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unsure of how to start this conversation so I can
finish it my way—without details. “I was away for a
little while.”
    “Prison?”
he teases. I don’t smile back.
    Of
a kind. “Abroad. I was living in Europe.”
    “Traveling?”
    “No.”
    “Modeling?”
    I
laugh. “Not hardly.” I shake my head.
    “Sex
work?” he says. He twists his mouth like he’s enjoying
this game. “You know, it’s legal in some countries over
there.”
    “I do know,” I say, riled up again. “And no .”
    “So,” he says, his eyes wide with amusement at my
rekindled temper, “why’d you come home?
    I glare. “I just needed a change. A fresh start.”
    “Wasn’t being in Europe a change?”
    I put my hands on my hips. “What does this have to do with
Jamie?”
    “You
know, I think you should consider whether he’d do all this for
you,” Ryder says. “Give up his fresh start to save your
ass. Because I don’t think he would. And for what it’s
worth, I don’t think it’s fair to you.”
    “Being
family isn’t always about being fair,” I say.
    Ryder sits in the chair on the other side of the desk, taking off his
blazer. He clasps his hands together and rests his forearms on the
desk’s edge. Through the white sleeves of the shirt, I can
start to make out the tattoos that envelop his defined arms, all the
way up his strong shoulders, this rule-breaking fighter always
lurking just below the surface of the rule-following businessman,
like a secret identity.
    “Well, working for me is all about being fair,” he says.
“You should know that.”
    My heart thuds a little faster. “Is that a yes?”
    He
folds his arms behind his head, leans back in his chair, a smile
stretching across his face. “You’re going to have to tell
me your name if we’re going to work together.”
    “Cassie,”
I say. “So we have an agreement?” I walk around to where
he sits and offer him my hand. He shakes it, his palm cool against my
warm one.
    “Tomorrow morning. Nine,” he says. “You’ll
work in here.”
    “With
you?”
    “Is
that a problem?”
    “No,”
I say, surveying the office. It’s not small, but there’s
one desk, one chair, and boxes of files that will have to go
somewhere. Not to mention the mountains of receipts and other papers
ready to avalanche across the desk. “It just could get cramped
with both of us.”
    Ryder
turns toward me in his seat, his head level with my waist, right
where his hands grasped me only moments before. “Lucky for
you,” he says, “I know how to move well in tight spaces.”
He looks up at me, the line of his jaw strong and straight, brushing
the hem of my skirt as he fingers the beveled edge of the desk, and
though from somewhere I can hear the dull whirr of the air
conditioner, I make a mental note for tomorrow: this office can get
hot.

 
    CASSIE
     

CH. 6
     
    “That’s your real name?”
    “Real as it gets,” he says. “Cash Ryan Gardner.”
    “With a name like that maybe you should be the accountant,”
I say.
    “No way,” he says. “I don’t want to count the
money. I want to have enough money to pay someone else to count it.”
    “Good plan.” I save the balance sheet file on the laptop
as Cash hands me a beer. It’s the end of my first week as the
new bookkeeper for Altitude. At twenty bucks an hour, I’ve only
got, like, three more months to go. If I don’t count the
interest.
    At least the drinks are free.
    Cash the bartender is also one of the partners with Ryder in
Altitude. He’s what in the nightlife business I guess is called
“front of house”—good-looking, smooth-talking, the
kind of person who can get customers to buy just one more drink, stay
for just one more song. Great for a night out, difficult when you’re
trying to get work done.
    Still, the last couple days, I’ve found myself gravitating to
doing work out in the main area instead of the office, sitting at the
end of the bar, even if there are customers, even if Cash and