Page 37 of Secrets, Scandals and Baby Shoes

“Let’s do it.” Elliot lifted his arm and twirled Lucy under it, drawing a few curious glances from the usually stony-faced passersby. “Next month, you and me, Europe. I’m in.”

Lucy beamed. She’d always wanted to go on a romantic trip to Europe. It was the stuff of rom-coms and romance novels, after all. And now it was happening with a guy she cared about deeply who was finally back in her life.

Everything felt perfect.

If there was a part of Lucy that worried that everything wastooperfect andtooeasy, it was only a small part, easily silenced. Lucy had spent so much of her life worried about how much time she’d have left with her brother. She refused to let herself worry now.

CHAPTER 18

ELLIOT

“It worked!” Lucy sang, twirling around their shared office. The door was closed, so none of the employees could see their CEOs dancing with excitement.

“I knew it would,” Elliot said. “Because you’re a genius, Lucy. And this is a good sign for our European trip, too.”

They’d spent the last week having meetings with local clients to encourage them to add more business to the app, and it had been a rip-roaring success. Borderless had secured its relationship with existing clients while growing its services. Elliot was thrilled. Lucy was thrilled. And they were both certain that Dominic would have been, too.

Lucy beamed. “Should we start planning? I already have a few clients in mind who we could visit.”

“Let’s.” Elliot crossed the room in a few strides and caught her in a deep kiss. “You know,” he said softly in her ear. “News like this calls for a celebration.”

“What are you thinking?” Lucy asked as he pressed kisses to her soft lips, across the length of her freckled cheek, and downthe sensitive skin of her neck. She gasped slightly at his touch, angling toward him, and he lifted her onto the edge of her desk.

“The door is locked,” Elliot pointed out, running a hand up and down the length of her back. She pressed closer to him.

“I’m not sure that’s a good idea…”

Just then, Elliot’s phone began to ring. Annoyed, he shut it off without looking at the screen and turned back to Lucy. “Sorry about that. Where were we?”

“We were just talking about how, just because the door is locked, we shouldn’t necessarily get up to anything in here. We’re at work, after all.”

“Yes, and we run the company.” Elliot kissed Lucy again, slow and deep. “Come on, we work a lot,” he whispered in her ear. “There must be some perks to being the CEOs.”

Lucy kissed him back. “I suppose there should be…”

Elliot’s phone began to ring again. Lucy sighed. “Maybe you should take that. It must be important if they’re calling again.”

“Okay, but don’t move.” Elliot reached for his phone and swiped to answer, pressing it to his ear as he ran his thumb across Lucy’s cheek. She smiled at him.

“This is Elliot Cobb,” Elliot said, a little gruffly. The voice on the other end belonged to his second in command, Jennifer Carston, who’d been running things at Keype in his absence.

“Elliot, thank goodness I’ve reached you.” Jennifer sounded more than a little panicked.

“What’s wrong?” Elliot asked, the warmth of the moment dissipating. Lucy looked up at him with concern, but he turned away to focus on the call.

“There’s been a problem with Keype.” Quickly, Jennifer laid out what had happened. Apparently, there were issues with a new product, which had caused Keype’s stock prices to plummet.

“Didn’t anyone do quality testing?” Elliot asked, one hand instinctively lifting to run through his hair.

“Yes, but apparently, clients switching to the new product lost some of the data stored on the old one. It seems to be partially client error, as they are asked to back up regularly, but it’s still a huge problem for Keype.”

“Obviously.” Elliot sighed in frustration, then shook his head. “Listen, I can’t do anything about it from here. I’ll be back in Chicago by this evening to get this sorted out.”

“All right.”

They hung up, and Elliot turned to Lucy, who’d clearly been listening to every word on his side. Her blue eyes were wide with worry.

“What happened?” she asked.

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