Ruined (Ethan Frost 1)

Too late I realize that he could have just as easily emailed my boss or had his secretary make the call. The fact that he’s hand-delivering me to the second-floor conference room makes all this feel like more than it is. More than I can let it be.

When we get to the conference room, he once again opens the door and gestures for me to precede him. He’s such a gentleman, even when I wish he

wouldn’t be. It sounds cowardly, and I pride myself on facing up to my fears, but just this once, I wish he’d go in first. I can see my boss at the head of the conference table, the other seven interns I met yesterday sitting at attention on either side of her, hanging raptly on every word that she says. I’m certain none of them was even a minute late for the meeting.

Maryanne looks up the second the door opens. She doesn’t see Ethan right away because the way he’s holding the door open puts him to the left of her sightline. Which is fine—I don’t want him fighting my battles for me anyway—but the first step I take into the room feels like my first step on death row. Like I’m a dead woman walking her way straight to Frost Industries’s own version of the guillotine. Or the electric chair.

“Ms. Girard, thank you for joining us. ” Maryanne’s voice rings through the room, sounding snippy and more than a little put out. “But the meeting started almost half an hour ago—”

“I kept her, Maryanne. ” Ethan’s voice was charming, the look he shot my boss even more so. I don’t know what else he says to her because he crosses to where she’s sitting and speaks to her in a voice so low it becomes nothing but an indistinguishable murmur to the rest of us.

The other interns are all staring at me, some with curiosity and some with blatant hostility. I cross to one of the empty seats at the table and slide into it. My injured hip protests a little, but I ignore it. The last thing I want to do is show any weakness now.

I know that Ethan thinks he’s doing me a favor—and maybe he is, with my boss. But with the other interns all his appearance here is going to do is cause me grief. I can feel it in the assessing way the male interns are looking at me, as if they know exactly what Ethan and I were talking about earlier. The female interns aren’t as blatant—especially not Chrissy, who was my mentor yesterday, and the most welcoming of the group—but I can tell they, too, are putting the pieces together and coming up with a picture I really would rather they didn’t.

At the front of the room, Maryanne nods and smiles. Ethan steps back, says a few words to the room as a whole. Even stops to talk to a couple of the interns who are on the side closest to the door. They preen under his attention, and I know what he’s doing—he’s trying to protect me, trying to make things as easy for me as he possibly can. If him coming here with me ends up giving the other interns a chance to shine, then maybe I won’t get as much grief.

The knowledge warms me, even as I doubt that what he’s doing will have much of an effect. I’ve been the pariah before, I know how it works. And a few benign words from on high rarely gets the job done.

Sure enough, once Ethan leaves, most of the room goes back to staring at me. I concentrate on pulling my tablet out of my briefcase and preparing to take notes on whatever shit assignment my tardiness has left me with.

Maryanne makes no move to give me my assignment, though. Instead she dives right back into what they were doing when I got here, which is talking through the main points and areas of interest in each case that is being assigned this week. While different people are in charge of the research and grunt work for different contracts, Chrissy explained to me yesterday that Maryanne likes to go over the main points of all of them with the group so that we all learn the ins and outs of different types of contracts and research. And so we can take over for each other with as little disruption to the actual attorneys as possible if something goes wrong.

It’s actually an extremely valuable learning tool and I’m grateful to be included in the process, even if I don’t know what research I’m going to be working on. By the time the meeting breaks up at ten-fifteen, I have page upon page of notes and a much better idea of some of the main cases deciding intellectual property law in the tech industry today.

The others file out, but I wait behind for my chance to talk to Maryanne. I still don’t have any research assigned to me, but I didn’t want to bring that up during the meeting. I’ve already been the object of enough speculation and interest today to last me for the rest of the summer.

Chrissy hangs at the door for a minute until she snags my attention. Then she mouths for me to come find her when I’m done.

Some of the knots in my stomach slowly untwist themselves. Maybe I’m being too sensitive. Maybe everything will be all right after all.

But then Maryanne finishes the conversation she’s having with Rick, one of the interns who has been here the longest. He doesn’t look happy when he turns away from her, but he keeps a professional demeanor—at least until his back is to Maryanne and his eyes meet mine. Then he glares at me and mouths the word “slut” before walking to the conference room door with a calmness that belies the hatred I saw in his gaze.

So much for everything being all right.

“Thank you for staying behind, Ms. Girard,” Maryanne says as she walks over to me. “I wanted to speak with you about your work for the next few weeks. ”

“I’m so sorry I was late. ” I know Ethan cleared it, but I feel the need to apologize anyway. “It won’t happen again. ”

“Don’t be silly,” she trills. “I understand completely. If Ethan had wanted to talk to me this morning, I probably would have blown off the meeting, too. ”

Shit. It’s worse than I thought. Though she’s not admitting to it, my boss is angry. Really angry—hence the passive-aggressive wording of that last statement.

“I fell in the stairwell and hit my hip pretty hard. ” I show her the now melted ice pack. “Mr. Frost was courteous enough to help me and ensure I got some ice. ”

“So he told me. Are you feeling okay now?”

“Yes. I’m fine. ”

“Good, because with the project you’re being assigned, you’ll have a lot of work to do. ”

“The project?”

“Yes. ” She eyes me coolly. “Whatever you and Ethan spoke about must have impressed him quite a bit. He’s requested that we put you on the research for the Trifecta merger. Have you heard of it?”

I feel my eyes widen and my heart rate increase even as I nod. I don’t know a lot about the Trifecta merger—no one does, as it’s been pretty hush-hush in the business papers—but I know it’s a huge deal. One that stands to make Frost Industries a lot of money, not to mention help them expand into another area of the biotech field.

I tell Maryanne what I’ve read about the merger, which, again, isn’t a lot, but she seems slightly mollified. “I just emailed you what you need to know about the research, along with an outline and timeline that Rick put together on what the lawyers need and when they expect to have it. Please follow the timeline—any deviations will need to be cleared by me. ”