned over the table. “Dish!”
I paused. My instinct was to dodge the question, but I was tired of holding people at a distance. “There’s not that much to tell. It happened so fast.” Omitting some of the more intimate details, I gave her a rundown of how Jake helped me with my brother and how I started to develop feelings for him.
Starry-eyed, Jamie breathed, “Ooh…that’s so romantic. He must be crazy about you.”
I must have made a face because Jamie sat up and demanded, “Why the long face? Aren’t you supposed to be on cloud nine right now?”
Swearing her to secrecy, I explained about the leak, sharing the bare minimum of details.
“And you think Jake suspects it’s you?”
I shrugged. “Wouldn’t you?”
“No way in hell! You’re too honest and if that asshole believes it, then he doesn’t deserve you!” She looked ready to go to battle with Jake. “Are you sure you’re not overanalyzing?”
Her ready defense made me smile despite my misery. And it gave me a glimmer of hope that I was reading too much into Jake’s actions.
But as the hours ticked by, that glimmer dimmed. At the end of the day, Jake had not returned. He texted me to leave without him because he was still in the meeting.
The ride on the El was the longest of my life.
When I got home, I forced myself to act as normal as possible and cooked dinner. I stared at my phone, but there was no text or call from Jake. After picking at my food and fielding strange looks from Marcus, I claimed I had a headache and retreated to my room.
The ache in my heart was unbearable. Curling up on my bed, I cried into my pillow. The cold wall Jake had put between us had gutted me. He had shut me out. How could he tell me he loved me and believe I would do something so heinous? Didn’t he know me by now? I would never betray him!
Anger started to pump through me. How dare he think I’d do something like this!
I sat up and pressed my fingers against my temples. “Think. Think, Cora.”
Wiping my wet cheeks, I took out a notebook. Writing down things always helped me see a problem clearly. I started to list all the things that might seem incriminating.
Both bids were only known at the highest levels.
Leaks happened after I started working as Jake’s EA.
Remembering the look on Jason’s face, I wrote down another item.
Jason must have found something on my hard drive. Did someone plant something on my computer? Who?
I massaged my temples. Something about Lakeshore Industries was niggling at the back of my mind. I turned on my laptop and looked up the company. I gasped when I recognized the logo.
With a shaking hand, I wrote one more thing on the list.
I applied for a position at Lakeshore Industries.
Weeks ago, after Jake and I almost had sex in his office, I had decided the best thing to do was to look for a job at another company, and thereby remove myself from temptation. That night I had sent out a number of resumes to various firms, but I was careless and forgot to attach a cover letter to my application to Lakeshore. When I remembered the next day, I had sent it from my work computer.