Page 19 of Sunset Beach
A bright pink flush crept over his freckled face. “Followed my girlfriend. She had a job with Honeywell. Three weeks after I got here, she dumped me for some dude she met at her gym.”
“You didn’t want to go back to Colorado after that?”
“No,” he said succinctly. “It took moving to Florida before I figured out I don’t really like winter. I don’t ski. Don’t snowboard either.”
“I loved snowboarding,” Drue said dreamily. Then, she asked, “Are you interested in the law?”
“I’m notun-interested in it. And besides, Brice Campbell isn’t just a good lawyer, he’s a genius at business. I can learn a lot from him. And I’m getting paid at the same time. It’s not a bad gig.”
Drue rolled her eyes. “Just what I always dreamed of becoming. A cubicle monkey.” She leaned forward. “So, if you’re not interested in becoming a lawyer, whatareyou doing working here?”
Ben’s smile was enigmatic. “I’m working on something. A side hustle, I guess you’d call it. You ever play video games?”
“My ex-boyfriend was big into Call of Duty, but I don’t really see the point,” Drue said.
“Ex? Why’d you break up?”
“Lots of reasons. Including too much Call of Duty.”
When they got to the break room they found Jonah already standing in front of the coffeemaker. He nodded a greeting, then reached into his pocket and brought out one of his special coffee pods. He slotted it into the machine, poured in a beaker of water and stood, waiting, his back to the counter.
“Hey y’all,” he said, looking over Drue’s and Ben’s shoulders. “If the dragonlady sees all three of us in here with the phones unattended, she’ll ream us a new one.”
“I’m already on her shit list for being late,” Drue said. “So I’m not too worried.”
“Yeah, what’s she gonna do? Fire her stepdaughter?” Jonah taunted.
Drue felt herself flush. “I’mnother stepdaughter.”
“Let’s see now. Wendy is married to Brice Campbell. Brice Campbell is your daddy. Doesn’t that make Wendy your stepmother? Or is there some technicality that I’m overlooking here?”
“Wicked stepmother,” Ben corrected. “World’s biggest cliché.”
“Just brew your stupid coffee and get out of our way, okay?” Drue snapped. She went to the refrigerator, got out the container of half-and-half and found her mug in the cabinet while Ben unwrapped a granola bar, which he managed to wolf down in two bites.
Drue watched Jonah watching the coffeepot, silently loathing him.
She loathed his looks: his unruly, sun-bleached hair, his wide-spaced hazel eyes, his rangy, athletic build. She loathed his casually expensive-looking clothes and the perfectly polished penny loafers he wore, sockless, as if to show the world he could get away with that kind of thing. She loathed the class ring he wore on his right hand, she loathed his alma mater, the University of Florida, loathed that he’d finished college and law school, and was only working here because he was killing time, waiting to take his bar exam again.
Most of all she loathed the fact that Jonah Kelleher was aware that she hated him and didn’t give a rat’s ass.
Jonah took his obnoxious orange and blue mug and flashed Drue a mocking smile. “Guess I’ll head back to the salt mines. Coffee machine is all yours, gorgeous.”
Wendy had turned her chair toward the wall of windows in her office, her back to the doorway, where Drue now stood. She was on the phone, her voice low, strained. “You’re sure? Maybe we should get a second opinion?”
Princess, Wendy’s French bulldog, poked her snout from under her mistress’s desk and eyed Drue suspiciously. “Grrrrrr.”
The desk chair spun around. “What?” Wendy demanded when she saw who her visitor was. “Hang on a sec,” she said, speaking into the phone before placing it facedown on her desktop.
“You said we needed to talk,” Drue said, her face and affect deliberately flat.
“Not now, for God’s sake. Can’t you see I’m busy?”
“Okay. It’s just, the phones are pretty busy. This is the first time I’ve been able to get away from my cubicle.”
Wendy gave a long, martyred sigh. “Okay fine. I’ll come right to the point. You need to get to work on time, Drue. You know perfectly well we started running the new ad campaign last night, which means all the lines were jammed, last night and this morning. As I explained during your training, we run a small, tight ship here. Everybody has a job to do and nobody else has time to do yours. If you want to work here, you have to pull your own weight.”
“I understand that. But my car wouldn’t start—”
