Total pages in book: 81
Estimated words: 77018 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 385(@200wpm)___ 308(@250wpm)___ 257(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 77018 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 385(@200wpm)___ 308(@250wpm)___ 257(@300wpm)
If you can’t even send a present to your sister, I guess I’ll just have to move your magnet down again.
My name being in last place had stopped affecting me by the time I’d turned thirteen. Hence why the next text I sent was a GIF of Willy Wonka looking utterly unamused, the phrase, “Don’t. Stop.” At the bottom of the clip. Like she’d pick up on the sarcasm… Then I silenced my phone, grabbed my keyboard, and Googled “How to Disappear Completely and Never Be Found.”
The persuasive article had me at bullet point number eight, Legally change your name. And it sank its claws in at bullet point number nine, Cut all ties with family.
I’d just asked myself if the universe was trying to send me subliminal messages when the overwhelming rose-petal scent of my boss’s perfume drifted over my shoulder.
I spun in my chair, my gaze trailing over the pantyhose that were four shades darker than Amanda’s Edwin Cullen skin, past her too-sensible business suit and her stiff, blunt, blond bob. The woman was The Devil Wears Prada, cross-bred with Cruella Deville and a splash of Ebenezer Scrooge.
Her bright-red lips curled into an unsettling Joker-esque smile. “I need to see you in my office for a minute.” She’d barely finished the sentence before she turned on her heel, whistling “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun” as she tromped off.
Amanda whistling was bad. Like the cackle of a witch when she tossed the last eye of newt into her potion and a huge, green, skull-shaped cloud of smoke erupted from the boiling pot. But her whistling that particular song meant only bad assignments were to come. If I had to guess, my next write-up would see me visiting a leech museum or some taxidermy farm out in the middle of Butt Fuck, Nowhere, managed by a serial killer who would end up stuffing my rotting carcass into a steel drum. That was if I came back from my assignment to Europe… because bullet point number ten in the article I’d just read had been Leave your job without warning. And I’d thought that sounded like a pretty good idea.
I pushed out of my chair and followed her to her office. When my gaze landed on Vance’s huge frame crammed into one of two chairs across from her desk, I stopped inside the doorway. There was only one reason she’d have called me into her office while he was in there—to reprimand me for something Mr. Heard You Were Easy had complained about.
He had probably run into her office earlier in the morning, tattling like a five-year-old: Blake came into work five minutes late, then threw paper clips and hole-punch trash at me. Some last-ditch effort to screw me over before I jet-setted across the Atlantic and left him to rot in his neat-and-tidy cubicle.
The office door clicked shut—so it was door-closed kind of business…
I thumbed at Vance as Amanda rounded her desk. “Why is he in here?”
“I’ll just cut to the chase.” She smoothed a hand over her suit jacket, her attention snapping to me as she sank to her seat. “I’ve reassigned the European travel to Vance.”
I felt my left eye twitch. There was no way she’d just said what I’d heard. No way, because her ripping that assignment away from me would take my bad luck to good luck ratio to thirty-eight to zero. It was all I’d had to cling to, and statistically, the universe owed me one good thing.
“I’m sorry,” I laughed, then touched a hand to my pounding chest. “But it sounded like you just said Vance was going to Europe instead of me.”
“I did.” She shuffled through a pile of papers on her desk, pulled one from the stack, and passed it across to Vance.
Evidently, that morning, my bad luck devil had gone apeshit crazy and snorted an eight-ball of Mexican black-tar heroin.
I felt my jaw tic as I looked from Amanda to the arrogant prick now smiling down at the paper in his hand. “Can I ask why it was reassigned?” Then I redirected my attention to Amanda, who looked more than thrilled about the current situation. “Last minute?”
“During a meeting on Friday, Vance brought up the importance of live feeds, especially regarding website traffic.”
Of course, the conniving, prompt, go-getter turned thief with biceps the size of my head had. I stared straight ahead while my blood pressure steadily ticked up.
“And since Vance’s online persona is not only more on brand with international travel—I never would have suggested you for it had I been here—” she mumbled that part like it wasn’t crystal clear the only reason I’d gotten the assignment was that she’d been out of the office with a stomach bug. “But he has a pretty rabid following. And business is business, after all. The higher-ups agreed he’d be a better fit. Just like you’ll be a better fit for—” She made an exaggerated jab to her keyboard.