Read Not Quite Perfect (Oakland Hills Book 3) for Free Online Page A

was really like? “Only once, and they were all unoccupied at the time.”
    She laughed. “I love it. You’re turning over all the rocks.”
    Her insight surprised him. “Yeah. Something like that.”
    She had turned away from him and now was searching through the large presentation boards hung on the wall. “Have you seen New York?” she asked.
    “Frequently,” he said. He managed to say it without bitterness, but every day he woke up back home in California filled him with relief—then guilt. He knew intellectually he was allowed to be happy, but his conscience still didn’t believe it. “Thinking of doing some travel?”
    She smiled at him over her shoulder. “The name of the line or group or whatever is New York. There’s a board here with some color swatches I need.”
    He rubbed his hand over his mouth, covering a grimace. Have I seen New York? Oh, sure, lived there for several long, cold years, clinging to the fragments of a life I never really began—oh, you don’t give a shit?
    “Got it!” She spun around with a board half as tall as she was in her hands. “Nice seeing you, Zack, but I’ve got to run.” She lifted it over her head like a backwoods traveler hoisting a canoe and maneuvered around the other side of the table toward the door.
    “Sorry, but I didn’t catch your name.” He walked parallel to her on the other side of the table. He made it to the door before she did, which was good, because he was pretty sure she was trying to escape again without telling him who she was. And he had a business reason for knowing. It wasn’t just because the miracle of the week before seemed to be repeating itself.
    It wasn’t just the jeans. Thousands of bodies in tight jeans had paraded past him over the past few years, and not one of them had fired him up the way hers was.
    She paused with the board on her head, looking as if she were tempted to bop him in the forehead with it to get out of the room. “Look, Rita Gronsky needs this right away.”
    “Rita Gronsky, manager of the graphics department?”
    “No, Rita Gronsky, banjo-playing astronaut.” She rolled her eyes. “Yes, in the graphics department. I’m April. I’m a freelancer here. If I don’t get this to her in the next five seconds, I won’t be.”
    He didn’t move. “So, Rita Gronsky—manager, folk musician, and astronaut—would fire someone over a delay of five seconds?”
    “Now it’s more like five minutes. And she wouldn’t, but the designers might get her into trouble, and I wouldn’t want to be responsible for that.” She went up on tiptoes, slicing the board over his head, and wiggled past him. Just as her body brushed his, she said, “Would you?”
    A hot shiver ran down his spine, freezing him in place. In a daze, he watched her jog across the lobby and into the hallway toward his office and the stairwell. He’d noticed most of the young designers, patternmakers, interns, and freelancers skipped the elevators, preferring the speed of the stairs. Being the same way himself, he’d been bumping into them there all week.
    He ran a hand down his chest, under his jacket, feeling the shocking return of life under his ribs.
    Maybe he’d bump into her there. April. Still didn’t know her last name. The memory of her body brushing his brought hot blood to his face.
    He shook his head. What the hell was the matter with him? Since when was he the type of creep to fantasize about jumping the cute young thing in the stairwell?
    He slammed his laptop shut and shoved it into his briefcase, trying to ignore the fantasy that hit him like a high-resolution video.
    Since today, apparently.
    * * *
    At the end of the day, April logged out of her computer—she’d named it Jane and had attached a suction-cup bud vase to the monitor—and slung her backpack over her shoulder. It was heavy with software manuals and made her walk at an angle as she headed downstairs.
    She’d mentioned her run-in with the consultant, Zack, in the