Chapter 1
Words were difficult.
You’d think ten years of working as a copywriter would have made them easier, but the computer screen taunted me. My eyes twitched at the blinking cursor.
Two hours in this rented office space. Three paragraphs had been written, then erased and rewritten.
My head wasn’t in the game. I blamed my parents.
They ambushed me last night by having an uninvited guest over for dinner. Manny Singh. Unmarried accountant, mid-forties, soft jawline matching his round little belly. The kind of man who screamed dependable, respectable, reliable. A perfect match for their divorced daughter Puneet Agarwal—late-thirties, love marriage gone wrong, moved back in with her parents.
I rolled my eyes. The cursor kept blinking, waiting for some work.
Outside my glass walls, a few other freelancers bustled around the coffee machine. The whole floor was open for any creatives who wanted to pop in to use the internet, claim a tiny office, and socialize with other human beings instead of working at home in pajamas. All for a low fee of $40.99 per day.
I did a peace sign to Joe, a tall, lanky graphics designer waving to me. He was in the office across from mine. One of my few friends, we usually discussed our mutual love for playing Skyrim, but didn’t chit chat today. I had a deadline to meet this afternoon.
The space between my eyebrows throbbed.
Usually, deadlines didn’t concern me.
When it came to my work, I was top shit.
Yahoo, MySpace, Bing.
Yes, those companies I worked for earlier on in my career were technically now dinosaurs, but this new gig was different.
PushBack. A start-up company with a mobile app that helped users fight over-billed hospital charges. Recent Fortune 500 title. Fingers crossed for longevity.
It was going to secure me serious clout in the copywriting world… once I finished this last assignment. I typed a few words. Deleted them again.
My phone chimed. Sunny Deol, Gadar, Main Nikla Gaddi Leke. My mom’s preferred ringtone. She insisted I use it despite my numerous protests of unprofessionalism. It went off again and a bearded guy outside, by the sink, glared while continuing to smash avocado in a mortar for his lunchtime toast. Yes, here I was. Loud and Punjabi. Interrupting his daily hipster ritual.
Third cellphone chime.
What did she want? I’d been too flabbergasted by Manny Singh to protest the surprise arranged marriage setup last night, and had rushed out this morning before my parents got up. Although real escape was futile. My mother was a shockingly skilled texter, albeit very oblivious to proper emoji usage.
MOM: You left your chai thermos at home
MOM: Manny’s mother messaged me. He likes you =O Very good. I’m happy Puneet puth.
MOM: Aren’t you happy?
Her last question was a loaded one. Did my self-esteem notch up because Manny liked me? Yes, it had been a year since I’d gotten any genuine interest from the opposite sex. Near the end of my divorce, my ex-husband paraded around the hotter, younger bride he’d shipped in from India for himself. On numerous occasions, he’d referred to her as a much-needed upgrade.
Pure asshole, I know. I was really young when we fell in love. Back then, dates to Olive Garden, some flowers, and make-out sessions in his Dad-gifted BMW had seemed like the pinnacle of true romance. I was naive.
I texted my mom back.
I don’t know about Manny…
Having an unmarried Punjabi daughter wasting away her good years at home, I could imagine my mother bent over the phone, glasses sliding down her nose.
MOM: You said you want to move on, puth. We accepted your love marriage but </3 :’) …
I winced at the laughing/crying emoji, but assumed she wasn’t making fun of me. The next string of text proved me right.
MOM: I don’t want you to cry again. Your dad and I want to see you happy in your own house, with your own family. Otherwise it will be too late.
Oh, yes. The countdown strapped to my womb. How many good years until implosion? Who knew. Four grey hairs had recently sprouted at the temples of my thick, wavy hair. My mother had rushed to pluck them out, even though it was useless. More perpetrators would grow again because I was getting older, and sure, I did eventually want kids. Still… Manny?
I can find someone on my own, I texted back.
MOM: You haven’t dated anyone since the divorce.
She wasn’t wrong. Tinder terrified me after I got hit with the first dick pic. And meeting someone at work was impossible when you largely worked from home. My other friends didn’t go out anymore, as they were all married—happily or unhappily, to varying degrees. Besides, why tempt fate? I had already had smashed and burned once. Divorce wasn’t an experience I ever wanted to redo.
My Google calendar pinged. There was going to be a meeting with the PushBack team in twenty minutes.
I flipped my phone over and got to work. A final push to finish my last assignment. I tapped at the keyboard, record speed, muscles cramping. So absorbed and heads-down that I didn’t notice the message bubble pop up in the corner of my screen until it vibrated a few times.
Huh?
It was Office Manager Brittany. Blonde ponytail, blunt bangs, cat mama to four.
Her message was chatty, largely irrelevant musings about pop culture… up until the very end. The last little bit of knowledge made me jerk and sent my laptop clattering onto the floor. I ducked under, going to my knees.
It couldn’t be. Oh no.
BRITTANY: Hey Puneet!!! Leonardo DiCaprio dumped his latest. She aged out at twenty-five. Do you think I’m too old for him? Like I’m on the cusp of twenty-four, so I have ONE GOOD YEAR, LEO. Also company meeting got cancelled. Mr. Devaros is coming to see you, instead.
My hands got tangled in the laptop cord as I tried to rescue it. Screen looked good, it seemed fine. My knees were not.
A distinct knock sounded on my door, and then it pushed open. Oh, no, no, no, no. This wasn’t how I wanted him to see me. Ass out, under the table on all fours. I gripped the edge of my chair and my eyes swept over long legs, monochromatic business suit, and broad shoulders.
His face made my body clench. Words were inadequate to describe it. You could say ‘beautiful man’ and ‘magnetic brown eyes’ and ‘sexy beard scruff matching the charcoal grey of his hair,’ and it still didn’t paint a complete picture. Clint Devaros was hot as sin. Behind him, all the freelancers openly gaped. The guacamole man was back, frozen in spot.
“Puneet.” The low voice reverberated through the tiny office, and possibly through my soul. “What were you doing on the floor, love?”
Stab me, this was embarrassing.
“Dropped something,” I chirped out, immediately regretting the answer because now I was a confirmed klutz to the CEO of PushBack. Trying to salvage the situation, I climbed back onto my chair, plopped my laptop down, smoothed the waterfall of my hair, and gave him a pleasant smile.
“What can I do for you, Mr. Devaros?”
“Clint.” He strode in. “I told you to call me Clint.”
“Sure.”
Why not be on a first-name basis with a man worth millions, a maverick shaking up the healthcare industry, making big insurance companies sweat because his mobile app armed common people with the power to fight against inflated charges and exploitative policy conditions? A man who exuded power, utter capability, and razor-sharp wit. I knew this firsthand because we had emailed back and forth when I first got this contract position. Back when I thought he was only a manager.
Silly me.
Clint glanced over my scattered desk, then picked up a piece of loose paper. So, this was him checking on my work. My last assignment for PushBack was a press release for our recent feature launch: a search capability that allowed users to track the history of every insurance company out there to see how good they were at paying claims fairly.
This new feature was going to get a lot of buzz in the healthcare industry—as long as I wrote it perfectly. A lot of money was riding on my press release. No pressure.
Clint perused my notes slowly.
I made a conscious effort to stay relaxed.
He wasn’t like the other CEOs I’d worked under. Most of them didn’t involve themselves with the daily work of their staff. There were underlings for that.
Clint was different. Up until I’d finally figured out his identity, we’d been emailing extensively back and forth for months. It started off generically, but then we began sharing news articles, having side rants about niche marketing, and sending each other funny grammar puns and inspirational quotes from comic book characters to end off the day.
Of course, it all stopped when I found out he was the CEO and what he looked like.
The LA Times had done an article on him, complete with a photoshoot. Three-piece plaid suit, hands tucked into pockets, intense and brooding eyes.
The picture made my mouth go dry, heart palpitate, and vagina stir in a way it hadn’t in so very long.
After that, I had cut back our communications and kept them purely professional. No more voice notes, emailed exclamation points, or movie recommendations. A man in his position probably had no time for my nerdy excessiveness.
He picked up another piece of paper, this one printout of all the press releases PushBack had done before my time at the company. Beside each one was my typed summary analyzing the social impact. I suppressed a wince. My commentary hadn’t been kind. The copywriter before me hadn’t been strong enough, in my opinion.
“This is blunt, Puneet,” Clint said. “You don’t pull any punches.”
“No.”
His mouth curved up and time stretched between us. The noises from outside faded until all I heard was the blood rushing in my ears. From my position, Clint was towering above me, eyes sweeping over my face.
I had worked with attractive people before. Men in ironic t-shirts; thick-framed, chic glasses; shaggy man-buns; fitted blazers; skull caps; and well maintained beards. Clint didn’t fit anywhere in those categories. The perfect cut of his jaw was beautiful, without a hint of softness. There was a rugged, almost celestial quality to his features.
I sucked in a breath. “I’m emailing you the press release now. Of course, if you want another opinion, I can suggest other top names in the industry.”
“No, that’s fine.” He handed me the folder he’d been holding. The one I had somehow not noticed. “This is an HR document confirming the end of our contract. We won’t be renewing your services.”
My back went up, shoring up my defenses. It didn’t help. A blade still went through my side. “I see.”
“You’ll no longer be working for me.”
“I’ll miss the steady pay cheque.”
“And nothing else?”
Him.
Honestly, I was already mourning. I wished I hadn’t discovered his identity. Back when we were more equal, when I thought he was just a manager, I figured we might actually be flirting. Clearly, my comprehension of social cues was rusty. He was being nice before. Now he’s politely ending things.
Good for him.
“I find that writing for PushBack is stimulating, so I’ll also miss that.”
His hands flexed on the table between us. “Perhaps you can describe what’s been particularly effective at stimulating you.”
Is he serious? Was this an exit HR interview? I was playing it professional as much as possible, but also wasn’t obtuse. There was something more pointed behind his steely, watchful eyes.
“I’ll create a bulleted list.”
“I do love your bullet points,” Clint said. “The Top Ten Reasons to Stop Center Aligning Text was particularly illuminating. A list fit for BuzzFeed.”
“BuzzFeed is a travesty, waging war against the human attention span.”
“Interesting. Now that you’re no longer an employee of my company, you should tell me more. What are your thoughts on Mediterranean food?”
I opened my mouth, but was spared from answering by of my cell phone.
It was my mother again.
“Sorry.” My cheeks warmed as I clicked buttons, putting the thing on silent, which unfortunately also caused the screen to illuminate in front of Clint.
“Who is Manny?” he asked. “And why does he want a summer wedding?”
