But today, as he locked his office and made his way to the elevators, you could have shot a missile through the empty corridors. It was Canada Day, but still, the programmers didn’t normally notice, much less observe, holidays. And he would have expected Jack Winter, the CEO of one of the other two companies that shared the forty-ninth floor, to be in. The two of them often went for a drink on Saturday afternoons after catching up on paperwork in their respective companies.
The elevator dinged. Given the fact that the forty-ninth floor was apparently a ghost town today, he didn’t bother looking up from his phone as he stepped on—or rather, as he crashed into—someone stepping off. “I’m sorry. I wasn’t—”
“Eff off, Dax.”
Dax had never thought blood pressure was something you could actually feel. Until he met Amy Morrison, the vice president of Winter Enterprises. When she was around, he turned into a cartoon—there was probably steam coming out of his ears. He tamped down his irritation and smirked at her. “I am rubber and you are glue, everything you say bounces off me and sticks to you.”
She tilted her head. “There’s not a day that doesn’t go by that I don’t marvel how someone so immature and dim-witted managed to become a multimillionaire CEO.” Not waiting for a reply, she curled her lip and brushed past him.
He lunged for the elevator doors, which were starting to close, but missed. Her laughter rang out as she sashayed in the direction of Winter Enterprises. He watched her hips, encased in some kind of shiny silver material, sway. She sure got dressed up for working on the weekend. But that was Amy for you, always dressed and coiffed like she’d stepped from the pages of a fashion magazine.
Wait. Suddenly he realized why the office was so empty. Everyone was at Amy Morrison’s wedding.
Everyone except, apparently, Amy.
He and Amy Morrison were like oil and water. Cats and dogs. Whatever cliché you wanted to throw at them, they were it. When his company had moved into the building three years ago, he’d tried to be civil at first. But somehow things degenerated so that before he knew it, she was refusing to share elevators with him and he was locking her out of the men’s room when the ladies’ had flooded. It had gotten so they didn’t even try to pretend they didn’t hate each other. But the one thing he could respect about his nemesis was that she had a hell of a work ethic. It wasn’t unusual to see her on the weekends.
But her wedding day? Wasn’t that a little much? Had she forgotten something she needed for the ceremony? The unlucky groom’s ring, perhaps?
He shrugged. Whatever. Not his problem.
It did, however, explain where all his staff was. Dax’s employees and Jack Winter’s were all friends, sharing a common kitchen, socializing after work, and doing typical office things like placing bets on when Amy’s boring boyfriend was finally going to pop the question. The Cherry Beach programmers were all a little bit in love with her, so of course they were at the wedding, falling in line like panting, besotted puppies.
On a superficial level, he couldn’t blame them. Amy was hot as all get-out—he’d concede that. She had the kind of tall lankiness that’s awkward on girls when they’re young, but when they grow into their long, lithe limbs, watch out. Bouncy blond hair, slight curves to take the edge off her otherwise sharp angles. Frankly, it was hard to look at Amy Morrison and not imagine what it would be like to fuck her. If you kissed her hard enough, you could muss up that perfect little rosebud of a mouth she always had painted dark red.
But then she’d open that perfect little rosebud of a mouth and ruin everything. It was probably some kind of karmic law of the universe that such a scorchingly hot girl had to be a smart-ass.
He thought about that mouth as he waited for the elevator to come back. She used it just now to sneer at him, but she hadn’t been wearing lipstick.
Which was weird. Amy always wore red lipstick.
Maybe he’d been imagining things, conjuring up a phantom image of Amy au naturel. He took a few steps toward the Winter Enterprises’ reception desk. What was that noise? It grew louder as he rounded the corner, heading for the executive wing where Amy and Jack’s offices were.
And then it resolved itself into crying. Sobbing, in fact.
He came to a halt in front of Amy’s office.
“Amy?”
She’d been standing at the window, but at the sound of his voice, she turned and lifted gorgeous, devastated blue eyes at him. Black streaks of mascara painted her usually porcelain cheeks. She looked like she’d teleported in from the 1920s. Her shimmery white-silver dress was short and edged with fringe like a flapper’s, and she’d done her hair in that kind of wavy style he associated with silent film stars.