CHAPTER 2
Anderson
It was a slow day at the office, but I didn’t exactly mind. Sitting at my desk, I leaned back in my chair and stared out the window, taking in the highway and the constant flow of traffic.
“What’s going on? Working hard or hardly working?”
I looked up to find Tobias, my best friend as well as my business partner at our firm, strolling into my office. Sometimes it was hard to imagine that fortune had been so good to us. We had grown up together, studied together, and now worked together, each of us having more success with our careers that we could have ever anticipated.
“Let’s make a deal,” Tobias had said to me when we were young. “We’re never going to leave each other behind, got it?”
I had readily agreed. “Right. Whoever succeeds first helps the other.”
“That’s right! We make our money together. Partners for life.”
We’d clasped hands afterwards and vowed to each other that we would honor that promise for the rest of our lives.
It had been easy to keep that promise. Throughout our time knowing each other, we had become more than best friends and partners in crime—we were brothers. We knew each other’s families, secrets, strengths, and weaknesses.
“Well, you got to work hard at some point to get to the point where you can hardly work, right?” I said as Tobias flopped into the chair opposite of me.
“Guess you’ve got a point there,” he said, temporarily closing his eyes.
“Looks like your day has been busier than mine,” I said.
“Damn straight it has.” Tobias reopened his eyes and sighed. He then grew quiet for a moment, a deep line forming across his brow, letting me know that something was wrong.
“What is it, man?” I asked, watching him carefully.
Tobias grimaced. “You remember that asshole, Zander?”
“No,” I said, drawing a blank. The name sounded somewhat familiar, but I couldn’t place my finger on why.
“You know, the guy my sister is dating. I know I’ve told you about him before.”
“Oh,” I said, nodding. “Okay. Yeah. What about him? Are they getting married or something?”
Tobias shook his head. “No. She’s leaving him.”
“Why? What happened?”
Tobias shrugged his shoulders, although I got a feeling he was holding something back. I knew how protective he was of his sister though, so I decided not to press the issue; if he didn’t want to talk about it, it must have been something pretty fucking bad. And if he wanted me to know, he would tell me when he was ready.
I had met Tobias’ sister, Joanna, back when she was just a kid in high school. She had been tiny and nerdy, with a bad attitude and a knack for following us around, just to aggravate us. In other words, a typical annoying kid sister. Although I had never been particularly fond of her, I kept those feelings to myself because I knew Tobias well enough to know that he would probably kill for that girl. I never had siblings of my own, and she had always made me glad that I didn’t.
I had a feeling that if things went wrong with her boyfriend, the fault probably lied on her, for if she was still the obnoxious know-it-all that I remembered her being, no man would be able to put up with her long. Thus, Zander probably just wanted a way out, and I couldn’t blame him.
Tobias, on the other hand, was clearly peeved off about something breaking his baby sister’s heart. He was still being mum about what precisely happened though.
I cleared my throat. “Why are you telling me this?” I asked. “You’re not planning on doing something stupid, are you? You work for a huge firm, Tobias. You know we can’t afford to have you going on a killing spree in your little sister’s honor. She’s a big girl now. Let her handle herself. She’ll get over it. Everyone does. You can’t be her own personal superhero forever.”
“Oh, shut up,” Tobias said.
I laughed.
“Anyway,” he continued, “I’m telling you because she’s coming here.”
I raised my eyebrows. “Here? To my office?”
“Here to work for us.”
I tilted my head to the side. “What’s she got a background in again?”
“She’s a financial planner. You know how smart she is. She’ll make a great asset. We need someone to help us keep track of these numbers. I get a headache just thinking about it.”
Numbers gave me a headache too, but I wasn’t sure I was willing to put up with Joanna and her Miss-Know-It-All attitude; that was likely to give me even more of a headache. I fought hard to keep the sneer off my face at the thought of her being in our workplace, breathing down our backs and trying to tell us how to do our job. “I’m not sure I’m following. What does breaking up with her boyfriend have to do with her needing to work here?”
“She was living with Zander and now that she’s leaving him, she needs to relocate and find work elsewhere. They were in Miami and she doesn’t want to stay out there by herself. She needs to get away from him. So I told her to come stay with me and to work for us until she gets herself back on her feet. I offered to just give her whatever she needed, but she wouldn’t go for that. You know how she can be.”
“Oh yeah, I definitely know how she can be,” I muttered.
“Well, I just wanted to give you a heads up since she’ll be around soon. You’re okay with this, right?”
I gave a tight-lipped grin while images of the snotty little girl I knew drifted through my mind. The girl that used to turn her nose up at me and complain about me being too loud while she was studying. The girl who used to turn every differing opinion into a debate of some sort. If I was not mistaken, she had once called me a chauvinist pig. Yet she insisted on staying around me, likely just to spite me.
“Yeah, I’m cool with it,” I lied, because I knew there was nothing else I could say. After all, Tobias was like my brother, which made Joanna my sister by default even if I didn’t like it. “Gotta look out for family, right?”
Tobias smiled. “Thanks, man. I knew you would understand.”
“Of course,” I said, although my throat felt a little tight. I reached for the bottle of water at the corner of my desk and took a long sip. “Just out of curiosity, how long do you anticipate her working with us?”
Tobias stood and shrugged his shoulders. “Who knows? Probably not long though. Joanna has always been independent, so I’m sure she’ll be moving along as soon as she can. This is just a temporary fix. Anyway, I’ll talk to you later.”
“All right,” I said as Tobias left my office.
I knew he had a point though. Joanna wouldn’t be around long. The more I thought about it, the more insignificant the situation felt. Not before long, I got back to work, no longer caring about what was going on with Joanna one way or another.