Page 38 of Blackmailing the Bad Girl

“You won’t need much. I know a lot of great value places,” Darcy said. “It’s going to be fun.”

The waiter arrived at that moment to open their champagne, and they fell silent. Darcy had asked her to set this up. Apparently, she had fond memories of the Ritz, going there for afternoon tea with her grandmother and sister when she was a child. Darcy was paying—she had plenty of money from an inheritance she’d received when she was only eighteen and her parents had been killed in a plane crash. She’d used most of it to buy the gym, which brought her in a healthy income that had been accumulating over the last couple of years while she’d been inside.

Money was no issue to her. But it wouldn’t help her get access to the one thing she wanted more than anything in life.

They raised their glasses. “To freedom,” Darcy said.

“To going straight.” Summer clinked her glass against Darcy’s and then drank down the icy cold liquid. It reminded her of her first night out. Drinking champagne. Nik.

Don’t go there.

Perhaps the second bottle had been a mistake. But it was Darcy’s coming out celebration; she couldn’t be a party pooper. They’d talked nonstop. At one point Darcy had asked what she was hiding, but she’d shrugged off the question and told her friend it was nothing bad.

She’d taken a taxi back from the Ritz. For the first time since she’d climbed into the back of Nik’s car on her own release day, she felt a sense of optimism. She was humming to herself when she got to work, even smiled at the man who got in the elevator with her on the fourteenth floor. He smiled back. Then frowned.

“Sarah?”

Oh, bugger.

She went still.

The fourteenth floor. The finance department.

Donot panic.

She hadn’t really looked at him when he got in—her mind had been on other matters. Now she recognized him vaguely from her first time working here.

Bloody hell.

She forced a blank look to her eyes and a smile to her lips. “Actually, it’s Summer. I’m temping for Mr. Masterton while his assistant is away.”

“Oh, I…thought I recognized you. You don’t have a sister, do you?”

“No.” Luckily the elevator stopped at that moment, and he had to get out. But he glanced back, a puzzled expression on his face.

She took a deep breath as the doors closed again. But the encounter had ruined her mood. She tried to get it back. He didn’t really remember her.

The next floor was hers—the top. She pushed her worry to the back of her mind and sat in her chair. Twirled.

When she came to a halt, her head was swimming from the wine and the twirling, and Nik was standing in the doorway to his office.

She wanted to tell him to go away, but kept the words in.

“How’s your friend?” he asked.

“Glad to be out.”

He strolled across the space between them. “You’ve been for lunch?”

“We went to the Ritz.” His gaze sharpened on her. Did he think she’d paid with her stolen money? “Darcy is rich,” she said.

He perched on the edge of her desk, and she really wished he hadn’t. He was way too close. “You do know there’s a company policy—employees don’t drink at lunchtime.”

Oops.

It was time to change the subject. “I just met someone in the lift. He thought he recognized me.”

“Well, you’re hard to forget.”

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