THE WATER IS HOT, NEARLY scalding, lapping against my chest. The air in the bathroom is steamy, fogging up the mirrors as I relax in a blissful, lavender-scented bath. All thoughts of the day—the insane tempo of Landry Holdings, the exhilaration of a first day, my sexy-as-hell boss that I can barely look at with a straight face—begin to melt into the water.

Filling my body with the lovely mist, I feel Graham’s hand on my— “Excuse me.”

“Oh!” I yelp, jumping in my office chair and bumping my knee on the underside of the desk. “I didn’t see you standing there.”

“Because your eyes were closed,” Graham points out. My cheeks flush as I wonder how long he stood there and watched me. It’s a full minute before I realize he’s awaiting an explanation. It’s another minute before it’s obvious he will either get one or he’ll keep standing there.

“I was visualizing,” I say, hoping we can now move on. “Visualizing what?”

Getting ready to visualize you naked, but you ruined that. “I was doing a quick relaxation technique. Walking through what I plan on doing when I get home to relax from the stress of the day.”

His sun-kissed skin pulls together along the ridge of his forehead. He looks at me like I’m crazy. I return the favor as a buzzing noise quietly sounds from my desktop phone, alerting me it’s five o’clock. The light at the top dims. How efficient.

“Was today stressful for you?” he asks.

“Kind of.” I rub my knee from the ding to the desk and stand. “It was my first day. Aren’t they always stressful?”

“I haven’t had a first day in a long time,” he grins.

“That’s probably true,” I admit. “Trust me, they stink.”

“‘Stink’? Are we back in high school?”

“Would you rather me say ‘suck’?”

I don’t mean it to come out so sassy, so much like an innuendo. I guess that’s just what happens when a man stands before you in a suit and looks so good, you aren’t sure he could look better stripped down.

His shoulders are wide, filling out the top of his jacket, his trim waist fitted with a brown leather belt. Everything fits him so perfectly, I’m sure it’s custom-made. So many men get worn by the suit. Graham Landry definitely wears his.

“I think we need to change the subject,” he says, clearing his throat. “How do you feel about your day?”

“Good. Gina, the girl from HR, trained me most of the day. There’s really not a lot here that’s different from any other administrative assistant job I’ve had. Just new systems, but they’re pretty easy to figure out.”

“Besides being late, I thought you did a good job. Gina said you caught on fast.”

He leans against the door, one foot over the other. I force myself not to let my gaze drop down the lines of his body and instead focus on the lines of his face. Not that it’s any easier, but more politically correct and it’ll be good to have a clear image for when I visualize it between my legs when I get home.

“I just drafted an email, defining what I’m going to need you to take on in order to make this an effective working relationship. I know it’s past five, but if you can peruse it before you leave today and send me a response, that would be helpful.”

“Sure.”

He flashes me a half smile, one that he appears to have to force himself to give, and disappears inside his office again.

The breath comes out heavier than I anticipate as I plop back down in my chair. Waking up my desktop, I wait for my email to open. As referenced, there is one new message in my inbox.

Is he for real?

Glancing across the desk, there is a set of papers under my keys and I have no idea when he put them there. I’ve been here all day. Turning back to the list, I look it over once more. Before I can hit reply, my inbox dings again. The body of the message is empty; only the “Re:” field has text.

I’m not sure he’s kidding.

“HEY, KITTY.” I GREET MY kitten with a nuzzle behind her grey ears. “What happened in your world today?”

She stretches, the little bell on her collar jingling. The sun has nearly set and my apartment is soaking up the final few rays coming through the window. I flip on some lights and glance around on my way to the kitchen. It’s coming together. The walls still need a fresh coat of paint, but

I just don’t have time to dedicate to that. Still, it looks a ton better than it did when I moved in here a few months ago. The couple before me had a more modern approach to decorating. Everything was white and black and straight lines. It was absurdly boring. The pottery pieces I’ve collected over my entire life help add some color and make it feel more like my own space, something I’ve never really had.

Eric’s face zips through my mind and I feel my heart pitter just a little. I miss him. Of course I do. I didn’t leave him because I didn’t love him. I left him because he basically told me he planned on leaving me eventually.

“You did what?” he hissed.

“I dropped out of school,” I told him. “Nursing isn’t for me, Eric. It sounded like a good career path initially—good money, good job market. But I hate it. Loathe it. I’d rather stick a pencil in my eye and gouge my eyeballs out than do some of those things. I just thought I could love it, and you thought it would be good for me.”

“It is good for you,” he laughed angrily. “Mal, what do you think you’re going to do with your life? Huh? Making coffee in some businessman’s office is not a career path.”

“I don’t just make coffee! I’m the Executive Assistant to the CEO. I’ve worked there for four years and have been promoted twice. I’m the highest paid administrative personnel in the building and I managed that while I was going to school for the last year. They say I’m a natural and I love it, Eric. It’s what I was born to do. Business is—”

“Mal, sweetie, business isn’t for you. It’s for . . . other people.” He took off his jacket and looked at me. “Your boss probably likes having a young piece of ass in the office. Why wouldn’t he?” he sighed as red-hot tears blurred my eyes. “This is going to sound blunt, but you need to hear it. Your boss is blowing smoke up your ass to get you to spread your legs. And if you think I’m going to work my ass off to take care of you forever, you’re crazy.”

My heart broke, his words strangled me. “I don’t,” I cried. “Why would you say that to me?”

He looked at me with pity in his eyes. “Do you think I don’t realize what you did? You hitched a ride up here with me so you don’t end up like your parents. You thought I was your Golden Ticket.”

“Eric,” I said through a smattering of tears. “I came because I love you.”

“I love you too. But . . .” The look he gave me, more than pity, of indifference, slayed me. “You don’t really think you and I are going to last, right? I mean, we have fun. Sex is great. But we’re not, you know, marriage types.”

Leaving him was the hardest thing I’ve ever done because it wasn’t just leaving him. It was leaving my life there, everything I knew as an adult, everything that was comfortable. Yet, being on my own, while scary as all get out, has been liberating. Making choices from dinner to my job are all mine. I’m actually creating my life and figuring out what works for me. For the first time in my life, I feel like I might be strong enough to do it. There’s nothing in the fridge when I look inside, which is fine considering I’m not really hungry. As I try to determine whether a visit to the yoga studio or a bath is in order, the phone rings.

“Hello?” I say after I find it at the bottom of my purse, directly under the water bottle that caused all the commotion earlier today.

“Hey, you!” Joy chirps. “I got the job.”

“That’s fabulous! When do you start?”

“Next week. We need to celebrate.”

I cringe as I sink at one of the mismatched chairs at the kitchen table. Joy’s description of celebration doesn’t mesh with the description of my wallet. Her parents are friends of the Landry’s, meaning they have money. Lots of it. They could probably wallpaper their house with it if they wanted to.

“I’m going to be working a lot this week,” I say, figuring it’s the truth. “I’m not sure I’m going to have time to go out or shopping or whatever you have in mind.”

“Sienna and I are going shopping tomorrow after work. You’re invited, of course, but if you can’t, I understand, you working girl, you,” she giggles. “I need a completely updated look. Professional, but with a twist, you know, because there’s no reason to look stuffy.”

“Of course not,” I chuckle.

“Sienna said she might be going back to Los Angeles soon. I don’t think she planned on staying home so long, but she really missed her family.” Joy giggles.

“I’d miss them too,” I say, fanning my face. “Can you even imagine them all together in one room? I’ve only seen them in groups of two. I think my ovaries might explode.”

She bursts out laughing. “Graham isn’t how you remembered him, huh?”

I stand, the blue-and-white checkered cushion sticking to my legs. “I could kill you for not warning me,” I huff. “I had an hour—an hour!—to wrap my brain around the fact that he looks nothing like he did at eighteen. Not that it was helpful. I needed a friendly sit down from my best friend,” I emphasize, “and an explanation of what I was getting into.”

Joy’s voice bounces through the line, her amusement in this situation annoying me. I march through the house and into the bathroom and begin filling up the tub.

“I didn’t realize you didn’t know. I guess I didn’t think much about it. I mean, I talk to you practically every day. I forget you weren’t here.”

“Paybacks are a bitch,” I warn her.

“I was going to warn you. I swear. I just didn’t realize you actually accepted the position and were starting today.”

“Because you don’t listen,” I sigh. “You don’t, Joy.”

“I do too! I’m just . . . busy. I have so many balls up in the air right now . . .”

She continues on in some tirade about how hard her life is now that her parents have started to wean her off financially. They want her to get a job. She thinks they’re being unreasonable. It’s a little hard to hear when you’ve had a job, sometimes two, since you were fifteen.

“Mal?”

“Oh, yeah, sorry,” I say, stripping out of my dress. “I’m here.”

“Who’s not listening now?”

“I’m getting in the bath,” I say, turning the water off. After dumping in a handful of bath salts, I test the temperature with my toe. Perfect. After sinking in the tub, I rest my head against a towel. “There. What were you saying?”

“I was just asking how your day went. That’s all.”

“It went well, I think. It’s nothing too complicated and nothing I haven’t done before. They’re paying me really well too.”

She pauses. “That’s it?”

“Yeah. I mean, what are you wanting me to say?”

“Damn it, Mal! You know I’ve fantasized about the Landry boys since we were ten. The closest I’ve ever gotten to one is a quick kiss with Ford behind his mother’s car in sixth grade. I used to beg Camilla to have me stay the night just so I could try to see her brothers.”

“You’ve always been a little hoochie,” I laugh, my thighs pressing together as Graham’s chiseled face floats into my mind.

“So?”

We both laugh as the water soothes my tense muscles. I close my eyes and sigh. “Graham is outrageously good-looking.”

“You aren’t complaining, are you?”

“No, no, of course not,” I say hurriedly. “It’s just really hard to concentrate when he’s on the other side of the wall all day. I have to call in his office and alert him of calls or appointments, and his voice comes through the line, and I literally have to talk myself out of not taking a bathroom break and getting myself off. I just hope this works out . . .”

“I’m going to pretend I don’t hear that thing in your voice.”

“What thing?” I ask defensively.

“That bit of uncertainty. Just stop it. Everything will be fine.”

It’s easy for her to say. Her bills are paid regardless if she works or not. It’s not that simple for me. I only got into the private school that she, Camilla, and Sienna went to because I worked my butt off in middle school, filled out the paperwork for a scholarship, and practiced for a week straight for the entrance interview. We couldn’t afford it. And, frankly, my parents didn’t think a good education was really that important. I’d finish high school and go get a job at the factory or be a cashier at the hardware store and be happy. If I mentioned pursuing something different, they rolled their eyes and told me to be realistic. I wanted more.

Through pure determination on my part and maybe a toss of luck from up above, the administrators of the school let me in with a scholarship. It was the best day of my life.

Now I sit in this mediocre apartment and look around. The porcelain in the tub is cracking and the corner of the mirror above the sink is broken, and I fight off the unsteadiness that wobbles in my gut.

“Will it be okay?” I ask. “I feel so out of touch.”

“Out of touch with what?”

“With . . . me. I don’t know who I am or what I want or what’s even possible for me anymore, Joy. I’m having a midlife crisis,” I pout.

“You can’t have a midlife crisis at your age,” she scoffs.

“You totally can. I think it’s called a quarter-life crisis, actually.”

“Stop sounding all doom and gloom.”

“I don’t,” I toss back. “I’m just emotionally drained from today. Cut me some slack.”

She sighs. “I’m glad you came back here.”

Her reference to me not moving to North Dakota with my parents is thinly veiled. She knows I don’t have a terrific relationship with them and had I followed them north to the oil fields where my father is now working, I’d be miserable. But coming to Savannah, the place I call home even without my parents, was a risk.

“Me too,” I whisper. “I just hope this doesn’t end up on the list of ‘Mal’s bad decisions.’”

“It won’t. Things will work themselves out. They always do. Look at me, having a job and all. Who’d’ve thunk it?”

“True,” I giggle. “But I certainly don’t know what I’m doing right now,” I sigh. “But what choice did I have? Stay in nursing with a guy that made it clear he doesn’t see a future with me or suck it up and move on? This whole thing isn’t what I wanted or thought would happen, and I’m not sure where to go from here.”

“You’ve started that by taking the job with Graham. I think you’re doing great,” Joy says softly.

“If only I can stop thinking about him in a purely unprofessional way,” I giggle.

“If you figure out how to do that, share the knowledge. I’ve battled that almost my whole life!”

I sink further into the water. “You know what I really want?”

“Besides Landry naked?”

I roll my eyes. “I want to feel . . . like the me I used to know. I want to feel alive. I want to wake up and smile. I want to accomplish things, to feel powerful. I want to have things to look forward to, have goals, find someone that wants to laugh with me, go hiking, or get ice cream. That sounds stupid, doesn’t it?”

“No, no, it doesn’t,” she says.

Swirling the water around the tub, I think about what I just said. It’s the first time I’ve been able to really verbalize how I feel. I miss feeling like the girl with the drive to get into private school. I don’t know her anymore; I sacrificed her for a relationship in which I was little more than a plot device.

“You know,” I say, sitting up, the water splashing onto the floor, “Now that I think of it, I can’t remember a time when I was with Eric that I was truly happy. I just kept thinking that I would be happy, things just needed to line up the right way.”

“That sounds stupid.”

“I know.” My shoulders slump. “I kept thinking if I do this or do that or this happens that we would be happy.”

“Then why did you stay with him, Mal?”

I shrug. “We had fun together. Especially at the beginning, we saw movies and played euchre and had great sex,” I laugh. “It always felt like something was on the horizon. It just never materialized. Before I knew it, years had gone by and I felt like I didn’t even realize who I was.”

“I had no idea.”

“Me either,” I sigh. “I knew I felt sort of depressed and blah, but I didn’t realize why until he told me he didn’t see a future together. That sent a spark of reality through me. I thought, ‘How did I, Mallory Sims, get here?’ I don’t remember him holding me or asking me how my day was,” I say, the words coming faster as all of it hits me, “or caressing me. He didn’t ask my opinion or tell me he was proud of me or encourage me to do anything.”

“Love makes you do funny things.”

“I guess.”

She doesn’t even try to conceal her frustration. “The moral of this sad, depressing story is fuck Eric.”

“Fuck Eric,” I whisper.

“On that note, I need to go. I have a packet to read tonight before I go in tomorrow. It looks lame as hell, but I’ll give it a quick skim. Otherwise, I’ll regret it tomorrow. ”

“Go get ‘em, tiger,” I tease. “I’ll talk to you later.”

“Bye!”

I toss my phone on a pile of towels and let my face dip beneath the water. Holding my breath, I’m reminded of the last time I couldn’t breathe.

Damn it, Graham.