Secret Kiss (16 page)

Nothing was
technically
slipping through the cracks, but they normally had about a five to fifteen minute “check-in” meeting every morning. It was a good way for them all to know where they were each at with their own portions of the project, as well as a mini brainstorm meeting, and also a time to introduce new business. It started out as kind of an informal thing, but now that there were so many irons in the fire, it had become crucial to their operation.

Jane felt totally out of the loop, which wasn’t the position she liked to be in when it came to loops. With work loops, she preferred to be smack-dab in the middle of those suckers.

“Yep. We’ll be home in time to head back to San Francisco.”

Oh no! Crap! San Francisco!

Jane had completely spaced that she, Mike, Nikki, and Adam were heading there on Wednesday morning and staying overnight. They had over a dozen meetings with potential investors and developers Nikki and Mike had met last week. Mike had messaged her about it on Saturday; she had seen the messages after coming in from gardening. But then she’d rushed around, getting ready for the fundraiser, and it had totally slipped her mind.

“Oh, okay. Great,” Jane said brightly. Maybe a little too brightly.

“Everything all right?” Nikki asked, sounding genuinely concerned.

“Yep.” Jane’s mind was running faster than nylons on a nail bed as she tried to mentally run through her to-do list, panic rising in her chest.

“Were you able to get the suite at the W?” Nikki asked.

“Yep. I have another call coming in. See you guys soon.”

“Okay. Don’t forget about Book Club, and tell the girls hi if I don’t make it back in time.”

“Got it.” Jane disconnected the call after lying through her teeth not once, but twice.

There was no other call and she sure as heck hadn’t secured a suite at the W. Mike had asked her to do it right away because it was such short notice—that had been two days ago. Now, it was ridiculously short notice.

After clicking over to the W Hotel in San Francisco (which was Mike’s preferred accommodations while staying in the city), Jane checked the availability of the Extreme Wow Suite.

“Come on, come on, come on,” she whispered as her computer loaded the page.

When the words
No Availability
appeared before her eyes, she wanted to cry.

Okay. Everything’s fine
, she assured herself. She tried the Fantastic Suite next and held her breath while her page refreshed. A mirror image of the previous message flashed on the screen, and Jane knew that everything might not be fine.

Grabbing her phone, she decided to do something she never did—call in a favor.

Over the years Mike had been in politics, Jane had made connections at several of the hotels he’d frequented. She tried to never bother any of them, especially when
she
had messed something up. Mike wouldn’t care whether or not he stayed in the suite—at least, he wouldn’t if she hadn’t opened her big mouth and
lied
about the fact that she had, indeed, secured it.

Why had she said that? She wasn’t a liar. Yet she’d lied to her grandparents about Adam being her boyfriend, about looking for a contact lens when Adam had shown up for his first day of work, and now about having already taken care of reservations. Which she hadn’t done because she’d been too busy getting ready to go to the fundraiser with—yep, you guessed it—Adam.

Jane didn’t have to be a cryptology expert to pick out the pattern here.

It was one she needed to break immediately.

She’d made up her mind after Disaster #4 had asked her to not wear heels (because he was a tad on the short side) and to stop using certain words like “really” and “obviously” (because they irritated him) that she would never compromise herself or change who she was for a man again. This time, she wasn’t even in a relationship. Not a personal one, anyway.

The worst part of it was that Adam hadn’t asked her to change or lie.

Nope. That was all her.

The phone rang twice before Mauricio picked up. “Jane, my love. What can I do for you, bella?”

Mauricio had worked for the W for as long as Jane had been booking rooms for Mike. He always went above and beyond to make sure the Congressman, Jane, and whoever else was in their party had everything they needed.

“Hi, Mauricio. Actually, I was trying to book a suite for Nikki and Mike for this Wednesday night—”

“Oh no, there is a large tech convention happening in town, and this week’s been booked solid for months.”

In Jane’s world, that was good and bad news. Good news: it wouldn’t have mattered if she’d tried to book the room on Saturday. It’d already been sold out. Bad news: she’d just told Nikki she’d already taken care of it.

Liars never prospered.

“Okay, well, thanks any—” Jane was trying her best to suppress the disappointment in her voice when Mauricio interrupted her.

“Now hold on just a second. All is not necessarily lost.”

Jane could hear the melodic sounds of fingers flying across a keyboard, only this time, it wasn’t hers—it was Mauricio’s.

“Oookay, I have juggled a few of our guests and the Extreme Wow Suite for this Wednesday night is now open.” Pride flooded Mauricio’s voice at his announcement.

“Oh my gosh! Thank you so much, Mauricio!” Jane exclaimed.

“Will you need any other accommodations?”

“Oh shoot. Actually, I’ll need two additional rooms.” Jane had almost forgotten about getting herself and Adam rooms. “But if it’s too much trouble, don’t worry. I can—”

“Okay, two Fabulous rooms for one night. Done. I’m e-mailing you the confirmation now.”

Jane let out a sigh of relief. “Thank you again, Mauricio. You are my hero! I owe you!”

“Nonsense. I’m just doing my job.” Mauricio gave that standard response whenever Jane tried to pay him a compliment. “See you in a couple of days, beautiful! Ciao.”

“Ciao,” Jane repeated before setting her phone down.

A smile pulled at her lips as she clicked over to her e-mail and saw the confirmation sitting as pretty as could be in her inbox.

Crisis averted. Thank you, Mauricio!

All she had to do was proof the proposal once more and press send. Easy peasy.

She closed the screen. But when the browser window disappeared, her desktop appeared.

Hmm. She scanned her toolbar, searching for the icon of her document. When she didn’t see it, she pulled up the folder she’d stored it in. Nothing. Had she accidentally deleted it? Her finger scrolled the ball on her mouse to move over the trash. Right clicking, she saw that it was empty.

The panic that had risen up a few minutes before was back, and it had multiplied.

“No, no, no. This can’t be happening!” She breathed. “Where is it?”

*

“Did you have fun Saturday?” Vivien asked, glancing over her shoulder as she prepared Adam’s drink.

“Yeah,” Adam said, trying to walk the fine line between friendly and flirtatious. He had no problem flirting, but he absolutely did not want to lead anyone on, especially in a town this small.

“I didn’t see you tearing it up on the dance floor.” Her left brow rose as she made the astute observation.

“Two left feet.” Adam grinned as he went the self-deprecating route. It was the easiest path to take in this conversation, even though it was far from true.

He’d had to learn to dance to prepare for one of his first assignments in the field. It was the one the CIA had recruited him for when he was stationed in Iraq. That first dance lesson was also when he’d met Alexis.

Adam still couldn’t wrap his mind around the fact that that was a decade ago.

“I seriously doubt that. You look like you’ve got some moves.” Vivien winked as she handed Adam his coffee.

“Thanks,” he spoke as he nodded, “for the drink and the misplaced belief in my dancing skills.”

“Any time,” Vivien smiled.

Although Adam could appreciate how pretty she was, it didn’t do anything for him. Even though, if he were going to get involved with someone, Vivien would be a much better choice than Jane. She was a keep-things-casual, fun, no-strings type, and he wasn’t just assuming that. That had come straight from the redheaded barista’s mouth. Which was exactly what Adam would have wanted if he’d been looking. Which he wasn’t.

Jane was the last thing he needed. She had commitment written all over her. Not to mention Adam hated how he felt around her. He hated it because he actually felt…a lot. That wasn’t a road he was willing to go down again any time soon.

The small chimes above the glass door of Brewed Awakenings sounded as Adam walked outside. The sun was hanging low so there was a beautiful orange tint in the evening sky. Adam paused, to take in the breathtaking vista before heading back into the office. It had only been a moment before his phone buzzed loudly.

Grabbing it, he saw that it was Declan. Adam knew that his friend had news that, whether or not he wanted to, he needed to hear.

“Hey, man,” he answered.

“Do you want the bad news or the bad news?” Declan asked.

It wasn’t his favorite way to start a conversation, but he played along, figuring he might as well get it over with. “Bad news.”

“She’s refusing to sign or vacate until she sees you,” Declan explained.

“Impossible,” Adam stated. He was on the opposite side of the country, and even if he hadn’t been, he had zero desire to sit down and listen to Alexis try to manipulate the situation so that she came out looking like the innocent party.

She was a lot of things, but innocent wasn’t one of them.

“I’m trying to make that clear. It’s not going as smoothly as I’d hoped.”

Adam recognized the frustrated sound in his friend’s voice. Alexis wasn’t an easy woman to say no to. She wasn’t aggressive. She just wore people down to the point where they gave her what she wanted.

“The good news is, once she’s signed, everything will be legal within forty-eight hours.”

“I thought you said it could take up to six months.” Adam wanted this to be over yesterday, but what his friend was saying didn’t seem realistic, either.

“I worked my magic. That’s why you pay me the big bucks,” his friend teased. “Plus, Alexis isn’t the only one with connections.”

“Okay, man. Keep me updated.”

“Will do, homie,” Declan said, using the term they used to call each other when they’d been punk-ass kids in the system.

“Later days,” Adam volleyed back with their preferred parting line as teens, before putting his phone back in his pocket.

A smile spread across his lips as he made the short walk back to the office. Adam was glad he and Declan had kept in touch. From what he’d seen, that wasn’t the norm for kids who came from the system. They’d beaten the odds—in more ways than one.

‡

A
s Adam gripped the office door, a feeling he didn’t often experience—but had several times since arriving in Hope Falls—swept through him like a cool breeze on a hot day. Nostalgia. Not that he’d ever want to go back to the hell he’d lived through as a teen, but nostalgia for the days when things had been simpler. When his only worry had been how to sneak downstairs in the group home after curfew to play video games and not get caught.

Things might not have been easy for him then, but they’d been simpler. However, when he stepped inside, his eyes landed on the definition of complicated.

“Where are you? I know you’re here! You have to be here!” Jane’s voice rose with each word. She was standing at her desk, her eyes glued to her screen as she clicked her mouse furiously.

“What’s wrong?” he asked, taking two long strides across the room.

“I lost it. I lost it,” she repeated, lifting her hands to her face and shaking her head.

Adam wasn’t sure if she was answering him or even aware of his presence. There was a good possibility that she was talking to herself.

“Lost what?” He intentionally used an authoritative tone, hoping it would get him answers faster.

“The proposal. I lost it. I clicked to go make reservations and then it was gone.” She sounded desperate. Hopeless.

Thankfully, Adam was confident she wouldn’t be for long.