Page 123 of The Billionaire's Wake-up-call Girl

“Does Mr. Drummond know?” I joke.

Marley shrugs.

I nearly collapse when I get into the elevator and see that the gray panels have been replaced with colorful ones. And when the door opens on the accounting floor to let in another passenger, I smell microwave popcorn.

Microwave-freaking-popcorn!

I smile at the woman. She seems to recognize me. She probably thinks I still work here. It’s only been a few weeks.

The elevator stops on the marketing level, and I spot Betsy coming out the marketing/HR door. She brightens up the moment she sees me, and it would be too weird to keep going up, so I slip out, taking my chances that Sasha isn’t there.

Betsy gives me a long hug. We do a quick catch-up and I tell her about the microwave popcorn I smelled in accounting.

“You have no idea. You have to see something.” She grabs my arm and pulls me in the door, around her desk, and past the rows of cubicles.

“Uhh,” I whisper as heads swivel.

“Ignore,” she says. We arrive in the back room where I was fired. Except it’s all different. There are comfy chairs, an espresso maker, a new microwave, and a giant basket of treats. “These are deadly,” she says, holding up a pack of chocolate-covered pretzels. She picks up another. “Cheese microwave popcorn. Food of the gods.” Another. “These caramel things? Best-kept secret in the baskets. Every department has a basket like this.”

“How is this allowed?”

“Mr. Drummond promoted Fernice from HR to employee well-being oversight, and suddenly these appeared.”

I pick up a pack of cookies, feeling weirdly excited and hopeful. It’s a basket of treats that feels like more than a basket of treats. It feels like a sign or something. A big sign that saysyes. Or maybethis way out of fuck buddy-only territory.

“IT ran through theirs,” she confides. “And another appeared.”

“Wow.”

“I know we’re trying to get that deal with Locke Foundation, but it was thoughtful. It’s not as if they’d ever know about something internal like this.”

“Yeah,” I say. “How would they know?”

“When Mr. Drummond does something, he doesn’t go halfway,” Betsy says. She asks about the job hunt as we head back up to the front.

“I’m working for a caterer, but I just signed a lease deal for an amazing space for a new Cookie Madness on Ninth.”

“Lizzie! You got a space?”

I grin. I kind of can’t not. “It’s so perfect—right where Hell’s Kitchen meets Midtown. A lot of foot traffic. I wouldn’t have been able to afford it, but the landlord knows my reputation and she wanted me in there. It’s this older couple—I think they have a lot of money and they just really want what they want. A tiny little place on a corner. So gorgeous.”

“That’s where the big food festival is,” she says.

“You’re opening a Cookie Madness on Ninth?”

I spin around and come face-to-face with Sasha. I stiffen instinctively, but what can she do to me? If anything, she should feel stupid around me, though judging from her haughty stare, she doesn’t.

“That’s right,” I say.

“Where on Ninth?” she asks.

I hesitate to reveal the intersection, but what’s she going to do? Come in and trash the place with a baseball bat? “Ninth and 43rd. It’s going to be awesome. So amazing.”

“Huh,” she says. It’s a significanthuh. A forebodinghuh.

“What?”

She just smiles. “Nothing.”

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