Page 8 of Safari Murder Party
“A drink. Can I please order a drink?”
Fletcher peeked over her shoulder. In her absence, Ford resorted to flirting with a blond with biceps the size of Montana. When she turned back, Waylon was pouring amber whiskey into a cocktail glass.
Her nose wrinkled. “What is that?”
“The drink you wanted.” Waylon plunked the coupe in front of her. “And seats are limited. Take your Manhattan and get back to doing my dad’s dirty work.”
How didheknowherusual drink? “No, thanks. I want a martini. Extra olives.”
Waylon’s eyes narrowed, and suddenly Fletcher’s skin felt too tight. His claim about her poker face from earlier rang in her ears. Was she smiling weird? She flattened her lips, but that felt wrong, too. What was a mouth supposed to do? Just sit there?
All he said was “Fine. Take this to Jepson, then. He’ll drink anything.”
While Waylon shook and shimmied enough gin and vermouth to sanitize a surgery wound, Fletcher tapped her nails against the counter. Irritation lanced down her spine. Had she learned nothing fromJet-Setter’s November proof? When interacting with an animal on their territory, it was best to appear nonthreatening.
Well, if Waylon were an animal, he’d be an apex predator, and Fletcher suddenly felt a little too much like a fawn. Wide-eyed and wobbly legged and definitely about to get eaten, exactly like she felt the first night she met him.
The most important part of her job was knowing everythingabout everyone. When the company hosted events, she was always right by Dyer’s side, feeding him intel, because the head honcho of a century-old publishing magnate used his spare brain cells making decisions for global investing rather than remembering who couldn’t eat shrimp without going anaphylactic. That was what Fletcher was for.
She knew that Cartwright’s CFO Deepti Kaur couldn’t swim but took two weeks of PTO to the Maldives every summer to lounge on the white sand. Naked, if you believed the rumors.
She knew that Denis Bertram, the SVP of Marketing and Publicity, took medical leave last month for emergency gallbladder surgery.
And, now, she knew that Waylon Cartwright was twenty-eight,an Aries, and a former Merit Scholar who graduated summa cum laude from Oxford. He was a serial dater, a troublemaker, and a constant PR risk. But three years ago, Fletcher knew him only as a handsome stranger hiding in the coat check closet during the biggest Cartwright Media charity gala of the year. She could still smell the leather and suede, the spilled champagne.
Remembering that night made Fletcher want to throat-punch him.
On the inside.
On the outside, she twirled a strand of copper hair around her finger, trying her damnedest to look like she wasn’t thinking about how three years ago she almost kissed him.
Waylon flipped the shaker bottle behind his back and caught it in time to pour into the triangle glass. He slid the martini toward her and then rested his elbows on the bar top, knuckles under his chin. “Why don’t you tell me why you’re really here, honey?”
“Why were you invited to Lydell instead of me?”
“How do you expectmeto know that?” Waylon tensed, but his words came as cool as ever. “You’ve spent more time with my dad in the last three years than I have in my whole life.”
“Exactly. Why would he even bother inviting you? At least I want to go to Lydell.”
“No, you don’t.”
Fletcher’s mouth hung open. “You’re right. I don’t want to. Ineedto.”
“Again: no.” Waylon shifted down the bar and started making a negroni for a woman with a striking resemblance to Fran Drescher, but Fletcher didn’t budge. A splash of Campari, a king cube, and an orange-peel ribbon later, he picked up right where he left off. “And because I know you’re thinking it,no, I can’t convince him to add you to the guest list.”
A glare.
“It’s acompanytrip. You don’t work there.” Fletcher tried to take a sip of Ford’s martini, but the olives’ freaky little belly buttons made bile crawl up her throat, so she set the glass right back down. “What’s your angle? Weasel your way back into Dyer’s good graces? Take the CMO position? Embarrass me in front of the entire company and nearly get me fired—oh, wait. You already did that.”
The way Waylon watched her made her mouth go dry. He wiped his hands on the towel tossed over his shoulder. “They’ll skin you alive on Lydell.”
“I have what it takes.”
“Not if you have to ask to be invited.”
Waylon was objectively attractive. Hard lines and sharp edges. Always just shy of clean-shaven, only enough scruff to make you wonder,Is he doing this on purpose?It wasn’t a crime to be handsome.
It was, however, a crime to kill her boss’s son, so Fletcher refrained from homicide even though the cocktail forks were right there.
