The next time I saw Natalie, she was not coming to the recording studio to sing. She had an overdue bill for recording time she’d used, and she was completely unable to pay it. Levi, my boss, had arranged for her to do some voice-overs to pay the bill.

She came in, looking far less fabulous than normal. Her yellow hair had weird bends in it because it had not been properly straightened. Her expression made the cleft in her chin look weak instead of powerful—a bad sign.

I greeted her like I hadn’t spent months with her crabbing about the toughness of the music industry, and sent her directly to the back.

I popped in a bit later and watched Natalie shift her weight on a stool as she read.

Next to me, Levi asked, “Are you seeing someone lately?” He never asked me questions like that. I saw it as a red flag.

“Did you have someone in mind?” I asked.

“My nephew, Adam, wanted me to find out for him.”

“You can tell him that I’m in a hot new relationship and I am hardly coming up for air these days,” I said dryly.

Levi sniggered. “Is that true?”

“Yup,” I said like a nearly dead fish blowing a bubble.

“What’s the truth?” he persisted.

I took a deep breath, remembered that I had worked for Levi for four years and I had always found him to be the least sleazy man I had ever met. There was no reason to cut him off without giving him a hint as to which way the wind was blowing. “I am seeing someone new. It’s been going well. I don’t want to jinx it, since I have a good feeling about him.” I cleared my throat and changed the subject. “I was going to tell you that I had an extremely rough encounter with Natalie the other night and something happened that has cooled my enthusiasm for supporting her singing career.”

Levi frowned deeply. “Shannon, everyone has a hard time making it in this business and if our people go far, it’s much better for our studio.”

“She hit me,” I explained.

Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

“Did you hit her?”

I shook my head in the negative.

“You didn’t even get one punch in?” he asked.

“I couldn’t. I was knocked out.”

Levi was understandably stunned.

“I didn’t report her to the police for assault and I’m not going to. I don’t think she’ll do anything like that again because I’m not going to be around her. I’m not going to stop you from working with her or quit working with you if you do. I’m just telling you what happened so you can understand why I’ve cooled and why I plan to stay cool. I’ll get back to the front.”

He stopped me before I could head out. “Are you sure you don’t want to tell me more about this?”

“Yup. I thought she was my friend. She’s not. I won’t be mixing business with friendship again.”

He nodded and let me go back to my desk.

I plugged numbers into my calculator and then into the spreadsheets on my computer until lunchtime. Levi and Natalie finished their work and migrated to the front. At that moment, Adam came in the front door.

I hardly looked up.

Adam had lunch with Levi often enough that his arrival was not sensational.

I was not attracted to him. The problem with him was that he was the personification of the men I usually dated and they were all the same. I didn’t need to do any digging to find out what he was thinking; his thoughts were all over his face. It made him the very opposite of Fletch. Normally, I would have let a man like Adam take me out, spend some money on me, but lately… since meeting Fletch, the idea bored me.

Adam invited Levi to lunch and since Natalie was standing next to him, he invited her too. Levi hadn’t had a chance to tell Adam that his attention would be unwelcome, so he approached my desk and asked me if I wanted to go to lunch with them.

“I’m sorry,” I said with a practiced flippant smile. “I can’t today. I have so much work to finish.”

Levi interrupted. “She’s been taking off early the last few nights, seeing a new man. She needs to play catchup, so let’s head out. I don’t have all day for a lunch break.”

It was a lie, but it worked double time, both giving an excuse and the reason why I wouldn’t be available later.

I sighed a breath of relief as the three of them left the office. We were closed during lunch hour so I locked the door behind them.

Then, I did the thing I did every day during lunch break. I didn’t eat. I had a bed under the reception desk that I unrolled during lunch hour. My hobbies kept me up late at night or got me up early in the morning. If I didn’t sleep during the hour I had for lunch, I wouldn’t be able to work a whole day. I usually had a snack at my desk in the afternoon and Levi had never complained that I sometimes munched on carrot sticks as I crunched numbers.

That day, however, it took me an extra few minutes to calm down. It was hard to say exactly what bothered me so much about seeing Natalie. She hadn’t done or said anything to me. She’d come in and read a few lines for a few bucks. Perhaps she looked sad that we weren’t friends anymore.