Into the Fire (Bridge Book 2) Read Free Page A

Hawkins, here to see David Reilly,” I said with a polite smile.
    “One moment.” He brought the phone to his ear. “A young woman is here to see you, Mr. Reilly. Vanessa Hawkins. Shall I send her up?”
    My stomach tightened as Reilly’s muffled voice came through the receiver. Instinct, maybe. Or my body’s habitual reaction to his tone, even from this distance.
    The young man hung up and nodded toward the elevators. “He’s waiting for you. You can go right up.”
    A few seconds later, I was on my way up. I leaned against the cool metal wall of the elevator and let my mind play ping-pong between the plans I was hoping to keep tonight and the much-needed vacation I was going to be enjoying in less than twenty-four hours.
    Despite it being Saturday, Reilly had called in a favor, and I begrudgingly obliged. His dry cleaning was going to be delivered to his townhouse on the Upper East Side. Instead of having me ensure they had his new address, he insisted I pick it up and deliver it myself so he had it for meetings this week.
    David Reilly had challenged the limits of my patience for the last two years in his employ. Some days were better than others, but just when I thought I’d taken enough of his shit, I harnessed the will to endure a little more. Something amazing was on the other side of this, I promised myself daily.
    The elevator opened and I stepped out, the doors silently closing behind me. Suddenly I felt incredibly small and out of place. I muzzled my internal tirade as I catalogued the enviable features of the loft I’d entered. Between the slick dark wood floors, clean modern furnishings, and the few glass walls separating some of the rooms, the space felt positively expansive by New York City standards. Never mind the floating staircase leading to the second floor with more square footage than I wanted to think about. I had no idea how much a place like this would cost, but knowing Reilly and his financial prowess at our firm, it was well within his budget.
    Reilly shuffled down the stairs quickly and approached me where I stood, a few feet beyond the elevator entrance. He was dressed in a dark brown sweater and blue jeans. Soft brown loafers covered his bare feet. His casualness alarmed me. I’d rarely seen him outside of his designer suits. He seemed more relatable maybe, though I couldn’t name a single thing we had in common outside of our humanity.
    He wasn’t bad looking, with sharp features and shrewd gray eyes. He was maybe five feet nine but toned and had enough presence that despite my many frustrations working with him, I wouldn’t dream of crossing him. Few men or women in the world of Wall Street would.
    He reached for the dry cleaning hangers that had been hooked over my sore pinky. “Good,” he said, tossing the plastic encased garments over a nearby chair. Black-and-white prints, a stark modern look that matched the rest of the room.
    I blinked, breaking myself out of my sensory overload, between the loft and this different Reilly in front of me.
    “Place looks great. Once you unpack, of course, it’s going to be really nice.”
    He almost smiled. “You should have seen the townhouse at Sutton Place.”
    If the place he’d shared with his ex was half this luxurious, I wouldn’t have minded standing around and gawking the way I was now. “I’m sure it was beautiful.”
    His stare turned stony in a way that had my stomach tightening up again. Had I said something wrong? He made a nondescript sound, his jaw hardening. “Well, the bitch can have it,” he muttered.
    I nibbled nervously on the inside of my lip. The ink was still drying on his divorce papers, and this was the final stage, it seemed, of his permanent separation from Cheryl. He rarely spoke of her now. For as long as I’d been his personal assistant, their social lives, at least the parts that I’d been exposed to, rarely intersected. She traveled a lot, a common excuse for why she couldn’t attend company