Page 38 of Falling into Place

“I’m okay,” she answered honestly, urgently scrolling through her brain to make sure she hadn’t missed some sort of meeting or appointment.

She still wasn’t used to the fact this job didn’t require her to show up and clock in at a certain time, and being at home on Monday morning felt a little like cheating. “How are you?”

“I’ve been better. I have something to discuss with you, and I’d like to do it in person. Could you come by the office this morning?”

Oh God. “Sure. Is everything okay?” Was she in trouble?

“Let’s talk about it when you get here.”

Her stomach flipped with unease. “I can be there in an hour, is that okay?” Her hair was a complete mess, so she had to do something about that before going in.

“I’ll make myself available. See you soon.”

Hands shaking, Carly ended the call and put her phone down, her mind racing through the possibilities.

A client issue? A company layoff? She’d recently met Jacque at the outlet mall to help her find something for her anniversary dinner and hadn’t charged her a fee for it.

She’d just wanted to help, but her business-minded boss might not see it that way.

Was it possible Mai heard something about Carly and Brooks’s relationship?

Pepper regarded her from the back of the couch. She gave him a quick scratch and got up, trying to convince herself it probably wasn’t as bad as all that.

Maybe it wasn’t anything bad, at all.

An hour later, Carly walked through the glass doors of the downtown high-rise that housed Mode’s offices. As promised, Mai was waiting for Carly as soon as she arrived.

Mai closed her office door and gestured to a chair. “Have a seat.”

Carly did as asked and resisted the urge to fold her arms across her stomach like a child in the principal’s office. Mai sat on the opposite side of her desk.

“I appreciate you coming in, and I want to get right to the point. But first, I want to ask if there’s anything you want to tell me. Anything you think I should know that might negatively impact the company.”

The underhanded question caught Carly off guard, and she was quite frankly exhausted after yesterday.

So even though it was unlike her, Carly replied with a question of her own, her tone more irritated than it probably should have been when speaking to her boss.

“Is there something specific you want to ask me about?”

Mai pivoted easily. “You completed the updated professionalism training over the summer, correct?”

Oh God. This had to be about Brooks. But what had she heard, and why was she concerned about it?

For now, Carly stuck to the specific question at hand. “Yes.”

“And signed that you’d comply with the code of conduct outlined in that training?”

“I did.”

“Someone brought to my attention that you may have violated that policy with a client. Brooks Martin. Is that true?”

Who could have brought that to her attention?

Sasha was the only one who knew about them, and there’s no way she’d have ratted them out, right?

Carly didn’t know what to do. She wasn’t the type to lie, especially not at work and not to someone she’d considered a friend for so long.

But in this moment she understood why someone would, out of desperation to keep their job.

“I ... I don’t—” She stumbled, trying to think past the panic fogging her brain. “I don’t know what this could be about. We’ve worked closely throughout the whole series, though we’re pretty much done, now. Did someone mistake one of our shopping appointments as something ... more?”

Mai stood and came to Carly’s side of the desk, leaning back against it. She pulled out her phone and tapped the screen. “Listen, Carly. I’ll be straight with you. Mrs. Princeton said she saw you and Brooks together and that things looked ... more than professional. She has photos.”

Mai handed Carly the phone.

The photos were grainy and far away, as if taken from inside a building, but it was Brooks and Carly, alright. In the parking lot of her accounting firm the day he brought her coffee. She swiped to see a series of three photos.

One of them just standing there, talking. One with their arms around each other, when he’d hugged her after learning about her job.

And the last one just before they broke apart, with his lips in her hair.

They didn’t look good, she’d give Mai that. Then something Mai had said seemed to click in her brain.

“Wait, Mrs. Princeton? Chet, my ex-client’s wife?”

“Yes.”

“Why the hell is she taking pictures of me?” That was creepy as hell.

“I only know what she told me—that she was meeting with her financial planner and was waiting in the lobby. She saw you come off the elevator and recognized you for ... obvious reasons. From the window she saw who you were meeting.”

Carly was about to ask why on earth this woman would care, and note that her personal vendetta against Carly (that was completely unfounded) was going a little too far. But with Mai’s next words, it all made sense.

“She recognized Brooks, too, from the Bachelor series. She said she’d followed it religiously from the start and even encouraged her daughter, Madison, to sign up for the dating app in hopes she’d be a match. Evidently, she was.”

Her stomach rolled, her fingers turning to ice. She had the sudden urge to crawl underneath the desk and hide.

Shit.

Madison Princeton. Brooks had mentioned a Madison but couldn’t remember her last name. She was the woman he’d gone out with the day after these photos were taken.

“She believes you and Brooks were together when he went out with her daughter and that he got her hopes up for no reason. Understandably, she’s extremely upset about it.”

This was bad. Even though Brooks had said Madison wanted to be with someone else and was using Brooks as a pawn to get her mom off her back, it wouldn’t help for Carly to bring that up.

The truth of the matter was, she had gone against company policy and there was photo evidence.

She could try to explain the images away—say they looked worse than they were—but they had done much worse in private. Either way, the damage was done.

First with Chet, now this. Mai deserved her honesty.

“I didn’t expect to feel this way about him,” Carly admitted quietly, staring at the image on the phone still in her hand. “I never meant for this to happen. It’s real, what I feel for him. If that even matters.”

Mai sighed. She took the phone, laid it on the desk, and massaged her temples. “You’ve put me in a terrible position, Carly.”

“I’m sorry.” And she was.

A few moments of silence passed before Mai spoke again.

“I believe that none of this was deliberate, and that you weren’t acting with sinister intent.

But you broke company policy. Someone else saw, and you confirmed it.

Even if you and Brooks are in a genuine relationship now, I can’t ignore those facts.

Even if I wanted to, HR wouldn’t let me.

I hope you understand ... my hands are tied. ”

Carly knew what was coming, but she still flinched at Mai’s next words.

“I’m going to have to let you go.”