Peaches & Cream by Alina Jacobs

Author:Alina Jacobs [Jacobs, Alina]
Language: eng
Format: epub

2

Blade

How had she acquired that watch?

That was the thing with Avery. Every time I thought I had her figured out, she did something to surprise me.

When she had first come in for an interview, she had been friendly and slightly snarky. The thing that had caught my attention, though, was that she had lied about everything on her resumé. Actually, lie might be too strong—it was more that she had so embellished the truth as to be insane. A one-day volunteer gig in a dog shelter had been exaggerated to her starting a completely new outreach initiative. It was blatant, audacious, and intriguing.

One could not deny, however, that Avery was a good assistant. Though she talked to me as if I were a preschooler or an unintelligent puppy, my life ran a lot more smoothly now that she was around.

At first, I had thought she had been a plant from one of the Holbrooks. They were after the Harris & Schultz contract, same as my company. But then I had discovered that she had applied there too. There was no way the Holbrook cousins would have let her leave with that watch. Grant Holbrook would have bought it from her first chance he had.

I loved watches; I collected them, especially Patek Philippe, the brand of Avery’s watch. I owned almost every model—millions of dollars’ worth of watches. There was something comforting about them all lined up in the drawer. Unfortunately, I didn’t own the one on Avery’s wrist. There had been only a few made. A pilot’s watch, the stainless steel, pre-World War II utilitarian design was unique in comparison to the elaborate compilations Patek Philippe usually created. Grant Holbrook owned one of those watches. Several others were thought to have been lost. Now this one had resurfaced. I had to have it.

The intern, Kitty, appeared next to me, jarring me out of my thoughts.

“Mr. Svensson,” she said with a high-pitched giggle, lightly resting her hand on my arm. “I was trying to find you this morning!”

I glared at Kitty, and she jerked her hand back. That was the other thing I appreciated Avery for—she kept the women away. My brother Weston, my Irish twin, was my total opposite. Even when we were teenagers, he had gone through women like he went through alcohol. You would think that they would flock to him and leave me alone, but they had used any excuse to show up in my office. Especially when I worked late, a gaggle of them liked to hang around. I had mentioned it offhandedly to Avery once, and she started staying late if she knew I was. I had found it an oddly touching gesture.

She just did it because she was paid, I thought, angrily mashing the elevator button.

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