A Heart to Trust, A.L. Brooks [speed reading book TXT] 📗

by Ali not long before the nastiness with Sally had certainly helped in the first year in New York. Ali had stayed in London when Olivia got the job in Bristol, and they’d known living in different cities would mean they’d have to work hard at keeping their relationship alive. But Ali’s definition of working hard was to find herself someone else to sleep with during the week when she and Olivia had promised to be exclusive. It had left Olivia reeling in pain. Sally’s betrayal on top of that had nearly broken her completely.

After arriving in New York, getting involved with someone again was the furthest thing from her mind. But now, in this second of the two-year deal she and Broderick had made, she felt a little…lonely. And horny. So it was obvious someone, anyone, with a body like Jenny’s would garner Olivia’s attention. But why did it have to be Jenny, of all people?

Olivia resumed her work building the list of food intolerances as well as likes and dislikes that the sportsmen starring in the Excelsior event professed, hoping that mundane task would distract her. Dealing with each of their managers, or their personal assistants, actually hadn’t been as bad as she’d dreaded. Most of them had already prepared sheets with all the details, so it had been easy to amalgamate them into one document. She scowled as she worked. I single-handedly managed an entire eight-week run of The Wizard of Oz at Bath Theatre, and here I am typing up a list that tells me this major NFL player won’t eat bananas and that tennis player doesn’t like too much foam on his cappuccino. God give me strength.

Olivia scowled again. She spent so much of her time frowning or scowling, Jenny was surprised she didn’t have lines permanently etched in her face. But Olivia’s skin was flawless. Beautiful. The apology she’d thrown Jenny’s way right after she’d snapped at her had been surprising, to say the least.

Jenny had stared at her, willing Olivia to meet her gaze. She wanted to…what? Start a conversation, share a joke about something? Yeah, right. But whatever Jenny wanted, Olivia had resolutely remained looking at her screen, her fingers flying over her keyboard.

Olivia had been an absolute mystery to Jenny these past two or three weeks. One moment she stared at Jenny with a strange, indecipherable look on her face, the next she treated Jenny as if she’d been put on this planet solely to make Olivia’s life difficult. One minute she complained about something Jenny had formatted with the wrong font in one of the shared spreadsheets, the next she praised her for the clarity of her summary of the building regulations to be aware of the night of the Catwalk event. These two very different sides to Olivia screwed with Jenny’s head in a big way.

Thank God for Chrissy, was all Jenny could think. She and Chrissy had become good friends, spending whatever lunch breaks they could together. They’d shared a little personal stuff, but Jenny had made sure to gloss over the details of her family life. She liked Chrissy but, apart from Adrienne, she’d never shared her whole story with another work colleague and didn’t intend to start now.

As if conjured by Jenny’s thoughts, Chrissy bounced over. She’d been in an early meeting with Derek and appeared with a big smile on her face. “Hey!” She perched on the edge of Jenny’s desk. “Coffee?”

Jenny grinned. Their morning ritual of sharing coffee and a quick catch-up was just what she needed after more Olivia weirdness. “Definitely.” She stood and followed Chrissy. “What was your meeting about?”

Chrissy gave a vague wave. “Just some stuff to do with my other projects.” She glanced over her shoulder then lowered her voice. “But Derek told me something about Catwalk that’s made me so mad.”

“What?”

They reached the coffee station and began making their drinks.

“She’s done it again.” The anger in Chrissy’s tone was so acidic it made Jenny rock back on her heels.

“Who?”

“Olivia.” Chrissy folded her arms. “She’s taken all the photos and notes from the visit to the Excelsior you shared on the team SharePoint site and combined them into one, big presentation pack, then claimed it was all her work!”

Jenny’s blood ran cold. “She… Why would she do that?”

Chrissy laid her hand on Jenny’s forearm. “I think she’s trying to make the rest of us look bad. I think she thinks Derek will be so impressed with her that she’ll automatically get one of the jobs and the rest of us will be fighting for the other two.”

“That bitch!”

“I know!”

“We should complain.” Jenny’s face was hot with her anger. “She’s got no right to—”

Chrissy jumped in. “No, we can’t. Do you think that would be a good look for us with Derek? We can’t prove anything anyway. The document has her name on it.”

Jenny’s shoulders slumped. “So she gets away with it.”

“This time.” Chrissy’s eyes were fierce. “But I’ve been thinking, maybe we should start fighting fire with fire, hm?”

“What do you mean?”

“If she wants to play dirty, maybe we should too.”

Jenny stared at her. She’d only ever done something like this once in her life and had vowed to never do it again. Sure, the person who’d done the original bad deed had it coming, but Jenny had felt no small measure of discomfort at beating them at their own game afterwards. It wasn’t something she wanted to make a habit of. “I’m not sure about that.”

Chrissy leaned in, a deep frown on her face. “Oh?”

Jenny took a small step back; Chrissy’s posture was pretty intimidating. “I kind of did it once before, and it didn’t feel that great, actually.”

Chrissy tilted her head but made no further move toward or away from Jenny. “What did you do?”

Needing to ease this weird—and unsettling—tension between them, Jenny grabbed her coffee and motioned to their usual, quiet spot near the storage cupboard. When they were tucked out of everyone’s sight, she