He leaned against the doorframe again, giving me a smug grin. “Don’t tell me you’ve never looked. Never thought about playing the field.”

“And looking is the same as touching?”

“So you’ve never touched?” He glared at me, a pointed, suspicious expression in his eyes as his brow pulled together. “Not once?”

I rested a hand on the railing at the top of the stairs. “Are you accusing me of something?”

He folded his arms across his chest again. “Guilty conscience?”

“Jesus, Jake. I don’t have time to play mind games with you.” I put my hands up. “I have never cheated on you. Never.”

“If you say so.” Jake knelt and picked up the key I’d dropped. He held it up. “Thanks for bringing this back.”

Then he disappeared into his apartment.

I stared at the door for a moment, wondering what the hell had just happened. Was he always this manipulative? Did he always find a way to turn things around on me?

Shaking my head, I went down the stairs and got in my car. As I started the engine, I thought back to the last few fights we’d had. I tried to think of one-just one-that hadn’t ended with me apologizing, but couldn’t. Yet virtually every fight had started because of something that had upset me.

And now he was even trying to turn his infidelity around on me.

I cursed under my breath as I headed down the street, letting his apartment fade in the rearview. I still hated how this whole thing went down, especially knowing that Nathan had to get hurt, too, but I’d be damned if I wasn’t glad to have washed my hands of Jake.

Two weeks after I evicted Jake from my life, it was business as usual at The Epidauran. My feet were on the desk and a stack of invoices spread across my lap when Dylan came into the office and shut the door behind him.

“It’s that time again,” he said.

That was never a good sign. I groaned and sat up. “Do I want to know?”

“Time to drop some dead weight.”

“Huh?”

“Claire.” He gestured with a file folder. “Got a trail of write-ups a mile long. She’s been warned.” He shook his head. “Nice kid, but she’s gotta go.”

“Damn,” I said, sighing. “I thought she was doing better lately.”

He shook his head. “Hasn’t been on time once in the last two weeks. Last Wednesday, she was almost an hour and a half late.”

I blinked. “Really? Christ, I just talked to her about it again on Tuesday, too.”

“Yep, I know,” he said. “Unless you think we need this kind of crap, it’s time for her to go.”

“Shit.” I rubbed my temples. “Sounds like this is long overdue then. Not going to be pleasant.”

“Never is, my friend,” he said. “Part of the job.”

I sighed. “Whose turn is it?”

“I had to fire Gavin.” He held the folder out to me. “It’s definitely your turn.”

I put my hands up and shook my head. “Come on, I let Tanya and Paul go.”

“Gavin cried,” he said. “Criers count as two.”

I rolled my eyes. “We’re flipping a coin, then.” I fished a quarter out of a drawer and balanced it on my thumb. “Call it.”

As I tossed the quarter into the air, Dylan said, “Tails.”

The coin landed on the floor and we both craned our necks.

George Washington’s face had never looked so smug.

“Looks like you’re the lucky winner.” Dylan dropped the file into my lap.

“Fuck,” I muttered. As much as we joked about it-behind closed doors and well out of earshot of employees, of course-both of us hated doing this. In fact, we were both pretty lenient and flexible with our employees, but for the last year, we’d been plagued with the tardy, the irresponsible and the insufferable.

Claire Hill fell into both of the first two categories. Unfortunately, not the last. Those were the easiest to fire. In fact, I secretly found great satisfaction in booting certain people out the door if they were obnoxious enough. Not Claire, though. She was actually a very sweet girl, and we both liked her a lot.

But this was a business.

“What time does she come in today?” I asked over my shoulder as Dylan walked past.

“Her shift starts in twenty,” he said. “So she’ll probably be here in forty.”

I groaned. Knowing my luck, she’d be right on time today. The late ones were always on time the day we canned them. Always.

Tossing the folder on my chair so that I wouldn’t lose it, I left the office to make my rounds before Claire showed up. Dylan usually holed up in the office during the day unless we were slammed, but I liked to check up on my employees to make sure they were on task. I didn’t pester them or try to micromanage them, but I knew the kinds of things they could get up to if left to their own devices for too long. I had, after all, done my time as a theatre employee. I’d probably invented half of the crap they pulled on me.

But I didn’t get a chance to make my rounds this time: Just as I’d predicted, Claire was on time. In fact, she was almost fifteen minutes early. She walked into the lobby as I was passing through, so I figured I’d just get it over with.

“Hey, Claire,” I said, just before she went into the back room.

She turned around and smiled. “Hey, Zach. How’s it going?”

“Good, good.” I dropped my gaze and cleared my throat. “Listen, after you clock in, would you mind coming by the office for a few minutes?”

Her smile fell and so did something in my gut. She had to know. Most of the employees knew. They tried to keep it from Dylan and me, but we were well aware that an office summons at the beginning of a shift had been dubbed “the talk of shame” and the subsequent walk to the exit was “the walk of shame”.

Claire swallowed and nodded. In a quiet voice, she said, “I’ll be there in a minute.”

I waited for her in the office. She took her time, but there was no sense getting upset with her. If she needed a few extra minutes to compose herself, knowing what waited for her, then I wasn’t going to deny her that.

Besides, it gave me a few minutes to zone out and think of a certain broad-shouldered attorney that had been on my mind for the past two weeks. It was probably a good thing I didn’t have his phone number. Right or wrong, I wanted him again. I hadn’t had sex like that in, well, I’d never had sex like that. I wanted more, I wanted-

“He’s gone,” I muttered to myself through clenched teeth. I tapped my heel on the desk and my thumb against the armrest, trying to do something with all this nervous energy. I needed to make my rounds, if only to give myself something to do other than think of Nathan.

Come on, Claire, don’t leave me here with my thoughts. Firing her wasn’t going to be pleasant, but neither was pining after someone I couldn’t-and shouldn’t-have.

I glanced at the clock. If I were you, I’d want to just get it over with. I leaned back in my chair and put both hands behind my head as I stared up at the ceiling. It occurred to me then that I’d told her to clock in first. Maybe she was milking the time clock for a few extra pennies before heading in here. I sat up and was just about to head for the door when a faint, timid knock stopped me.

“It’s open,” I said.

The door opened and Claire appeared, eyes down and cheeks a little red. “Sorry I took a few minutes,” she said, closing the door behind her.

“Don’t worry about it.” I sat up and rested my elbows on the desk. She looked at me and swallowed hard, probably noticing my more upright posture. Everyone here knew that I handled all but the most serious or formal discussions while kicked back with my feet on the desk. I’d once heard one of the guys ask another how bad an ass-chewing was. The response of “Zach sat up in his chair” nearly made him blanch.

If Claire had had any doubt about why she was here, she probably knew by now. I gestured toward one of the chairs opposite my desk, and she sat.