“Things are a shitshow,” was the first thing Zoe, Carter’s assistant, said when the doors dinged open and he stepped out of the elevator into the plush lobby of the new Purely Pleasure offices. She automatically took his side as he made his way through the hallways, toward his office in the back.

“I have three messages from board members,” Zoe continued, trotting along beside him. She was short—“teacup sized,” as she always put it with a wry grin. He’d spent the first six months she worked for him modifying his lanky stride when she walked beside him, not wanting to be leaving her in the dust. But she’d proven herself to be quick on her feet—figuratively and literally.

“Two of our IT guys are stuck in traffic because there’s an accident on one of the bridges,” Zoe continued. “Don’t ask me which one; this town seems full of clouds and bridges. Half of the computers still haven’t been delivered and I have yet to find decent coffee, so you’ll have to suffer with what I grabbed across the street.” She handed him a to-go cup. “Also the stuff from your New York office is… somewhere.”

“Somewhere?” he echoed.

“I haven’t quite located it,” Zoe confessed. “Thus the vagueness. I will find it, though. I know it’s been delivered to the building. I just don’t know where.”

“We only have one floor, Zoe,” he said.

“I’ll find it,” she promised, as they came to a halt outside his office door. “Your tablet is on your desk, loaded with your itinerary today. Oh, and Rebecca called and said she isn’t coming.”

She said this last sentence in a rush of words, like she had to force them out before she lost the nerve.

Carter closed his eyes, taking a deep, cleansing breath.

Remember, you’re doing this for Olivia and for Mom and Jake, he told himself. They need you here. Not in New York. This is the only way.

“What do you mean, she said she wasn’t coming?”

“Just that,” Zoe said, biting her lip, looking at him worriedly. His social media manager had been reluctant to leave her life in New York. He’d offered her an excellent moving bonus, but told her he understood if she wanted to stay. She’d taken the job, but he’d always worried the move to Portland would be too much for her. And now it looked like that concern was warranted. “She said she was sorry. But she’d gotten another offer and she needed to pursue it.”

“Fuck,” Carter swore softly, rubbing a hand over his close-cropped hair. “Okay. Thanks, Zoe.”

“Ms. Sloane is waiting for you in your office,” Zoe said, before turning and disappearing down the hall, probably in search of his missing office things.

He opened the door to his office, finding Nat sitting in the lone chair set in an empty room.

“I love what you’ve done with the place,” Nat drawled, spinning in lazy circles in his desk chair. “Zoe tell you about Rebecca?”

“Yep,” Carter said. “I have no idea where I’m going to find a social media manager this late in the game. Rebecca was about to unveil a whole new campaign for the subscription boxes.”

“Well, I might actually have a solution for that,” Nat said.

“Oh?” Carter asked.

Nat was one of his oldest employees—she’d begun at Purely Pleasure when it was just a start-up, barely a glimmer in his eyes. She’d worked for him back when he was merely an inventor, fiddling around with making a better sex toy, because why not. Before he became Carter Daniels, master of pleasure.

God, that New York Times article was going to be the death of him. He wanted to roll his eyes every time he thought about it. The gushing review had propelled his business forward when it desperately needed it, but it had also painted him as some sort of purveyor of countless orgasms.

Well, you kind of are, Nat had pointed out to him at the time.

She’d been his vice-president and CFO for three years now, and he couldn’t ask for anyone better. He relied on her more and more as time went by, especially when he took over as CEO last year, which pulled him away from his inventing—something he sorely missed. When he’d told her he wanted the entire company to Portland, where they manufactured their products and had a small, solid workforce and their flagship store already, she’d been one of the few people to be behind him one-hundred percent.

When it came to business, it was rare to have loyal people. And Nat was loyal.

“I actually have a friend who’s looking for a job,” she said. “Madeline Craine. She majored in communications and advertising in college, and she did the social media for A Million Little Hearts, that clothing line that took off a few years ago… ModCloth and Anthropologie picked it up and all sorts of magazines featured it?”

“I’ll take your word for it,” Carter said dryly. He wasn’t exactly up on high fashion—or any fashion at all. He took a sip of his coffee. It was terrible, like Zoe had warned. But he kept drinking it anyway.

“Anyway, Maddy is a big reason they took off the way they did. She designed this game to reveal the new line that a lot of people got into and the whole thing ended up going viral. When the company moved their operation to San Francisco, they wanted Maddy to go, but she’s really close to her family. She didn’t want to leave Portland.”

“If you think she’d be a good choice, then by all means, call her in for an interview,” Carter said. “We need someone competent and clever as soon as possible. Rebecca left us dangling in the wind, and the subscription box announcement is six months away and the release just a year.”

“Got it,” Carter said. “I’ll have Zoe set up the interview on your schedule for tomorrow. You’ll love Maddy. Everyone does.”

She rose from the chair, flipping back her riot of black curls with a flourish. “Any idea when the rest of the computers are coming?”

“Ask Zoe—she’s got all the records and tracking numbers,” Carter said, glancing down at his desk as his phone rang. Mom, the phone screen said. “I’ve got to take this,” he said.

“I’ll go find Zoe,” she said, walking toward the door. “Oh, and Carter?”

“Yeah?”

She smiled. “It’s good to be home.”