Total pages in book: 81
Estimated words: 77018 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 385(@200wpm)___ 308(@250wpm)___ 257(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 77018 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 385(@200wpm)___ 308(@250wpm)___ 257(@300wpm)
The motor to her printer whirred before it spat out a piece of paper which she promptly passed across her too-neat desk to me—“The Lunchbox Museum,” she said. “Isn’t that exciting?”
My eye spasmed again. I envisioned raking everything off her desk while letting out a banshee war cry, then taking her ridiculous rhinestone-encrusted stapler and chucking it through the office window. But that would get me fired, so instead, I cleared my throat and tried to collect myself enough that my voice wouldn’t shake. “Wouldn’t it have made more sense for Vance to go to the Lunchbox Museum? Since I’m already packed for Europe?” And since I was three minutes away from completely losing it.
“Oh, come on. The Lunchbox Museum is right up your alley, Blake.” There went her Joker grin again. “It’s… eccentric. You’re great at eccentric.”
I despised that word. I’d been called that by my mother for as long as I could remember, and it was nothing but a backhanded, socially acceptable way to call someone a weirdo. What I thought would be much more up my “eccentric” alley would be my taking that stapler from her desk and giving her a hack job of an eyelift right before I used it to pierce Vance’s man nipples.
“And, Blake,” Amanda said, that villainous smile spreading over her red lips, “would you mind emailing whatever research you’ve done to Vance?”
“Oh, thanks. That would be great,” he added.
My head whipped to the side just as Vance flashed a perfectly white, thieving smile.
I bit the inside of my cheek as heat crept from my chest to my ears. Then I nodded, swallowing back the urge to call him a massive, blister-covered dick in a garbled, “Uh-huh.” I’d get to it tomorrow. Maybe Friday when he was halfway over the Atlantic.
Amanda clapped her hands together. “Teamwork is what it’s all about.” Then she went about rattling off all my wonderful experiences that article-stealing dickhead would get before she dismissed me.
I pushed out of my seat. “Hope you enjoy Europe,” I said, hiding every bit of contempt bubbling like a hot cauldron inside me as I left the room.
He’d stolen the holy grail of assignments right out from under me like some cheap, pee-stained rug.
I stopped at the end of the hallway, closed my eyes, and took a deep breath. A really deep breath. No—a cleansing breath—while I silently recited, “I breathe in the calm and exhale the toxic.” I kept pulling that breath deeper and deeper, hoping the tension winding my muscles would dissipate, but it didn’t. My irritation had built to nuclear levels, and by the time I finally let the breath go, I felt a little lightheaded.
Holding the wall to steady myself, I rounded the corner, and the second I did, my gaze went straight to the news article pulled up on a coworker’s monitor. Carbon monoxide poisoning kills two at Belgium Airbnb.
One of my brows lifted. Was that a sign from some omniscient presence that the trip was a disaster waiting to happen? Maybe Vance getting that assignment was the world trying to rectify my life. What if, in a week’s time, Vance was a headline about carbon monoxide poisoning or a hostel stay gone wrong? Not that I hoped he would be. He may be an arrogant asshole, but I didn’t want him dead. Dead to me, but not dead-dead. Although, if he ended up with a case of bedbugs or scabies or horrendous diarrhea, I would absolutely laugh.
Laugh and laugh and laugh…
Chapter Three
BLAKE
The next day, right before lunch, Wanderlust had its weekly team meeting. That was when Amanda announced the change in assignments with a giddy smile. There was a round of awkward claps and glances from our coworkers.
Margot, though, she glared at Vance with complete disdain in her eyes, as any best friend should. I stared across the conference table at him, sitting there all pompous in his freshly pressed white button-down, his dark hair all perfect and thick, while Amanda rambled on and on about what a great job she knew he would do. And I kept reminding myself of the Belgium Airbnb.
The hinges on Margot’s chair creaked right before her lips were at my ear. “God, could she get off his dick?” She gasped. “What if he’s screwing her, and that’s why she’s all ‘he’s the best?’”
I now had the image of Vance thrusting on top of Amanda stuck in my head. I felt my lip curl and something tighten in my chest. Stress-induced indigestion? It couldn’t be anything like jealousy. “It wouldn’t surprise me.”
“At least it would explain why he gets all the good assignments,” Margot mumbled before sinking back into her seat.
It wasn’t, though. The truth I didn’t want to admit: Vance was a superb writer. Witty and charming on paper, with a shockingly dry sense of humor for someone with such a stick up his butt. One of the first articles of his I’d read was about some cheese farm in Wisconsin. He’d done such a good job that I’d actually looked up the cost of flights. If he could convince me—a woman who hated most cheese—that I needed to visit a stupid cheese museum, well, he could probably convince just about anyone to give up their life savings to experience Europe. And the more flights and hotel bookings that came through Wanderlust, or any of their affiliated websites, the more lucrative the company. Their bottom dollar mattered, not my self-dignity or whether my mom tossed my name magnet into the garbage disposal, dumped a canister of gasoline down the pipes, and then set it on fire. The woman strongly disapproved of failure, and this would be a huge failure as far as she was concerned.