LUKE: Complete Series by Cassia Leo Page B

outstretched, mouth hanging open.
    “I’m sorry I haven’t called. I’ve been busy.” I took a seat on a stool at the breakfast bar.
    “Yeah, busy moving and changing your phone number without telling me.” Her round face contorted with worry. “I thought something bad happened.”
    I knew what she meant by “something bad.”
    After my brother’s suicide seven months ago, I disappeared from Seattle for six days. I couldn’t face anyone knowing that not only was I the one who drove Ryan to the hospital where he jumped to his death, but I was also the one who encouraged him to enlist in the Marines two years earlier. Jill was the one who finally found me in a hotel room in San Francisco: the destination of the last road trip I took with Ryan before he was shipped to Afghanistan. My eyes were swollen from crying for six days straight, my hair was in knots, and I had lost eight pounds from not having eaten for six days. She never asked what I was doing there or, rather, what I had been too afraid to do there. She knew.
    She talked me down from that ledge seven months ago and this was how I repaid her. I was a horrible friend.
    “What’s going on, Brina? Are you mad at me?”
    “No! I’m… I changed jobs. I moved to be closer to my new office. But it was all really sudden so I didn’t get a chance to tell anyone about it.”
    I hung my head in shame. I had been dreading this moment for the past week since I moved into this apartment.
    “So getting a new job means you disappear off the face of the Earth? What the fuck’s going on, Brina? And I don’t want anymore of this new job bullshit.”
    “I do have a new job. Well… I have two jobs: the new one and the old one. It’s complicated. I can’t really talk about it.”
    Jill crossed her arms. “You always tell me about your assignments. What’s so different about this one?”
    “Uh… hello, Jill? Do you not see that I was actually moved out of my old apartment for this? This is the biggest assignment of my career.”
    She rolled her eyes and finally took a seat on the sofa. “How about you get us something to drink ‘cause I’m not leaving until you dish.”
    I couldn’t help but smile. Even though I wasn’t supposed to talk to anyone about this assignment, I desperately needed Jill’s advice. She was the sensible one in this friendship. I was the one who went to a college clear across the country. She was the one who stayed behind to run her family’s travel agency when her mother got sick. I was the one who took a job as a corporate spy. She was the one who took her mother to dialysis appointments every week. I needed her to talk some sense into me.
    I poured us each a glass of Reisling and tucked the bottle of wine between the sofa cushions as I sat next to her. “I’m working for Maxwell Computers.”
    Her eyes widened. “You’re spying on Maxwell Computers?”
    “Well, specifically, Luke Maxwell. I’m his new executive assistant. We paid off his old assistant to retire early.”
    “Are you fucking kidding me?”
    “That’s not it. Luke and I… we’re sort of….”
    “No fucking way!”
    “Yes, fucking many ways.”
    Jill downed the whole glass of wine and held it out to me for a refill, which I promptly poured. “You’re dating Luke Maxwell.”
    I held my wineglass up to my mouth to hide my huge grin as I nodded.
    “How is he?”
    “So sweet. You would not believe how safe I feel when I’m with him. And he’s funny and sexy and—”
    “Brina? How is he?”
    I sank back onto the sofa and shook my head. “There are no words.”
    “That good?”
    “Better.”
    “Wait a minute. Aren’t you supposed to be spying on him? How are you supposed to steal from him if you’re all gaga for his hot jalapeño?”
    “Please don’t call it that.”
    “His love sausage. Whatever.”
    “You really need to stop watching so much Food Network.”
    She guzzled the rest of her wine and held her glass out again.
    “If I give you this,