Poison: The Seaclusion Series, Book One

Chapter 1-2

“…So that’s how you transfer calls to their voicemails. Cassie? Any questions?”

Cassie blinked when she heard her name. She turned toward the nurse who was training her. It was a stretch to think that her new role as receptionist required training. The job was basically a phone with multiple lines for crying out loud, not an intricate surgery. Cassie finally nodded in response to the nurse’s patient smile.

“Dr. Tyler likes his calls written down on this log, so he doesn’t have to scan all his voicemails. Okay?”

“Sure,” Cassie said, drawing her body up straighter. Dr. Tyler. Holy s**t. She was talking casually about how to handle phone calls for John Tyler. It made her scalp tingle. It was only seven-thirty in the morning, and unbelievably, she’d run into an ex-boyfriend who detested her, had been fired, re-hired, and put her two new bosses at odds over her.

And now here she sat at the mercy of John Tyler. She couldn’t leave as John wanted her to do, because she needed this job. If circumstances had been different, she would have taken one look at John and walked out of the clinic without a word of protest. Did he really think she enjoyed seeing him? Or that she wanted to wait around for him to say what he had been waiting for a decade to say to her? She would gladly find a different job far away from him.

But her situation didn’t give her that choice. Her life had slid out of her control to the point that she lived in a rundown trailer, with little money, no family support, and now the job she’d come to this particular town for would most likely be sabotaged by John.

Harry Everhart had agreed to help her when she had contacted him four days ago in desperation because she had to disappear, and disappear now. She had wiped out her savings, left her business, her apartment, and her entire life behind, without a phone call to anyone, not even her sister Kelly.

Then she had moved to Seaclusion, Washington, a place she’d only ever heard of as the return address on the yearly Christmas card Harry sent her. The plan had been she would work for Harry and hopefully go unnoticed as Harry’s secretary. That had been the idea, until John recognized her.

Didn’t he think she too had been stunned? Dismayed? Totally appalled to see him? Did he really think she relished the thought of working for him? With him? Around him? She didn’t want anything to do with him. Being a well-educated doctor, she would think he could deduce that on his own.

Cassie pressed a finger into her eye socket as Nurse Bishop went into an in-depth explanation of how to greet new patients. Really, this wasn’t life-saving CPR instructions. The only thing the nurse’s chatter accomplished was letting Cassie’s mind wander over the horror her once nice life had become in only a few short days.

And to cap off that terror was the unbelievable luck that the solution to her situation had led her into John Tyler’s office. Yeah, that hadn’t gone so well.

When she’d first seen John from his doorway, she’d stopped dead in her tracks. She hadn’t meant to gasp, but really, John Tyler as her boss? It was as unbelievable as if she’d won the lottery. When he’d raised his black eyes, she’d known instantly he still passionately detested her. She’d wanted to roll her eyes at timing and fate and life in general. But she’d been too busy trying to explain to John that she couldn’t quit, and as far as she understood, he couldn’t fire her.

Dr. John Tyler? Why couldn’t John be something more normal? Less successful? Less noble?

And why couldn’t he have changed more? Maybe gotten fat, or zits, or lost his hair? Oh no. His hair shined as glossy and black as when she used to run her hands through it as he lay across her lap. There wasn’t a blemish or clogged pore to ruin his stern, dark, sexy face. For John rarely smiled. But when he did smile, his dark eyes crinkled in the corners, and his lips quirked up to the side. She’d at one time felt like she found a speck of gold in a pile of sand when she made John smile. Not so much the effect he had on her nowadays.

They’d both moved on in the ten years since they’d broken up. John from the college-bound freshman she had known to become a successful doctor. He had flourished beyond even the normal idea of success while she had screwed up nearly everything in her life to the point that her marriage was now detrimental to her health.

Cassie sighed. She pressed a hand to her chest to calm her racing heart as she tried to tune back in to the inane chatter of Nurse Bishop. She had to stop thinking about John. Her present life was too much stress at this point, let alone to be woolgathering about a love affair gone wrong from ten years ago. She had to make sure John didn’t find a way to get her fired. Because what John didn’t understand was that she had a son to protect. John thought he could scare or intimidate her away from this job. It made her want to laugh out loud. Yeah, like John’s belligerence could even touch the total dysfunction of the rest of her life.