Mistaken for Love (The Love Vixen #7) - Delancey Stewart Page 0,2

compelled to take it, my mind spinning as he reached across me to use the mouse to pull up the first document.

What looked like an email popped open on the huge screen in front of me, a wash of fuchsia and orange battling for my attention as I read the headline, “Your back end begs for Benedict.”

“Who’s Benedict?” I asked, utterly confused.

“Mark that one as a no,” the girl said.

The man shook his head. “So no one has briefed you? At all?” He crossed his arms and sank down to sit on the corner of the desk next to the one where he’d planted me. His attention slid to the other woman, who cringed slightly under his appraisal. “I thought you sent out pre-work. All the intro stuff?”

“I did,” she said quickly, her spine straightening a bit. “I emailed it.” She shot me a less friendly look. “You got it, right? You probably just didn’t have time to look at it.” She gave Bryce a little smile and an eye roll, as if to illustrate that whatever he was unhappy about was clearly on me, not her.

“I mean, no . . .” I began. “I just came up here to—“

“I’m sorry. I know you just got here,” the guy said, scrubbing a hand over his jaw, his eyes crinkling in the corners. “Allison, you can get back to it. I’ll brief . . . Uh, sorry. Your name?”

My name was Virginia, but my family had always called me Ginny. For some reason though, with this man sitting here and clearly thinking I was someone other than the girl who’d had her whole life ripped out from under her eleven months earlier, I told him my name was “Gin.”

“Like ‘gin and tonic’?” He asked, a smile pulling those gorgeous lips wide.

I nodded, distracted by the sheer magnitude of his good looks.

“Okay. Well, I’m Bryce. We’ll be working closely together while you’re here.”

“Okay,” I said, kicking myself inwardly for not saying something that would more clearly explain that I was only going to be here a few more minutes. Just until I told him where to find the bagels and coffee I’d delivered and gotten the hell out of here.

“We’re toying with ideas to pitch Benedict,” he went on, clearly oblivious to my confusion. “They have a back-end solution that can perform big data analysis for huge applications, and we’re on the shortlist to take on their entire customer acquisition strategy from analysis to development and roll out.”

“I thought maybe it was a toilet paper pitch, with that whole ‘back end’ thing,” I said honestly.

Bryce scrubbed his jaw again. “No, that won’t work. Take a look at the others.”

“Okay,” I said, curious now. I popped open another document. This one said Backend processing that wins the internet. “Better,” I said.

“Yeah? Good. Okay,” Bryce said, rising. “Can you make notes here”—he leaned across me again to open a spreadsheet, a scent of soap and something spicy dancing by as he did—“and just check in with me at the end of the day?”

“Oh, no, I can’t—“

“Hey, Gin? I know you can. I’ve seen your credentials, remember?” And then he turned and left me there, obviously believing I was someone I definitely was not.

But as I flipped through the documents on the screen, out of curiosity more than anything else, I realized that I very much wanted to be someone else. Even if it was just for a few more minutes.

I slipped my cell out of my pocket and called Uncle Flynn’s shop. “Would it be a problem if I took the rest of the day off?” I asked.

“Not at all, sweetheart. You do something fun, Ginny. You deserve it.” My uncle and aunt were always a little bit too kind to me, as if they believed I’d been through so much that even a harsh word might topple me right off the edge of sanity.

It might not have been far from the truth.

I got to work recording my notes, not having much idea who I was supposed to be or why I was doing it, but when an hour had passed and I realized I hadn’t thought of my parents even once, I knew it was a good thing. Even if it was just for today.

Chapter Two

Bryce

Interns were definitely getting hotter. Two others had checked in earlier today, and both had looked far less confident and put together than Gin. Although I questioned her choice of attire for a first day at a new