Hate Notes Read online

  A shot of Charlotte in the arms of some guy caught my attention. They were all dressed up, and his arms were locked around her little waist as they kissed. She had one hand wrapped around his neck and the other was holding out her hand to the camera with her fingers splayed wide. My eyes dropped to read the caption, I said yes, before returning to the photo to examine the rock on her finger. She wasn’t wearing that ring anymore. Maybe Little Miss Crazy and I really did have something in common after all . . . other than we both liked her in a red bikini.

  The next morning, I went in search of coffee downstairs in the hotel. I stopped short, spotting Charlotte inside the small gym, and watched through the top of the glass door. What the hell is she doing? She was alone in the tiny mirrored room. Only she wasn’t exercising. She was sitting on one of those big exercise balls, bouncing up and down, while watching the television hanging on the wall and chewing on a Twizzler.

  I shook my head and chuckled. God, she’s so nuts.

  When I opened the door, her head whipped around to look at who had walked in, and it must’ve thrown off her balance. She bounced up and then hit the corner of the ball with her hip, causing her next bounce to land her flat on her ass on the floor.

  Shit.

  I walked over and extended my hand. “Are you okay?”

  She smacked at her chest with her hand and spoke with a strained voice. “I just swallowed a piece of Twizzler down the wrong pipe because of you.”

  “Because of me? How is it my fault?”

  “You scared me.”

  I arched a brow. “It’s a public gym in a hotel, Charlotte. People are going to come and go. That’s how facilities open to the public work. No appointment necessary.”

  She clasped my extended hand and gave it a yank that was harder than necessary to get up. “God, you’re so condescending. Do you hear yourself?”

  Standing, she brushed imaginary dirt from her clothes and hands. That’s when I got my first look at her outfit. I’d been so preoccupied watching her bounce up and down on that stupid ball that I hadn’t noticed it before.

  “What the hell are you wearing?”

  She looked down. “Betsy gave me this. They keep a stash of new clothes donated from local businesses for emergencies. You know, like when guests lose their luggage on flights and stuff.”

  “Betsy?”

  “The woman at the front desk who checked us in? She introduced herself to you and wears a name tag.”

  Whatever. Charlotte’s outfit was interesting, to say the least. She wore a black T-shirt with the Applebee’s logo emblazoned across the front, coupled with a pair of men’s Gold’s Gym shorts that were rolled at the waist yet still fell to her knees. But the most intriguing part of the getup was her exercise footwear—white terry cloth slippers that were four sizes too big, with “Holiday Inn” written across the front.

  “You can’t use the equipment in that. It’s not safe.”

  She rolled her eyes. “I know. That’s why I was exercising on the ball instead.”

  Both my brows shot up. “Exercising? Is that what you call sitting on the ball and bouncing while eating candy?”

  Her hands went to her hips. “I just finished exercising, and I was taking a break.”

  “To eat Twizzlers . . .”

  “I bet if you look at the product information on a package of Twizzlers compared to a bottle of Gatorade, it’s not all that different.”

  “Gatorade provides hydration and has electrolytes and potassium. Twizzlers are straight-up sugar.”

  She scowled at me. “God, you’re so annoying.”

  Apparently we were done talking again because she opened the door and walked out without another word.

  It looked like shit, but it ran. The mechanic had managed to secure my cracked bumper that had hung down and rubbed against my tire, but the car would need to go into the dealership for bodywork when we got back to the city.

  I was just about to merge onto the expressway at the spot where Squirrelgeddon had happened yesterday. Shaking my head at the memory, I asked my passenger, “Is the coast clear? I wouldn’t want a field mouse to run across the road so that I wind up with another ten grand’s worth of damage.”

  She glared at me. “Today a field mouse or a squirrel, tomorrow I’ll be reading about your plowing into an old lady crossing the road.”

  I hid my smirk. “You have a vivid imagination. Tell me, Charlotte, did you speak to your old boss this way? No wonder you were unemployed.”

  I side-glanced and saw her face drop. Shit. I’d been joking around, but it looked like my snide comment had hit a sensitive spot. She stared out the window as she answered.

  “My boss at Roth Department Stores was a pig. He deserved way worse than a little teasing.”

  I felt a knot tighten in my chest. My eyes flashed to Charlotte and then back to the road. “He harassed you?”

  “No. Not really. Not in the way you think, anyway. Although I did catch his secretary bobbing for apples one night under his desk, and it wasn’t even Halloween.”

  “You walked in on him getting a blowjob?”

  She continued to stare out the window. “Yep.”

  “Crap. What did you do?”

  She sighed. “I threw my engagement ring in his face.”

  It took a few seconds to realize what she’d said. “Your boss was your fiancé?”

  “Well, he wasn’t my direct boss. But he was my boss’s boss.”

  “Shit. Sorry.”

  She shrugged. “Better to find out before the wedding than after.”

  That I knew firsthand to be true. “What kind of work did you do before this?”

  “I was an assistant buyer at Roth’s in the women’s department. My ex-fiancé is Todd Roth. His family owns the chain.”

  “Did you quit, or did the asshole have the nerve to fire you?”

  She smiled at my term of endearment. “I quit. I couldn’t work for him and his family after I broke off the engagement. Plus, I honestly never intended to do that type of work to begin with, so it wasn’t like I was working at my dream job anyway. Although in hindsight, I probably should have lined up another job before quitting. I wound up taking crappy temp jobs for months, and it killed me financially.”

  “His loss,” I said.

  She smiled sadly. “Thanks.”

  I wasn’t the best at expressing empathy, even though I could relate to Charlotte’s situation. You don’t just lose a partner; you realize you never had one to begin with. I was relieved when Charlotte’s phone buzzed and diverted her attention. She spent a few minutes typing before speaking again.

  “The Wootens have an offer on their Florida property. Neil Capshaw said it’s an all-cash deal with a quick close. I also set you up with a call for Friday morning with Mr. Wooten and moved your appointment with Iris like you requested.”

  I glanced at the time on the dashboard. It wasn’t even eleven yet, and she’d gotten everything done even though I’d given her the list of things to do yesterday afternoon right before the accident. “Great. Thank you.”

  She put her phone back in her purse. “Are we going straight to the office?”

  “I wasn’t planning on it. We should be back in the city by one. I don’t have anything on my calendar until three, so I thought I’d go home to shower and change. But you can take the rest of the afternoon off. Yesterday was a long-enough day.”

  “No, I’d rather not take any time off. But thank you for offering. Iris gave me some things to do when I get back, and I want to get started. Although I’d love to run home and shower quickly, too, before heading back in.”

  “Okay. I’ll drop you wherever you want and then see you back at the office later.”

  She was quiet for a moment. “Would you mind dropping me at my apartment? I’m not too far from the office, but they’re doing midday work on the A train that slows everything down, and I want to get back to the office quickly to get started.”

  “Of course. No problem.�
�� Remembering her logic as to why she wouldn’t let me pick her up yesterday morning, I said, “I take it you’re okay with me seeing you naked now?”

  Her face pinked up. “What?”

  “Relax.” I laughed. “I wasn’t propositioning you. I was using your analogy from the other day when you were okay with me knowing where you lived but not seeing your building.” Although I suppose she’d figuratively shown me herself naked in the last twenty-four hours, too. I knew the details of her breakup, that she was adopted, even some of the things on her crazy Fuck-It List. It troubled me that learning all that made me feel closer to her.

  “Oh.” Charlotte laughed and sat back into the passenger’s seat. “Yes, I suppose I’m okay with you seeing me naked now.”

  After that, she relaxed for the rest of the ride to the city. I, on the other hand, definitely did not relax, with thoughts running through my mind that Charlotte was okay with me seeing her naked.

  CHAPTER 12

  CHARLOTTE

  The office was eerily quiet.

  It was early, but not so early that I expected to unlock the front door to the office suite. Even though I’d stayed until after seven last night, I hadn’t gotten as far as I’d wanted to with Iris’s project list. So I’d come in at six thirty this morning to get a jump on the day.

  After flipping on all the lights and booting up my computer, I headed to the break room to make a pot of coffee. While I waited for it to brew, I decided to clean some spills inside the refrigerator that I’d noticed on Monday. It looked like a container of orange juice had spilled on the shelf at one point, and no one had bothered to wipe it up. I grabbed some paper towels and Formula 409 spray from underneath the sink and bent to clean the glass on the middle shelf while the smell of coffee percolating filled the air. The back wall of the refrigerator had some hardened orange gunk, too, which I could only reach by pulling the shelf slightly out and stretching my entire arm inside and up the rear wall. That was exactly the position I was in, my body bent as I scrubbed the inside of the refrigerator and my ass prominently on display, when a man’s voice from somewhere behind me scared the shit out of me.

  “What the hell are you doing?”

  I jumped and whacked my head on the shelf above where I was cleaning.

  “Ouch! Shit.”

  Attempting to stand, I realized that not only had I banged my head, but I’d also managed to get the top of my hair stuck on something inside the refrigerator.

  “What the fuck, Charlotte?”

  Of course, it had to be Reed.

  Visualizing what he was seeing, I took a deep, cleansing breath before speaking. “I’m stuck.”

  “You’re what?”

  I waved my hand, pointing to where my hair was caught. “My hair. It’s stuck on something. Can you take a look?”

  He mumbled something I couldn’t make out and then came to stand behind me. Leaning down, he had to bend over my ass to see what my hair was caught on.

  “How the hell? Your hair is wrapped around the lever that you crank to make the shelf higher and lower.”

  “Can you just unwrap it? Or cut the piece off if you have to. This isn’t exactly a comfortable position.”

  “Stay still. Stop squirming. The way you’re moving around is making it tighter.”

  I stayed as immobile as I could while Reed had one hand on my head and the other working to untangle whatever I’d snagged. It wasn’t easy, considering my body was acutely aware of the close proximity of his. But once I stopped moving, it took only a few seconds for him to free me.

  Rubbing my head where the root had been yanked, I stood. “Thank you.”

  Reed folded his arms over his chest. “Do I even want to know?”

  “I was cleaning a spill and my hair must’ve gotten caught.”

  “You came in before seven in the morning to clean out the refrigerator. We do have a cleaning crew, you know.”

  “No. I came in here to make coffee. But while I waited, I figured I could clean the spill since I’d noticed it the other day.”

  The coffee machine beeped, signaling the brewing was done, so I turned and grabbed the mug I’d brought in and poured a cup. Turning back to Reed, I held up the pot. “Do you have a mug?”

  “No. I just use the Styrofoam ones we keep up in the cabinet.”

  I frowned. “Those things are so bad for the environment. You need to get a mug.”

  Reed squinted at me. “Did Iris tell you to say that?”

  “No. Why?”

  He reached over my head, opened the cabinet, grabbed a Styrofoam cup, and then took the pot from my hand. “Because she’s been harping on me about that for years.”

  I offered him a sugary smile before sipping my coffee. “Maybe you should listen for a change.”

  Allowing him to consider that thought, I left him in the break room alone.

  While Reed and his brother primarily focused on real-estate sales, Iris’s side of the business managed properties that the Eastwood family owned and provided management for clients who owned commercial buildings. Although there was some crossover where the brothers kept a building to manage if they had sold it or had a relationship with the owner.

  One of the projects on Iris’s list was to compile one database of all the cleaning-company vendors that they used so she could solicit bids for managing multiple properties for a cost savings. In order to do that, I had to go into each of their individual folders on the system and pull up information on every property. While Max’s files were a disaster, with Word documents and Excel spreadsheets strewn all over the place and no clear file-naming system in place, Reed’s were as organized as I would have expected. Each property had a separate folder named with the building’s street address, and inside each folder were separate subfolders that were logically organized, such as the one labeled MAINTENANCE, where I found most of the information I needed.

  It took me a few hours to compile almost everything. Information from only one property of Reed’s was missing: 1377 Buckley Street. After checking the property’s folder a second time, I clicked around to check a few other folders that were not labeled with addresses. One such folder was simply labeled PERSONAL. Inside there were a dozen subfolders. I perused the titles for anything that might be misfiled and found folders such as MEDICAL, CONTRACTS, LEGAL . . . there was even one labeled WEDDING. Curious, I left-clicked on the mouse to look at the last time the folder had been opened. It hadn’t been accessed for more than six months. I was just about to close out and take a walk over to Reed’s office to ask him if he knew where I might find the information for the remaining building when I saw there was one lone, unfiled Word doc. This file was labeled BUCKET.

  Thinking nothing of it, I clicked to check out the contents. What I found shocked the crap out of me. Reed had made a fuck-it list of his own.

  Throughout the entire morning, I couldn’t get Reed’s list out of my head. Although it wasn’t necessarily the contents of his list but more the fact that he’d made one at all that boggled my mind. The man had laughed when I’d told him I was working on my list. Yet he’d made his own bucket list? And I’d checked the time on the file. It had been created at eight o’clock last night and last updated a little after ten. He’d still been in the office when I left around seven. I just couldn’t imagine that he’d stuck around for hours, working on his own list. It seemed too out of character for him. There were definitely two sides to Reed Eastwood—a side that he showed me and the rest of the world, and a side that he kept hidden. I could totally see the man who penned the beautiful blue note having a bucket list of things that he wanted to achieve in life, but certainly not the condescending Reed that he was to me most of the time. Then again, there were these brief moments when I felt like I was catching a glimpse of the other Reed. But they never lasted for very long.

  I strolled the aisles of the dollar store on my lunch hour with a basket in my hand, lost in thought. I’d come to pick up silver baking trays, paper towels, and rubber glo
ves—three things I used in excess when I worked with pottery clay—but I never left the dollar store without a bunch of junk I didn’t really need. My basket had tissues, a few plastic bowls, hair ties, and a bunch of spices that were too cheap to pass up even though I didn’t have a clue what I’d use them for. When I arrived at the shelving with seasonal mugs, I decided to pick one up for Reed so he’d stop using the Styrofoam ones for his coffee.

  Fingering through mugs with Halloween pumpkins, Valentine’s hearts, and menorahs on the front, I snorted when I picked up one particular red mug. It was Christmas-themed, and the cartoon picture on the front was of a group of boys wearing sweaters and scarves while singing Christmas carols. I couldn’t resist buying it, considering what he’d written as number three on his bucket list.

  Sing in a Choir.

  Sometime in the middle of the afternoon, it dawned on me that maybe Reed had planted that list on the server to screw with me. Could he be poking fun at me? Or did he have an epiphany after hearing about my list and truly decided to make his own? I couldn’t very well come right out and ask him since I’d be admitting that I’d snooped in his personal files. Well, I could, of course, but last time I did that he’d gotten pretty pissed off. So I decided that I’d gauge his reaction to the mug I’d bought him. If he’d planted that list and made up the crazy part about singing in an all-male choir, I might be able to see it in his face. So around five o’clock, I made a fresh pot of coffee and fixed a cup just for my boss in his new mug.

  Reed was looking down at a stack of papers when I knocked on his open office door. It was the first time I’d seen him wearing glasses. They were a tortoiseshell-colored, rectangular pair—very studious—that really worked with his chiseled face. God, he looks like a sexy Clark Kent. They must’ve been only for reading, because he took them off when he looked up.

  “Did you need something?”

  In that moment, quite a few unprofessional answers popped into my head. I shook the thoughts away and stepped forward with the full mug of steaming coffee. The picture on the front was facing me still. “I thought you could use some coffee.”