Chapter One
Nash
“Goddamnit, Lawson. Get it together and work faster, or I’m going to fire you.”
Alexander Rutherford Snow III blew past me like an Arctic wind, tossing a huge stack of binders onto my desk and disappearing into his office without another word. I looked at the enormous quantity of paperwork and sighed.
I’d worked for Snow and Associates a whole week, and it had easily been the most nerve-wracking week of my life. I’d been hired as a low-level administrative assistant—which, considering the ink wasn’t yet dry on my bachelor’s degree, wasn’t a bad place to start—but apparently Mr. Snow’s assistant had developed some long-term illness, and almost before I’d started, I’d found myself working as personal assistant to the big man himself. The CEO of Snow and Associates.
The only problem was, he had ice where his heart ought to be.
Rumor had it that he was a snow king. Not just cold himself, but somehow freezing everything and everyone around him, too. A King Midas who turned everything he touched, not into gold, but into ice. And the first day I walked into the enormous Snow Tower—thirty weirdly modern stories of reflective blue windows in Chiswick, Virginia, its jagged lines making it look like it might just have been chopped haphazardly out of a glacier—I couldn’t help but wonder if it was more than just a rumor.
A week later, I was pretty sure it was no rumor, but stark truth. Mr. Snow was every bit as warm and soft as an icicle. At thirty-one, nine years older than yours truly, he was undeniably an incredibly handsome guy—a few inches over six feet, with broad shoulders and no hint of a spare tire—but his cocoa-brown hair was frosted prematurely with silver, and his eyes were the chilly pale blue of the winter sky.
His manner was just as cold as his eyes. His interactions with me consisted solely of sentences like “Get it done in the next half hour, Lawson, or I’ll fire you” and “If you expect to keep your job, Lawson, my coffee had damn well better be on my desk in the next thirty seconds.” Friendly and caring, he was not. In fact, he’d threatened to fire me at least thirty times in the past week.
Through some miracle, I’d managed to hold onto my job for a whole seven days, but I was terrifyingly aware that my continued employment was dangling by a very thin thread. And I really needed to keep my job, since I’d rented an apartment here in the city, and didn’t want to be forced into crawling back home to my parents in Charlottesville.
The weird thing was, it wasn’t just me Mr. Snow treated that way. It was everyone, and as a result the whole company seemed to exist in a dark, cold, never-ending winter. When I had to hand-deliver papers for him, I saw no smiles on the faces I passed. There were no friendly greetings, no cheerfully cheesy calls of working hard or hardly working?, and no one seemed to dare to stand around the water cooler gossiping. These people looked miserable.
And with a boss like Mr. Snow, maybe it was no wonder.
I put my unhappiness aside and began looking through the documents he’d tossed onto my desk, trying to figure out what needed doing first. I glanced at the clock on my computer, and heaved a sigh.
It looked like I’d be working straight through lunch again.
✽✽✽
I’d learned to stash candy bars in my desk, since Mr. Snow apparently considered lunch breaks to be optional, but by the time I got off work (an hour and a half later than I was supposed to), I was totally famished.
I walked (or staggered, rather) toward the elevator, glumly considering my options. Since Snow Tower was in the business part of downtown, there weren’t a lot of McDonald’s or similar places to choose from. Most of the local restaurants catered to an executive clientele, which meant they were pricey as hell.
My salary didn’t allow me to eat at better places regularly. And given my uncomfortable awareness that I might lose my job at any moment, I didn’t dare splurge. The absolute last thing I wanted to do was have to borrow from my parents, or worse yet, have to slink home with my tail between my legs and ask them to support me. They’d spent an awful lot of their savings to get me through college, and now it was time for them to save toward their own retirement. I was going to make it as an adult on my own, damn it.
My stomach grumbled, and I sighed, deciding that I’d just get in my little black Chevrolet and drive toward the tiny apartment I now called home. There was a KFC on the way, and a Taco Bell too. I could probably survive fifteen minutes more of starvation, even if it did feel like my navel was pressing against my spine at this point.
The plush burgundy carpeting muffled any sound of footsteps, and the first I knew of anyone nearby was when Mr. Snow loomed up beside me. Today he wore an iron-gray suit with a blue tie, and he looked as warm and approachable as ever.
As warm and approachable as an ice cube, that is.
Don’t get me wrong—he was undeniably gorgeous. His silver-streaked hair was perfectly combed, his three-piece suit was miraculously wrinkle-free despite the eleven-hour day he’d put in, and his face… well, a multitude of angels really should be following him around, singing joyful hosannas over the perfection of his face. He was easily the most attractive man I’d ever seen, and that included Cary Grant, Clark Gable, and other classic examples of masculine Hollywood good looks. His was the type of beauty that could bring anyone to their knees.
But all that beauty was marred by the cold reserve of his manner. It was like looking at a marble statue—you might marvel at its craftsmanship, but you sure as hell didn’t want to talk to it.
The problem was, he was my boss, so I couldn’t very well give him the cold shoulder. My job status was precarious enough as it was, so I had to say something. I drew in a breath, steeling myself, and spoke as politely as I could manage.
“Good evening, sir.”
He grunted.
Typical, I thought. A people person, he was not. In fact I had some doubts as to whether he was actually a person at all. He didn’t seem human. Maybe he was one of those really fancy Japanese androids.
Nah, because those showed expression on their faces, and Mr. Snow didn’t.
We stopped at the elevator, and I reached out and pressed the down button. Some perversely mischievous impulse made me keep talking.
“Going home for dinner, sir?”
He grunted again.
“Me too,” I said cheerfully, as if he’d responded with a detailed itinerary of his evening plans. “Going to grab some tacos, I think. Then I’m going to go home and chill out, maybe watch a little Brooklyn 99. How about you?”
He stared down at me through icy blue eyes.
And grunted.
The elevator announced its presence with a ding!, and the doors slid open. The two of us stepped inside, and I pushed the button that would take us to the garage level.
Great, I thought. A whole minute alone in the elevator with the Human Ice Cube. Wonderful. A minute was, I felt, about fifty-nine seconds too long. I refrained from trying to get him to talk again, just stared straight at the doors, willing them to hurry up and open.
Forty-one seconds later, the elevator ground to a shuddering halt.
The doors didn’t open.
I reached out and punched the floor button again, and then the open doors button, but nothing happened. The doors remained closed, and the elevator refused to move as much as an inch.
Great. Just great.
I was stuck in an elevator with Alexander Rutherford Snow III.