Love Me Love Me Knot Read online

  “Darts, not golf, but whatever,” Amy said with a wink.

  He grinned, then began yelling profanities at the TV.

  “Sobbier?” Sophie lined up the dart with the board and flicked her wrist, striking the middle. “Bull’s-eye,” she cheered, and then bit her lip not wanting to draw unwanted attention from a certain scuzz bucket and his harlot.

  “More sobby? I don’t know.” A server brought Amy an iced mug with something from on-tap and set it in front of her. “Thank you.” She tipped the server. “Sadly kids with eating disorders are a thing now. Not really a call to action.”

  Sophie flinched. True as that may be, the teens at the café lit Sophie’s world. She knew their struggle and the very real consequences if not addressed. “May I remind you, you have never been the one to pick out a toothbrush based on its capacity to reach the back of your throat to gag.”

  Amy laid her hand over Sophie’s. “Sorry. I didn’t mean it like that. I just mean a café training teens how to eat properly may be an uphill battle as far as funding is concerned.”

  Sophie closed her eyes. Clearly she was taking out her Asher angst on Amy. “No, don’t apologize, I’m not being nice. I didn’t expect Asher to be here. And bring her. Luckily the place is packed tonight.”

  “It’s the magazine’s local well . . . and a home game. Probably should have expected it. We could have met at the café and filled these out there.”

  Sophie lifted her shoulder somberly. “I’m not ready for the gang to know we are hanging on by a financial thread. It may make one of them purge . . . or worse. Plus”—Sophie pointed at her nearly empty wineglass—“this is the only place in walking distance from the café that has fifty-calorie sangria and free darts.” She risked nausea by lifting her eyes to Asher one more time. “And it’s a wine sort of night.”

  “Priorities and all,” Amy agreed, picking up her mug and clinking it against Sophie’s glass before taking a sip.

  “Exactly. Besides, I was here first. If I leave, he may see me and he’ll think it’s because of him.”

  Amy narrowed her eyes at Asher. “He’s an ass.”

  “That’s the problem. Apparently everyone wants a piece of it.”

  “Listen.” Amy slammed her mug on the table and stabbed her finger in the middle of Sophie’s stack of paper. “No more office romance and no more distractions. We will find a way to come up with the money. Asher will be old news. The teens at the community café will continue to get the help they need. And God willing, this humidity streak will lay off my hair. They did not create enough mousse, spray, or gel to tame this wild beast.”

  Grateful as always for the pigpen mess of Amy’s hair to lighten the mood, Sophie shoved a handful of the grants in front of Amy. “Grab a pen and get to work.”

  Amy winked. “That’s my girl.”

  Sophie stared at Asher once more as if participating in the fine art of self-torture would ease the twisted knife to her gut. She had to admit it was only six dates. Hardly worth batting an eyelash over, but somehow, in the pit of her stomach, the familiar pang of rejection eroded through her.

  Sophie sighed, subconsciously patting her Ellie Award on its back. Whereas her column had won the “Oscar” for magazines on health and humor, Trixie was a measly freelance photographer at Up Front. She wasn’t even an employee. Talk about trading in filet mignon for ground beef—the off-brand kind, no less.

  The problem with working full time as a columnist for Up Front, an all-encompassing magazine focusing on life and leisure, and then moonlighting at her community café for teens with eating disorders was it didn’t give her a lot of time to find “Mr. Right.” Not that she was searching, but could it kill her to meet a good guy? Sure, she’d fallen in love once with “Mr. Nice,” but that was eons ago, and he’d completely humiliated her, so he wasn’t so nice after all.

  “Is this what we’re doing now?” Donovan Charbert asked, joining their table. “Stalking the plaintiff over darts and carbs?”

  “And wine,” Sophie said, breaking her brooding glare from Thing One and Thing Two, to smile at her favorite Y chromosome. Too bad he was the only man she’d ever met who could make a girl swoon and laugh before she caught on he was gay. All the good ones usually were. “No one’s on trial here. He is free to go out with whomever he wants.”

  “Well,” Donovan mused, setting down his glass of red, “in my opinion he’s a little too pompous for his own good.” He stroked Sophie’s cheek with his thumb. “Now, I only have an hour before I’m taking Mother to the show. The Lion King just opened last week and Mother is getting her hair fixed now.”

  Sophie took in Donovan’s three-piece, pinstriped suit. “A man who takes his mother to off Broadway . . . swooning even more now.” She batted her lashes, and Donovan blew her a kiss.

  Amy raised her mug. “It’s the best show Off Broadway. I should know, I wrote a review last week.”

  “And a beautifully executed review you wrote.” He rose his glass in return. “So how many grants have we applied for already?”

  “Sixty-seven.” Sophie tapped her fingers on top of the current list of potential donors—or future rejections if this pile was anything like the last batch she sent out.

  “Sixty-seven?” Donovan’s eyes widened. “That many?”

  Sixty-seven was a drop in the hat. There were thousands of available grants. She’d been filling them out for weeks now, and she’d earned a blister on her finger from the pen as a battle wound. So far she hadn’t heard back from any.

  She hadn’t seen her ailing grandma in two weeks either, and her current column was due tomorrow, yet it wasn’t even close to ready. Sophie took a deep breath. “Well, you know what they say: Throw spaghetti against the wall and see what sticks. I’m applying for everything.”

  Donovan held up an application. “This one is for teenage mothers who want to go back to school.”

  “Intense competition,” Sophie said. “Which is why I have to keep applying to everything with the word ‘teen’, ‘eating disorder’, ‘education’, or ‘starving artist looking for a break.’”

  Amy tapped one of the completed applications. “That’s why you have a degree in journalism. These submission letters make those animal cruelty commercials seem unworthy in comparison.”

  “There’s enough to go around,” Sophie said, taking the application from Amy. “I just don’t know why the magazine cut our funding. It’s their outreach and our biggest sponsor.”

  “Have you talked to Red?” Amy asked.

  Red Goldman. Though she absolutely adored Up Front’s editor in chief, he was a dinosaur in the industry who barely owned a smart phone. Recently he’d been incredibly distracted, so she didn’t rely on him getting the word out to corporate that they needed their funds completely reinstated. “I tried. He said he was looking into it, but you know Red.”

  “Hi, Sophie.” Asher’s voice grated on her ears. She forced her body not to squirm.

  Her throat went bone dry. “Asher.” Sophie returned the same flat tone.

  “I didn’t realize you’d be here. But I didn’t want to be rude and not say hi. We’re just leaving.”

  Sophie closed her eyes. Asher’s hand in ungentlemanly places on Trixie’s body replayed in her mind like a broken reel that wouldn’t jump to the next scene. “Okay. Bye.”

  Asher saluted the table. “I guess I’ll see you all tomorrow.”

  “See you tomorrow,” Donovan said.

  When he was finally gone, oxygen slowly seeped back into Sophie’s brain.

  Donovan rubbed her back. His warm hand comforting her. “You okay, toots? He’s not worth the effort of one salty tear.”

  “Peachy,” Sophie murmured. Totally not worth the effort. She had more important things to deal with. Like . . . “Back to carpal tunnel syndrome,” So
phie ordered. “Let’s get these applications filled out, and hopefully we’ll hear something positive soon.”

  “Way to stay focused, toots.”

  “Of course, finding life on Mars may have better odds than actually getting a grant.”

  Chapter 2

  Sophie pressed send, and all the applications she’d scanned into her laptop fluttered off into cyberspace. Now it was a matter of hurry up and wait.

  Her hand shook. She’d like to blame it on the aftermath from punching Asher in his kisser, but alas, the tremor was the result of well-earned writer’s cramp. She could have typed the grants, but something about writing the requests, in actual penmanship, held a certain dignity she hoped would weigh in her favor.

  She anticipated hearing something soon—or else. At least it couldn’t get worse.

  Until, that is, she spilled out of the elevator door and into the office.

  The low buzz went silent the minute she walked into the office.

  Julie from graphics winced at her as she made her way to her desk. “How are you, Sophie?”

  “Fine,” Sophie assured.

  Jocko, their Swedish intern who acted as a contributing editor, hung over her cubical partition. “You need anything?”

  Oh, his accent. “Nope, I’m good.”

  “Are you sure? You’re up to four hundred thousand views.”

  Sophie shook her desk mouse, and her computer hummed to life. “I’m aware.” Her voice cracked behind gritted teeth.

  “Shoo.” Donovan sent Jocko away. He set a love offering—a ginormous cup of coffee—on her desk. “One large, sugar-free, vanilla soy latte with extra foam for my YouTube sensation.”

  Sophie scrunched her nose at Donovan the Great and his ability to make all things right in the world. “You sure I can’t marry you?”

  “Sorry, if my mother doesn’t scare away all my prospects, I have my eye on someone with a tad more stubble.”

  Sophie sipped her delicious cup of goodness. “Don’t check out my legs then, because they’d have you fawning.”

  Asher’s laugh echoed from across the room. Sophie side-eyed in that direction, her lip curling in utter repulsion. “He’d better stay on his side of the ficus tree. Or else.”

  “Want me to hire a hit man?” Donovan offered.

  “You do love me, but you’ll have to fight Amy on who gets to hire the hit. Remember, the offer to marry you stands.”

  “As does hiring a hit man, toots.”

  “Tempting as the offer is, you wouldn’t look good in orange.”

  Donovan shrugged. “This is true. Okay, then, off to finish my piece on that new vineyard in Napa. Word is they still press grapes with their feet.”

  “Ew, gross.”

  “Don’t knock it till you try it.” He leaned over her shoulder. “What are you working on?”

  Sophie groaned. “That stupid hernia piece.”

  Donovan read aloud. “How to make hernias less harmful.” He let out a guttural sound.

  “I know. Tell me about it.”

  “What’d you do to piss off Red?”

  “It’s a favor for his bridge group or something. But turns out it’s probably the nail in my coffin.”

  Donovan the Great winked his unfairly long lashes. “You’ll make it shine.”

  Sophie fluttered her own lashes. “Yes, I will.”

  He flung his thick dark locks back over his shoulder. “Love ya, toots. See you at the café later?”

  “Where else would I be?”

  When 1:00 p.m. rolled around, Red e-mailed her a request for hard copies of her hernia column. He said it was this month’s exciting piece. Having an old-school editor who liked printed copies of his articles was not only uneconomical but on a day like today when the copy room was across enemy lines, or rather on Asher’s side of the ficus tree, it produced a bit of a geographical challenge.

  Maybe she could get one of the interns to make her copies. Then again, did she really want them looking at her hernia headline when she was already the topic of gossip?

  No, thank you.

  Just stride across the room, make the copies, and drop them off with Red. No big deal.

  Sophie clicked the keys to send the article to the printer, then pulled herself to her feet. Feigning great interest in her pumps—they really were cute with the wedge and slingback straps—she avoided eye contact with anyone who wanted to give her one more sympathetic look.

  She slipped into the copy room and rushed to the massive machine and pushed in her password.

  It beeped at her.

  She tried again.

  It beeped again.

  She pounded the keys harder. “I’ll beep you—”

  “Hi, Sophie,” Asher’s pretentious voice came from behind.

  Ficus. She forced herself to swallow the lump suddenly choking her. “Asher,” she hissed, refusing to give him the gift of eye contact. She held her breath and punched in the password again. The printer sprang to life, spitting out her article. Oh, God, please don’t let him see my hernia piece.

  From the corner of her eye, she saw him rest his arm against the wall a foot or so from where she stood.

  Sophie could practically feel bile seep up.

  “I have a box of your things. I can drop it off at your apartment later today.”

  Sophie’s throat tightened. No chance she’d let him anywhere near her apartment. “I’ll be at the café after work. You can drop it by there.” She snatched the printed copies from the tray and folded them in half, then turned to leave, but Asher stood in her way. She sat back on her heels, refusing to back up. “Instead of infuriating me, why don’t you go play with your new toy?”

  Asher smirked. “Her name is Trixie, she’s off on assignment, and it wasn’t personal, Sophie.”

  “Good to know, and I don’t really care.”

  Asher didn’t budge. She considered a well-placed knee that would make him move, but she was above violence. For now.

  “You’re in my personal bubble, Asher.”

  “You have a bubble?”

  “Amy!” she hollered over his shoulder. “Asher’s in my bubble.”

  Almost instantly, Amy stuck her head into the copy room. She assessed the situation and raised a critical eyebrow at Asher.

  “You should leave,” Amy advised. “I only see that look right before she makes her kill.”

  He kept his amused gaze on Sophie. “According to your boundary lines, you’re on my side of the tree.”

  Sophie’s eyes grew wide. Ficus.

  Amy stepped into the room and held the door open. “You must not have hear me. I said get out.” A few silent beats passed. “Please,” she said, barely containing a growl.

  “Whatever,” Asher grumbled. “I’ll leave your stuff at the café.”

  The simultaneous bing of all three cell phones broke the tension.

  Sophie reached for her phone, careful to keep her article hidden. It was from Red calling a mandatory meeting. What could it be this time?

  Sophie followed her fellow journalists to the conference room and took a seat as far away from Asher as possible. Amy plopped down in the chair next to her, and Donovan winked from across the table.

  Red stood at the head of the long table. In his right hand he held a fistful of pamphlets advertising the team-building trip orchestrated by their parent company, Over the Top, Inc. “Those of you who have already signed up for the company cruise, thank you. For those who haven’t registered yet, here’s some added motivation.” He drew his glasses from his plump face and rubbed his eyes.

  An unsettling fear knotted inside Sophie’s gut. Why was he stalling?

  “Ryan Pike from Sports Now will be flying in on Wednesday. He has agreed
to head the training on board the cruise as Jack Batson from Human Resources has become unavailable.”

  At the mention of Ryan’s name, Sophie’s chest tightened as if an ice pick had stabbed her in her sternum. Why Ryan? She hadn’t seen him in ten years, and for good reason. Was there not one other person in the company they could send?

  “I want all hands on deck—pun intended.” Red laughed at his own joke. “If you’re ill, I need a doctor’s note. Unless you’re the primary caretaker for your children or a relative, you’re going.”

  Sophie’s breathing accelerated into short puffs. Mandatory meant she couldn’t weasel out of it. She’d have to spend four days trapped on the same ship as Ryan.

  Red scanned the room. His eyes landed on Sophie. Red treated her like a daughter. Always asking about her grandma, taking extra time to mentor her with her articles, going out Friday nights after the café closed. His eyes appeared remorseful, and he sighed. “And due to some personal circumstances, I won’t be attending.”

  Sophie and Amy’s eyes locked. What? She turned back to Red as if to look for him to say, “just kidding” only he didn’t. Sophie slumped. First Ryan, then mandatory, and now Red wouldn’t be there to provide her the buffer she needed.

  Not happening.

  Sophie’s hand shot up. “I can’t go. Not with the café struggling.”

  Red’s rueful look said, I’m sorry, darling, but I can’t help you this time. “We need all the training we can get, and Ryan’s the best. With the way our subscription rates have plummeted the past three quarters, I don’t want any further negative attention.”

  “Not a problem for me, Red.” Asher’s dimple popped when he played kiss up. Sophie was pretty sure she saw a sparkle ricochet from the Twit’s perfectly whitened ivories.

  “Way to be a team player, kid.” Red slapped Asher on his shoulder. “But no need to suck up. I’m not happy about this, either.”