Carter Reed(23)

She jerked back in her seat like she’d been burned. “Oh, of course.” After readjusting her glasses, she ran a hand over her hair and then sighed. “It’s going to be a long night. You have a lot to catch up on with this account.”

CHAPTER NINE

Theresa wasn’t kidding. I sent Carter a text to tell him that I would be staying late at work. When I didn’t receive a reply, I tucked my phone away and didn’t think about it. After reading more and getting a sense of what Noah Tomlinson wanted for his new pet project, I started to get excited. He wanted this new liquor to be a household competitor. I knew if this bourbon was a hit, there’d be more to come and I would be on the team. In fact, it seemed that Theresa and I were doing most of the grunt work. Her boss and Mr. Hudson were our supervisors, but we were appointed the lead workers.

It was a big deal.

When it was nearing seven in the evening, Theresa heard my stomach rumble and grinned at me. She pushed her glasses up and collapsed against the back of her chair. “What do you think?”

“What do you mean?” I was on the floor in the middle of three piles of papers. I’d been there for the last hour and didn’t think my legs could work again. They’d fallen asleep forty minutes ago.

“Should we call it a night? It’s your first day back from vacation. Talk about a killer, huh?”

She was joking, but I sucked in my breath. She couldn’t have used different words? Then I forced out a laugh and tried to relax my shoulders. There would be permanent knots in them. “Uh, yeah. We can call it a night.”

“I don’t know about you, but I could go for a Joe’s pizza right now. You up for a slice and a beer?”

I started to push myself up from the floor and once I was up, I threw her a rueful grin. I wasn’t getting any younger. Then I saw she was serious and jerked upright. “Oh. Uh, sure.”

I’d been invited for drinks by some of the other assistants in the hotel at other times. It wasn’t a large group, but we were somewhat exclusive. A fair amount of people worked underneath us so my group of friends wasn’t too big, but Theresa was in another league. She was the Assistant to the Director of Sales and now I knew that she knew Noah Tomlinson personally. I was taken aback by her invitation, but I couldn’t turn her down. In truth, everyone was curious about Theresa Webber. She worked on all the higher accounts and she worked alone. She wasn’t known to go for after-work drinks, much less a slice of pizza and beer.

She flashed me a friendly smile as she shut down her computer. “Good. I’ll meet you there in fifteen? Or if you wait around, we can walk over together?”

“How about we meet in the lobby in ten minutes?”

“Perfect. See you down there.”

When I went to my office and shut everything down, I grabbed my phone and stuffed it in my purse. I needed to go to the bathroom before I met Theresa in the lobby so I used the one on the first floor. It was always cleaner since it was the same one that the customers used, and it was beautiful. The tiling on the floor was top-notch, with separate sinks along the wall. Each of them had been individually customized as works of art from Italy. The Richmond was a work of art in itself. I was proud of Carter if he had anything to do with it.

“Oh. Hi!”

My head jerked up from washing my hands.

Amanda stood behind me, she had just come in. She was pale in the face and grabbed onto the wall to steady herself.

I whipped around and tried to grab her. I didn’t think about it. I saw her foot slip and knew she was going down, but she caught herself against the wall.

She flinched away from my hand.

The smile fell away and my hand dropped back to my side. I wasn’t used to that reaction from my friend.

“Sorry.” She grimaced. “The last day hasn’t been so easy.”

My head fell down. Shame flooded me as I remembered what I had left behind. Guilt flared up. “I’m sorry, Amanda. I really am. I—”

She waved me off. “No worries.”

I hesitated. “You were working at the café tonight?”

She nodded. “I picked up a late shift. They were cleaning our bathroom so I figured I’d use this one. You guys are right next door.”

“Yeah.” The guilt had settled in me. It wasn’t going anywhere. “I’m really sorry I left, Amanda.”

“Really, Emma. No worries. I mean it.” She was firm now. “We know you did something to help Mallory, all of us, since we’re all a part of it. You don’t have to explain yourself.”

I sighed. I left that life and stepped into some other glamorous life. Even my job seemed to have gotten better since Carter. “How’s Mallory?”

“Uh,” Amanda jerked forward. She went into a stall.

I waited until she had finished and came back out to wash her hands. Once she turned the water on, she soaped them up and rinsed before she looked up again. “Ben took her to the hospital last night.”

“What?”

She waved at me again. “No, no, no. It’s not what you think. He wanted her to get tested. They couldn’t check for sperm since Ben had…you know…”

I looked away.

She lowered her voice and stepped closer. “He wanted her bruises and stuff looked at, to make sure she was healing alright. The hospital recommended a counselor and I think he took her to one this afternoon. Since you left, and, you know, you told us that we could have a life again, she’s been better. You weren’t the only one scared about what they were going to do to us.”