Twenty ◑ The Girl

"We," Cade began, spreading his arms jovially, "are going to have a ball."

Silence. Just crickets in the conference room. The Marketing and PR team was present, and the members just stared at Cade as he nodded around for affirmation. Trang, the head editor, had an expression of polite confusion, mirrored by Krista, the head of acquisitions.

All of them knew that they were called for an emergency meeting to discuss the launch, but none of them were sure about where this was going exactly.

It wasn't like Cade was doing a good job of explaining either. He kept muttering to himself after saying one thing out loud, making what appeared like mental calculations.

"A ball," he repeated. "Like a dance. All of our releases are romance books anyway. Why not make it a romantic, formal event?"

Krista shrugged and turned to Trang, who tilted her head in consideration. "I don't hate the idea," Krista said. "Might be kind of cool, actually."

"The authors would love it," Trang put in.

"Yes!" Cade clapped his hands together. "Lucille, what do you think?"

The question came out eager and loud, but it went by unnoticed by Lucille. Her essence was still floating up in space, stuck in the bubble of conversation she'd eavesdropped on yesterday. She couldn't believe Cade had gotten another chance to prove himself. She couldn't believe William hadn't fired him on the spot.

And she couldn't fathom why on earth she'd been relieved when she'd heard it.

Yes, relieved. Relieved. She'd been overcome with that grateful feeling the moment William said he'd give Cade one more chance. And it was dumb—and completely wrong—because she hadn't been rooting for that. She'd wanted him fired, so she could wrap up this mission once and for all.

But since she couldn't change the fact that Cade was staying, she should be channeling her energy into sabotaging the launch, right? Well, no. Right now, she was so annoyed, so baffled, that she didn't want to do anything else but sit and listen.

"Lucille?" Cade leaned across the table to tap her shoulder. "You okay?"

"Yeah," she said after a pause. "Er, a ball would be nice. The authors could use their photos as free promo, and it would give us a shining reputation. We could invite the press too, give it a bit more of a boost."

Shit. And now she was giving him pointers for success too. What was happening to her?

"Fantastic!" he boomed, then he caught sight of the clock. His face fell. "I have a meeting, so I'll adjourn this. You can continue discussing it, though. Just give me an update when I return. Thank you, people."

All of them nodded as he turned to leave, but no one seemed too keen to continue the discussion. In fact, Trang and Krista exited the conference room shortly after Cade did. Only Lucille, Shanry, Rosie, and Clifford remained seated, mainly because they were too lazy to get up.

"He seems . . . determined," Clifford remarked as he rested his head against the stack of papers in front of him. "And really restless too."

Rosie snorted. "Don't forget ambitious. I mean, a ball. A fucking ball."

Sensing the hint of contempt in their voices, Lucille perked up and declared, "I think it's admirable."

Clifford and Rosie exchanged looks with Shanry, who smiled and asked innocently, "Do you have a boyfriend or a girlfriend, Lucille?"

She shook her head. "Nope."

"Cade is single too," Clifford said. "He's been single for an awfully long time now."

"I've worked here for ten years," Shanry said, "and eight years ago, Cade got hired. He's never had a girlfriend, never seen with anyone. Mind you, he was fresh out of college when he got here too. He's not the partying, mingling kind. I think—"

"I know better than all of you."

The four of them flinched and turned to the source of the voice. Standing by the doorway was Jamie, her expression stern.

Busted, Lucille thought, but to her surprise, Jamie didn't tell them off. In fact, she waltzed right inside the conference room and sat beside Lucille.

Clifford closed the door and asked daringly, "Well, Jamie?"

"Well, I say you're all spot on." Jamie took a biscuit from the bowl on the table. "The dude is single as fuck, and I bet you he'll probably stay single for life, especially after what happened to him last year."

"Please don't reference events I don't know about," Lucille said exasperatedly. “You're killing me."

"Oops, sorry," Jamie replied with an apologetic smile. "Come here, child, I'm going to tell you a story." Once Lucille was facing her, she continued, "Five years ago, we've been taking interns. Lots of them too. The branch was still pretty young then, and William thought it would be great to give the company more exposure by sharing knowledge and experience and all that jazz. Thus, the interns."

"Also, we were on a tight budget," Shanry put in. "Interns work for free."

Lucille frowned. "Isn't that kind of exploitative?"

"They know what they're getting into." Rosie waved a hand airily, taking her coffee cup and draining it. "Being in the branch of a well-known company got those kids in good colleges. It's a win-win. Some of them chose to continue working. Those who go down that path got a bit of compensation."

"We got collaborations with universities too." Jamie added. "Those were good times."

"What happened?” Lucille asked. “Why did the branch stop hiring interns?"

"Well, there was this girl who got hired two years ago." Clifford sighed. "Smart girl. Very assertive. There was something off about her, though. She was sensitive. She liked to play the victim card. She was assigned to assist Martin and Rosie, as they needed extra help to smooth out that fiasco about the author who cheated the New York Times bestseller list. Now, this girl used to mess up dates a lot. Like, Martin missed deadlines and shit because of her. She messed up letters too. As you can guess, Martin hated her guts."

"Martin hates everyone's guts," Jamie mumbled.

"True," Shanry agreed. "But for this girl, Martin was extra evil. He yelled at her in front of everyone when she gave him the wrong memo. He wanted to get her fired. She wanted to quit."

"Then Cade swooped in," Jamie said. "He talked her out of it, reminded her that she couldn't get the credits if she resigned. He's nice that way. To everyone."

Lucille raised an eyebrow. "Then why do you hate him so much?"

Rosie cleared her throat. "We don't hate him. We just hate that he doesn't stand up for himself. We wish he wouldn't just let people step all over him, you know? He never dismisses any rumors, and there are a lot. Some of them are really bad and really believable. And they all tie back to the girl."

"So Cade convinced her to stay, right?" Jamie tore open the wrapper, stared beyond the view offered by the window, and began to eat. "He took her under his wing and made sure she was treated fairly. She ended up liking him. Really liking him. She got confident. She started assuming he liked her too."

Shanry shook her head in dismay. "The man likes everyone. She didn't know."

"And she began to chase him," Jamie told Lucille simply. "Figuratively and literally. She's pushy as all hell. She began to barge into his meetings and memorize his schedule. She began to work overtime in the hopes of being alone with him. She began to say a lot of stuff about their alleged relationship. Girl was head over heels. Cade found her behavior strange, but he was too nice to say anything about it."

Okay, this was frustrating. Lucille now understood why they wanted him to grow a backbone. She wanted to yell at him for this, but for some reason her head was exploding with the sound of alarm bells.

The story was starting to sound a bit familiar. A beat of suspicion was thrumming in Lucille's chest, but she dismissed it and gestured Jamie to continue. "And?"

"It all blew up in the Christmas party." Jamie's tone took on a dark hint. "She got drunk, tried to kiss Cade, and told everyone they were together. Needless to say, he didn't like that. He called her out and fired her on the spot. He was pretty subtle about the firing thing, though. She didn't like that too."

"She threw a fit," Rosie said ominously. "It was fucking intense."

"I couldn't wash the spaghetti off my hair," Jamie mumbled. When Lucille looked horrified, she explained, "I tried to break off the fight. She was attacking Cade, and he didn't want to hurt her. Little did he know she'd leave lasting mark. Some people believed Cade really was sleeping with interns. William scrapped the internship programs and offered to sue her for Cade, but he declined."

Clifford sighed. "Everyone knows that the only thing Cade is sleeping with is paperwork."

The other four laughed, but Lucille was frozen. Her mind was filling in the blanks, conjuring images, and connecting the dots to form a story that incorporated her growing suspicion.

Her heart was racing. Her stomach was churning so rapidly she felt like she had snakes as insides. She was clutching the edge of the table.

However, her denial was just a little bit stronger. She was willing it to be a downright refusal to accept and see the glaring facts.

"She called again yesterday," Jamie carried on. "She's like, 'Where's Cade? Why won't he talk to me?’. Cade was forced to answer, and boy, did he put her in her place. He's like, 'You're one call away from a restraining order and a stalking injunction, so don't push your luck.' And she's like, 'I'm going to bring you down. I'm already close. Just you wait and see.'"

There was a collective cringe in the room, but it was paired with a reminiscent kind of laughter that grated Lucille's ears. Her whole body was tingling now, so much so that her limbs were numb.

A dangerous shade of red was covering her vision—pure and uncontrollable. Still, she pulled back the flames of her rage to ask, "Who's the girl? What's her name?"

"Mia." Jamie's eyes twinkled reminiscently. "Mia Beckett."