Page 3

“Because you’re obsessed with me,” Lola replied, shine returning to her eyes along with the sparks of fire.

Pulse stomping to a high-energy dance song, Carmen lost control of herself. “You’re completely delusional. Only you could cause a car accident and blame anyone but yourself—”

“You could have waited,” she repeated, jaw tight and aura around her singing, “but you’re always trying to fuck—”

“Enough,” Bamford said, voice soft, as if she’d never had to do more than whisper to command a room. “I’ve made my decision.”

Carmen and Lola turned to the woman in unison. Without knowing she was arguing before a judge, Carmen hadn’t been able to craft an appropriate case. At her side, Lola was keeping her body still, but inside she was a can of soda that had been shaken up with one of those machines that combine paint.

“You will complete an anger management course,” she said, her fox still sleeping in her arms and blissfully unaware of the surrounding chaos. “It is apparent that both of you could stand to learn how to communicate without screeching.”

Lola stepped forward, carbonation pushing at the seal, keeping the building energy contained. “Ms. Bamford, what do you mean by—”

“I’ll have my assistant send you the details,” she said, already returning to the backseat of the ultimate display of extravagant luxury. In the backseat, a woman with cropped gray hair was waiting, probably holding another freaking fox. “If you don’t complete the course, I’ll have your respective establishments evicted.”

“You can’t do that,” Lola replied with a laugh.

Bamford stopped with her hand on the car door handle. She only turned her head to look at them. With the confidence of true and complete privilege, Bamford smiled. “I can do anything I want. It’s my building, and I will not have this toxicity in my home. I don’t need it seeping into the air vents and disrupting my harmony.” She opened the door. “Move your cars.”

Carmen didn’t protest that she hadn’t taken photos of the crash for the lawsuit she’d definitely file against Lola. There were cameras in the garage trained on the cars exiting and entering. She would get what she needed from them. As for anger management, she was sure that Bamford couldn’t force them to do it. As soon as she got up to the office, she’d pull the lease agreement. There was no way she could terminate their contract if they refused.

“I hope you’re proud of yourself,” Carmen hissed under her breath before starting for her car.

“I hope you like paying for my attorney’s fees,” Lola barked.

Behind the wheel of her own car again, Carmen took a deep breath and tried to still the tremble that had started in her hands and worked its way through her entire body.

In the hermetic silence of her SUV, she acknowledged that she shouldn’t have hit the gas when she saw Lola’s car cutting into the garage. It had been a stupid impulse. There was just something about Lola that made her lose touch with her normally excellent judgment.

As the BMW pulled away from her with a sickeningclank, Carmen regained herself. She wasn’t going to do some ridiculous anger management course, and she wasn’t going to let Lola get away with being an overgrown 34-year-old brat.

CHAPTER3

Fury would have beenenough jet fuel to carry Lola up thirty flights of stairs. She would have climbed all the way to Dominion’s offices if it weren’t for her concern about showing up sweaty and out of sorts. She didn’t wake up in the pre-dawn hours to shower, do her makeup, iron the shirt she’d worn under her black jacket, and slick her hair back into the perfect middle part, low bun combo, just to look like wet recycling when she walked in.

Relieved that Carmen had only been able to move her car out of the way and call for a tow truck, Lola relished her moment alone in the elevator. She only made it up two of the parking deck floors before one of the suits from the accounting firm on seven got on, but it was enough to center herself. Walking in empty-handed wasn’t nearly as bad as walking in late, and late to Lola was a second after Natalia.

Given that Natalia hadn’t driven up to find Carmen making a complete spectacle in front of Bamford, she should be in the clear. That settled her overactive nervous system.

The moment the elevator doors opened in Dominion’s lobby, Lola took a deep, cleansing breath. It was dark and the security light on the door leading from reception to the inner offices was red.

She was the first person through the door that morning. Regaining her equilibrium, Lola’s sense of control returned. She turned on the lights, disabled the alarm, and filled the waiting room’s coffee machine with fresh, filtered water.

Carmen and her ridiculous bullshit would not ruin her day. Natalia had promoted her from assistant agent to associate because she was competent and a problem solver, not because she flew off the handle at any little thing.

Although Natalia hadn’t ever had to deal with Carmen. If she had, she’d definitely understand that the aggravating woman was impossible to ignore. The water bottle in her hand was suddenly too soft and crumpled under Lola’s grasp, sending water all over the glass coffee table behind the receptionist’s desk and down her pants.

“Shit!”

Looking down at her black pants, Lola realized for the first time that Carmen had spilled Natalia’s coffee all over her as well as her car. Her car detailer was already on his way after she’d sent him an urgent message, and her brother had promised to come to the office and plunge out the dent in her back bumper and trunk before he reported to his probation officer, but it wouldn’t do for her to look like a mess.

Rushing to the bathroom, Lola tried to clean the evidence off of herself. The black pants could hide the spill well enough, but the specks of brown on her white shirt were like billboards of incompetence. The more she tried to extinguish them, the more they seemed to spread.

Another deep breath while she looked at herself in the mirror, fixing the tiny smudge in her eyeliner before she applied nude lip gloss. There was no need to panic. This was why she kept spare clothes in her trunk.

Her lip curled. Her clothes were in the trunk she couldn’t open because Carmen couldn’t stand to wait two seconds for her to get in the garage. So entitled.

After texting her brother that he needed to get there now, Lola dried her shirt under the hand drier and left the bathroom. In the split second she’d been in the bathroom, everyone had apparently swarmed the office like ants on a dropped ice cream cone.