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Chapter One

I needed a good idea. Not aninterestingone or one with potential. Nope. This had to be a real stunner. The kind that would cause the men sitting around the conference room table in their plain white, nine-hundred-dollar Tom Ford sneakers to break out in a chorus ofoohhs andaahhhs.

Hell, I’d settle for tepid approval and a few half-hearted nods at this point.

Living in Washington, DC, and being single meant wading through a dreary dating pool of guys in striped ties. I didn’t have a problem with stripes, in general, but these stripes tended to be worn by a specific clout-chasing Capitol Hill type. This clout-chasing Capitol Hill type asked the same two questions at the start of every date:Where do you work?andWheredid you go to college?

Being twenty-six and no longer actually in college, I didn’t understand why the latter mattered but College of Charleston. Go Cougars! The answer to the former was Nexus Opportunity Ideas. I’d worked there for four months and three days and still had no idea what I did for a living other than sit at my desk and play games on my phone.

NOI was a business incubator thatfound and developed business opportunities for savvy investors. The description came right from the company website. I know because I memorized it andrepeated it with confidence whenever anyone asked me about my job. The explanation was only slightly more comprehensible than the company name, which sounded like pure gibberish.

My best friend, Whitney, worked in human resources at NOI. She’d texted, emailed, and called me about an open position the second before the official listing went live to give me the chance to “get in fast.” Yeah, no pressure.

Whitney made enough money to buy a sweet one-bedroom two blocks from Logan Circle. Sure, it barely measured six hundred square feet, but it had a private terrace and a walk-in closet. I rented a studio apartment on the fourth floor of an in-need-of-renovating building with a leaky faucet, wallet-depleting rent, and a broken elevator.

Whitney easily won that round of adult bingo.

If only to rescue my ego and bank account from obliteration, I needed to survive the six-month probationary period at NOI. Two months to go.

The position sounded great in the employment listing. Talk about false advertising.Dynamic work environment! Innovative teams! Breakfast and lunch provided!The promise of a daily free bagel won me over. But to get the job I had to... let’s say embellish.

Lie. I had to lie.

The job requirements were vague, or I pretended they were. Business or finance degree? Not really or at all. The ability toquickly and effectively develop new investment opportunities and strategize about their implementation and financing? No idea what that even meant. But Whitney vouched for me, and I owed her big-time.

One problem remained. I hadn’t pitched a single actionable idea since starting at NOI. I kept my head down, made calls, attended meetings, and researched other people’s projects. Basically, a computer program could do my job and no one would need to feed it a free bagel, so my days were numbered. I had to start doing something or get better at faking being busy.

“Kasey?”

Kasey Nottingham. That was me. Unfortunately. I stopped staring out the window at The Wharf, the strip of restaurants, businesses, and residences on DC’s southwest waterfront where NOI was located. That location being the best part of the job. Food everywhere and if I squinted I could see the tail end of the National Cherry Blossom Festival from the smaller conference room. A perk the company recited with pride at the initial interview back in November, months before the cherry blossoms appeared.

This town took its flower festivals very seriously.

Brock Deavers had called for my attention and now he had it. He managed to be the most annoyingI went to Yaleblowhard I’d ever met and that was a high bar to clear. He was my immediate boss. I’d been foisted on him without his input and clearly over his objection, and now worked on his team. Lucky me.

That team consisted of other guys who went to Yale or Yale-like schools. They played around in canoes or kayaks—not sure about the difference—on the weekends as they traded stories about their college rowing days. Never mind that they were in their thirties. In Brock’s case forties but pretending to be thirties.

At CofC we called these guys assholes.

Every member of the five-person team was an assistant director because this company handed out titles like free bagels, but Brock was a full-fledged director.Theguy in charge. Dressed to perfection in his expensive-but-trying-to-look-casual black pants and zip-up hoodie.

He hated me. He never said the actual words out loud, but he telegraphed his disdain at every opportunity. He sighed whenever I opened my mouth. He trampled over the few comments I rarely offered. He’d also delivered a lecture yesterday about myworkloadthat should have lasted five minutes max but droned on for forty.

His smirk now shoutedgotcha!“You wanted to talk about a business idea today?”

Ah, okay. We’d entered the passive-aggressive portion of the meeting. This was a challenge. Brock’s way of testing. Worse, of showing everyone I didn’t belong in this super-dynamic and not-at-all self-important company.

He wasn’t totally wrong but still. Screw him.

The charged silence dragged on just long enough for people to start shifting around in their leather chairs. If they thought they were uncomfortable they should have tried being me.

“Pies.” The word popped out of my mouth to a round of frowns. Some guys in the room leaned forward in what looked like the body language equivalent ofwhat the hell did she say?

The most pronounced scowl belonged to Michael Bainbridge, the owner of NOI. The same Michael who had some sort of epiphany or spiritual awakening and now insisted on being called Micah. Because it was totally normal to changeyour name if you thought a different one sounded cooler. His parents must be so proud.

Fifty and trim, Micah ran more miles each day than I had in my entire life. He’d also taken a class on effective listening and spent the majority of every conversation repeating back whatever anyone said in the form of a question.

“Pies?” Micah asked, right on cue. His eyes narrowed behind his black-framed, very serious glasses that matched his newly minted name. “Are you hungry?”