Carlos unlocked the glass doors to the offices of Story Sisters Trading Ltd. and flicked on the reception-area lights, circling the modern-style chrome desk and opening another glass door that led down a narrow hallway. Pictures of vineyards in California, South Africa, Australia, and Argentina adorned the crisp white walls as his loafers padded on the thick gray carpet. He walked past the small lime-colored conference room, stopped in the pantry quickly, then continued by the copy machine and file room to enter the main part of the office. Appreciating the quiet of the empty space, he took a moment to relish the silence before turning on the overhead lights, which came to life with a hum.

Against the exterior wall straight ahead of him were four glass offices: Alice’s, the largest, to the far left, was directly in front of him. To the right of hers was the office of Shane Olson, the vice president of sales, and to the right of his, two additional offices remained empty, ready for the vice presidents that Alice intended to hire over the course of the next two years.

Outside of the offices, in the area where Carlos now stood, were ten large cubicles and an open-plan conference/meeting/brainstorming table and whiteboard for the manager and associate-level employees. Carlos beelined for his desk, located just outside of Alice’s office, and placed his laptop bag on the desk chair, the keys in his hand jingling as he reached forward to turn on his computer screen.

Plucking her venti cold brew from a cardboard tray in his other hand, Carlos unlocked Alice’s office door and turned on the lights, setting her coffee beside her keyboard and powering on her computer. Finding the TV remote where she’d left it last night—on the Plexiglas coffee table in front of a lime-green leather sofa—he tuned the television to CNBC, muting the sound before placing the remote on her desk beside her keyboard. From his pocket, he pulled the KIND granola bar—dark-chocolate cherry, her favorite—he’d grabbed from the pantry and placed it beside her cup of coffee. Then he stretched his arms over his head and yawned as he walked over to the windows that looked out over the City of Brotherly Love.

When Priscilla had invested in SST a few years ago, Alice had moved their small company to these newer, brighter, much posher offices in a downtown high-rise building. Carlos had sat in on every meeting with the realtor and architects, taking notes for Alice so she could be hands-free to discuss her plans and negotiate contracts. More than anything else, she’d insisted that her staff enjoy the same view that she did. She’d been express in her wishes that the executive offices were bright and open, with glass walls that allowed natural light to filter through the windows to the administrative and associate staff cubes on the main floor.

Carlos marveled at the view from her floor-to-ceiling windows for a moment as he did every morning, remembering the office that had come before.

He and Alice had sat back-to-back at identical secondhand desks with identical secondhand chairs that squealed when they rolled across the floor. It was a one-room office with only three hundred square feet of space and barely enough room to move around. Still, they’d made it work…and in that small, intimate space, Carlos had gotten to know his boss very well.

You’d never know it from her stern demeanor and frank-speaking ways, but Alice Story had a heart as big as the ocean, and she’d been that way for as long as he’d known her, quietly and without any expectation of praise doing what was right, not just for herself, but for everyone.

She offered her employees top-of-the-line health care; four-month maternity and paternity leave; a minimum of three weeks paid vacation for all employees, even those at the administrative level; and most important of all, tuition reimbursement for any employee who had worked at SST for a minimum of three years, a short list that currently only included Carlos.

Turning back to his cube, Carlos picked up his own hot, full-octane coffee, taking a sip as he moved his laptop bag to the floor and sat down in his desk chair. Thinking, as he often did lately, about Alice’s tuition reimbursement policy, he opened the bottom drawer of his desk and stared for a moment at the completed application for admission at the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania. He’d filled it out two months ago, asking Shane, in strictest confidence, to write him a recommendation. Shane had written a monumental letter too, but Carlos still feared that his undergraduate education, at a Puerto Rican university, wouldn’t be good enough for the Wharton admissions board.

He closed the drawer.

He was probably best off where he was.

Even after they moved to these offices, Alice had kept him beside her as her “Guy Friday” and right-hand man. She’d also promoted him to office manager, which meant that in addition to helping Alice, Carlos was responsible for the hiring and firing all support staff, supply procurement, building management, office contracts, and matters of real estate.

And lately, because Shane didn’t speak a lick of Spanish and Alice was interested in importing more South American wines, he was acting as a translator for their sales force.

All around, it was a good job—respectable and multifaceted—and Alice paid very well. Leaving to go to business school didn’t really make a lot of sense. Or so he told himself. In quiet moments, when he allowed his heart to dream, to tell him what it wanted most of all, his reasons for staying exactly where he was took on a much more personal focus. Maybe what it really boiled down to was that he didn’t want to leave her.

“Hi, Carlos,” said a woman’s voice, and he looked up to see Shane’s assistant, Gloria, standing over his desk.

“Morning, Gloria.”

She grinned at him, eyes sparkling as she moaned, “You’re lookin’ fiiiiine this morning, papi.”

Like him, Gloria was part of the large Puerto Rican population in Philadelphia, though unlike him, she’d been born here in the States.

He adopted the sort of no-nonsense expression he’d learned from Alice. “Let’s go easy on the slang today, okay? You know better.”

Gloria pursed her red lips and arched her back so her tits stuck out. “You’re not better than me.”

“I never said I was, Gloria. But that’s not an appropriate comment to make to your supervisor. If I said the same to you, I could be suspended for harassment.”

“I was giving you a compliment, Carlos.”

He wasn’t going to let her get away with it. “Would you give Miss Story the same compliment? Would you tell her, ‘You’re lookin’ fiiiiiiine this morning, mami’?”

“N-No,” she sputtered, dropping his eyes, her cheeks flushing with color.

He didn’t mean to embarrass her, but Gloria was younger than he was by several years, and she’d only been working at SST for a few weeks. And he knew Alice. If she ever heard Gloria saying something that overt and suggestive, Alice would ask for her dismissal. His boss was fair, but she ran a tight ship. It was better that Gloria learned it from him rather than ending up losing her job.

“No big deal, huh? Just, you know, be professional,” he added to soften the blow of his words.

She looked up and nodded, giving him a small smile. “Shane asked me to remind you…even though he’s coming back to work this week, he doesn’t want to travel until his paternity leave is up.”

When Priscilla gave birth two months ago, Shane had decided to take off eight weeks to help Priscilla with their daughter, Kaitlyn. He was entitled to eight more weeks of leave, but he’d agreed to work three days a week starting in August as long as he didn’t have to travel until the sixteen weeks was up.

Carlos turned to his keyboard, accessing Alice’s calendar and taking a look at it. “She doesn’t have any scheduled trips coming up…but I’ll remind her just to be safe.”

“Morning, Carlos! Gloria!”

A group of three associates on Shane’s team turned the corner, passing by Carlos’ desk, and he nodded hello to them.

As Gloria slipped away with a little wave, Linda from accounts receivable stopped by his desk. “We’re out of eight-and-a-half-by-fourteen paper.”

“Linda, I got you six reams”—he reached for a stack of invoices in a plastic tray on his desk, flipping to the one he was looking for—“in June.”

“I know.” She shrugged. “But we’re bigger now. Sorry. I need more to run the reports.”

“Can you try to requisition it before you run out next time? It’s cheaper for me to buy a whole case than a single ream.”

“Sure thing,” she said, nodding at him before she headed back to her office.

“Poland Springs is here,” said Susan, the new receptionist, stopping by his desk with an invoice. “They’ve got three large water bot—”

“They go in the pantry,” said Carlos. “Back left corner. You can sign for them.”

“Great. Thanks,” said Susan, hurrying back to the entry lobby.

Turning back to his computer, he looked at Alice’s appointments for the day, noting an hour blocked off from nine until ten. He didn’t recall who was coming in, so he clicked on the highlighted appointment, waiting for it to come up as he took another sip of coffee.

Eduardo Ramirez, Castillo Brothers Ltd. (Board of Directors)

Hmm. The meeting had been booked by Shane, not Alice.

Although Castillo Brothers Ltd. was a familiar name to Carlos—the company was started by three brothers about fifty years ago in Puerto Rico and had been, at one time, a competitor of the now much larger Bacardi—Ramirez was not.

Carlos didn’t mind if Alice went into meetings blind as long as he had a firm grip on the sort of person with whom she was dealing. She was more than capable of handling whatever business came her way, of course, but more than once, Carlos had noted that some men wanted more from Alice than a good deal on exports.

Alice was beautiful, successful, ambitious, and clever.

She was also filthy rich. Or she would be. One day.

And Carlos had seen more than one fortune hunter try to get into her pants over the years. He much preferred to know exactly who she was dealing with so that he could run interference if necessary. If Shane booked the meeting, the guy was probably legit business-wise, but that really wasn’t Carlos’ primary concern. He wanted to know what kind of man he was.

Glancing around his shoulder to be sure Alice wasn’t walking in, Carlos opened an Internet browser to do a little background check on Ramirez’spersonal life before she arrived.

A moment later, he stared at a picture of bronzed, blue-eyed Eduardo Ramirez, checking out his online resume.

Born in 1965, he was fifty-two years old but looked closer to forty, with salt-and-pepper hair, expensive glasses, cheerful creases around his eyes, and an overconfident smirk. Carlos raised his eyebrow as he noted that Ramirez was from Guaynabo, not far from the small Puerto Rican town where Carlos had been raised. Well, close in distance, perhaps, but actually worlds apart. Ramirez had been born into a lot of money. Back in the 1980s, a Puerto Rican didn’t get Harvard ’86 and Wharton ’89 beside his name unless he’d come from some considerable wealth. And hired by a hedge fund straight out of Wharton? Oh, yeah. This guy was swimming in dough.

Opening a new tab on his browser, he surfed “Ramirez” again, adding the words “wife” and “girlfriend” to his search, and discovered that he’d been married and divorced not once, not twice, but three times. He had two children with wife number one, to whom he’d been married for seventeen years, and none with the latter two. Carlos’ lips twitched as he noted the name of Ramirez’s most recent wife, Gianna Maria Ramirez, which he entered into Facebook.

It didn’t take long for him to find her—her picture showed a very tanned, blonde, thirtysomething woman wearing a sarong and pricey sunglasses on the beach with the bright-blue ocean in the background. Pretty in a Real Housewives of Malibu sort of way, she listed her current city as San Juan but noted that she was originally from Milan. A quick check of her public photo gallery resulted in a picture of Mrs. Ramirez from six years ago, when she was still Signorina Bianchi, wearing an Alitalia flight attendant uniform.

Carlos added and subtracted years, inserting the missing pieces quickly: Ramirez was still married to his second wife when he met Gianna Maria and hadn’t been able to keep it in his pants. So he’d divorced wifey numero dos for Miss Mile High and married her…though the happy couple had only remained happy for a few years. After a massive wedding and three years of couple-selfies that were increasingly less joyful, he found a picture of Gianna Maria drinking champagne with a group of friends, giving the camera her middle finger and revealing a fourth finger that was decidedly less diamonded. What a big fucking surprise that the road to true love hadn’t been paved with frequent flyer miles.

Rolling his eyes and sighing but armed with ample information to size up Ramirezon first glance, Carlos clicked thex’s in the upper right corner of his browser window just as he heard the sound of Alice’s voice coming down the hallway.

***

“It feels good to be back,” said Shane as he and Alice got off the elevator side by side.

“Is Pris getting any sleep?”

“Surprisingly yes,” said Shane. “Theo’s not a bad sleeper.”

“Any chance you’ll be able to start traveling again?” she asked hopefully.

“I’d really prefer not to until my paternity leave is up,” said Shane, gently reminding Alice that his coming into the office at all was voluntary and a favor to her. “But I can hold down the fort here. You don’t mind doing the travel for a couple more months, do you?”

“Mind? Of course not. I’m grateful you’ve agreed to come back early.” She forced a smile as they rounded the corner.

She understood, of course, that Shane wanted to be close to home as he and Priscilla acclimated to having two small children. She knew that despite his cheerful assurances, sleep was probably still erratic and irregular and Pris needed his support.

But it was damned inconvenient that her vice president of sales was off the road for sixteen straight weeks. They were an import-export company, for God’s sake, focusing more and more on fine wines from South Africa, South America, New Zealand, and Australia. Deals weren’t made in Philadelphia. They were made abroad.

But what could she say? Shane was her brother-in-law, and he was a top-notch salesman who’d made more inroads with vineyards over the past two years than she’d ever expected. She’d just have to make do, letting his managers take on a little more responsibility and handling big contracts herself. Since she’d hired Shane, her own travels had been cut back appreciably. Trying to look on the bright side, she conceded that she wouldn’t necessarily mind hitting the road for a few exotic locales, especially now that Shane could be trusted to run things in her absence.

She paused at Carlos’ desk. “Good morning, Carlos.”

He grinned at her. “Good morning, Alice.”

Ah-leese. Her lips twitched, but she didn’t smile.

At SST, only Shane and Carlos called her Alice. Everyone else, without exception, despite age or title, called her Miss Story. But Shane was family, and Carlos? She had a quick flashback to his gray eyes looking up at her as he helped her down from the desk she was standing on.

Carlos was…well, without putting too fine a point on it, special. He had believed in her when no one else in the world was willing to give her a chance, and she would never forget that or take it for granted.

“How was your weekend?” she asked.

His tongue slipped out to wet his lips.

You had a date, she thought.

He clenched his jaw once, then cleared his throat.

But it didn’t go well.

“Just fine,” he answered, nodding once. “And yours?”

She sighed, turning toward her office. “Fine. Busy.”

As she sat down at her desk, picking up the iced coffee waiting for her, she looked up to see Carlos standing in the doorway filling the entire space, his body in a crisp white dress shirt and gray suit. He searched her face carefully.

“The luncheon for Priscilla was…a success?”

She shrugged. “She was pleased with the painting. Thanks again for tracking it down for me.”

“Of course,” he said, still staring at her. Suddenly he nodded, his eyes softening with understanding. “Elizabeth wasn’t there.”

“Nope. She didn’t show.”

He winced. “You tried.”

“Yes, I did,” she said, placing her coffee down on the desk and picking up her granola bar.

“You know better than anyone,” he offered gently, “that families can be challenging.”

“I do,” she agreed, sitting down in her desk chair as she took a bite. Dark-chocolate cherry. Her favorite. “What’s on the docket for this morning?”

He stepped into her office and handed her a printout of today’s appointments. “Eduardo Ramirez will be here at nine.”

“Ramirez,” she said, looking up at him, “from…”

“Castillo.”

“Oh, right. Of course. Board of directors. But I don’t rememb—”

“You didn’t. Shane set it up.”

“Interesting. Castillo’s coming to us?”

Carlos shrugged. “Looks that way.”

“Hmm,” she hummed, cocking her head to the side. Carlos was good at finding things on the Internet, their seven-year age difference making him more of a digital native than she. “Jump online for me? Find out current deals, stock fluctuations, recent contracts…”

“Wives and girlfriends?” he asked, cocking one eyebrow.

He knows something…

“Not necessary,” she said briskly.

…that I don’t need to know to drive a business deal.

He made a note in his omnipresent notebook, a two-dollar black-and-white composition book favored by high school teachers everywhere. She’d asked him once why he didn’t upgrade to an iPad for note-taking, but he’d just shrugged, told her he preferred his notebooks, and left it at that.

A digital native who prefers paper and pencil.

An old soul.

“Should I ask Shane to stop by?”

She shook her head. “Nope. No need. We’ll see what Mr. Ramirez has to say for himself.”

Carlos closed the notebook, pressed it against his chest, and then crossed his arms over it. He definitely had something to say, but she watched as he thought better of it, nodding at her once before turning to leave. For a moment she wondered about it, but she was quickly distracted by the sight of her assistant’s firm, toned, Justin Trudeau–style butt. Firm and toned, it was hard not to notice, but she’d be mortified if he caught her gawking, even for a second.

She blinked, forcing her eyes up.

“Carlos!” she croaked.

“Yes, Alice?” he asked, pivoting to look at her, his lips twitching.

Ah-leese.

She cleared her throat, positive that her cheeks were pink. He hadn’t caught her, but his eyes still twinkled like he knew exactly what she’d been doing.

She raised her chin. “You’ll, um, you’ll sit in? With Ramirez?”

“Of course,” he said, grinning at her before walking back to his desk.

Alice sighed, gnawing off another piece of her granola bar and rotating her desk chair to look out the window.

Bum-looking notwithstanding, she should have hired someone new to be her assistant when she promoted Carlos to manager. They were two single people under thirty-five, and they’d been working in close quarters for years. Alice had zero designs on Carlos, but he was attractive and she was human. It probably wasn’t the smartest arrangement ever, even though there had never been a hint of inappropriateness on either side.

But hiring someone new would mean training them, putting up with their mistakes, and forging a new relationship. She rolled her eyes. Who had time for that? Carlos, with his innate intuition, organizational and research skills, and careful attention to detail, had become indispensable to her. They finished each other’s sentences, worked seamlessly together, and enjoyed a shorthand with one another that had been born of necessity and nurtured daily, however inadvertently, over three tumultuous years of building a business together.

And it was an appropriate relationship…aside from the occasional ass-check. There were no smirks or winks, no cheeky behavior or liberties taken. They didn’t share meals together or meet up out of the office unless it was within the context of business. She wouldn’t call them friends, per se…though they probably knew one another far better than she knew most of her friends.

She took another bite of her granola bar and frowned.

No. That wasn’t true. How could you really know someone without ever seeing their home or celebrating their birthday? Aside from an address in a neighborhood she didn’t know, she knew almost nothing about where Carlos lived and what he did after work and with whom. She knew his parents were still in Puerto Rico, but she gathered he had family here. From snippets of phone conversations, she’d figured out that he had a robust dating life, but she had no idea if he had someone special. She didn’t know, and she acknowledged it was best that she didn’t know. It wasn’t any of her business.

But speaking of business, they did work well together; complimenting one another in a way that she’d never seen coming. Her relationship with Carlos was organic, which was probably why she treasured it so much. They were unlikely but intrinsic, like two pieces of wax that had sat side by side under the hot sun until they’d finally melted together.

But only here. Only in the office.

She took a deep breath as her thoughts segued from her business relationship with Carlos to her nonexistent personal life.

Wouldn’t it be nice, she mused wistfully, to have that sort of organic comfort in a romantic relationship? To be with a man whom I trust implicitly, who looks out for me and has my back and understands me in a way no one else does? Wouldn’t it be something if such a man could effortlessly burrow into my heart like he’d been there all along? Wouldn’t that be heaven?

Finishing the last bite of her granola bar and crumpling the wrapper in her palm, she recalled an old F. Scott Fitzgerald quote that had always struck her as particularly on point:

“They slipped briskly into an intimacy from whichthey never recovered.”

She sighed with longing.

That’s what Alice wanted, eloquently stated in eleven ordinary words.

She didn’t really want her sister to host a gathering for Alice to meet men.

She didn’t want to register on Match.com or sign up for a matchmaking service.

She didn’t want to raise her expectations only to have them hopelessly disappointed.

She didn’t want the messiness of dating, the wondering if he’d call or not call, the second-guessing of herself, and the chipping away at her own already stingy optimism.

It felt too exhausting even to contemplate because the reality was that Alice didn’t want to work at love the way she worked at business.

She turned her chair back around and threw out the crushed wrapper.

All she really wanted was to trip into the arms of the right someone and to never fall out of them again.