WRIGHT WITH BENEFITS (Wright Standalone)

1. Annie

1

Annie

A brisk wind whipped around my bare legs, swirling the skirt of my black dress and flipping it upward, Marilyn Monroe–style. I shrieked, batting at the material in a desperate attempt to bring it back down to an acceptable length. The wind didn’t seem to hear my string of curses because it just bit into me harder, making me regret forgoing tights.

“Oh my God,” I snapped as I clutched the material in my hands.

The wind whistled in response. A cackle if I’d ever heard one.

I glared up at the stupid Lubbock wind. It wasn’t enough that the temperatures were in the low thirties already at five thirty on this Friday afternoon right before my last semester of medical school started; the wind had to rub it in.

“Annie, why are you standing out here?” Cézanne asked. She wore a black jumpsuit that highlighted her dark brown skin with her box braids pulled up into a high ponytail. She somehow looked professional and like an imperious, avenging angel. “It’s below freezing.”

I prayed to the Lord for patience and grinned at my closest friend in my cohort. “The wind attacked me.”

She eyed me skeptically. We’d known each other pre–med school, and she still sometimes looked at me like I’d sprung a second head.

I waved her off. “Whatever. I’m not having a good day.”

Which was an understatement. My house had flooded! Like, straight flooded. My room was a wreck. I’d lost half of my closet, including all of my shoes. Like, every pair, except the impossibly high snakeskin heels that I’d scrounged out of a pile of donations I hadn’t gotten rid of yet. My room was essentially awash until maintenance showed up. I’d be living on the couch for the foreseeable future.

If that hadn’t been bad enough, I’d been nearly run off the road on the way here. Some dipshit had driven straight through a red light, and I’d had to swerve to avoid getting T-boned.

Today was officially over.

I stepped inside the rustic building the medical school had rented for the event, and Cézanne closed the door.

“Well, if you’ve been having a bad day, I hate to ask, but where’s the wine?” Cézanne asked warily.

“What wine?”

“The…wine. You know, the case of commemorative wine for Professor Rodgers and the rest for the retirement party. The entire school is coming, and…there’s no wine.”

“What the hell? Who was in charge of that?”

Cézanne looked at me blankly.

“No,” I told her.

“It has your name next to it.”

I shook my head. “I swear I wasn’t in charge of the wine.”

She passed the list to me, and I saw where my name was scrawled unintelligibly. I groaned.

“Are you sure it was even called in? I didn’t do it.”

“I’m not sure who called it in, but I have the original order request.”

“Let me see it.”

I plucked it out of her hand and stared down at it. Phew! It was three thousand dollars’ worth of wine. The commemorative case alone was a grand. Well, no wonder Cézanne was wondering where the hell all the wine was.

Unfortunately, it didn’t say who had put the order in. But I knew for a fact that it wasn’t me.

I took a deep breath and then released it. “How can I help?”

Cézanne grinned. “Can you please call the Wine Boutique and find out what happened?”

“Yeah, I can do that.”

“Thank you. Thank you. I knew I could count on you to get s**t done.”

I sighed. What else could possibly make this day worse? Might as well try to get the wine, so we could all get f****d up today. Professor Rodgers was only retiring once.

Cézanne checked off a slot on her to-do list that rested on an actual clipboard. I loved Cézanne to death, but sometimes, her organizational skills were so extra. There was a reason she was top of our class and in charge of all of our events.

I stepped away from Cézanne to make my phone call. The Wine Boutique’s number was on the top of the order, and I dialed it with another sigh. This was what I got for being dependable. The line rang and rang and rang. It felt like an eternity before the voicemail clicked over.

“Thank you for calling the Wine Boutique. Sorry we missed your call…”

I hung up and tried again. And again. And again.

No answer.

Their hours said that they were open until six. I had another thirty minutes. They should have answered their phone.

“Gah!” I growled, wanting to throw my useless phone across the room.

Of course no one was answering. It was just my day. I checked the address on the sheet again. I knew where this place was. It was only a five-minute drive downtown on a good day. Today was not a good day, but I had enough time to still make it.

“Cézanne!” She glanced over at me. “No one is answering. I’m going to head over there and find out what happened.”

“You’re a goddess, Annie. Truly.”

“I still say that I wasn’t in charge of this.”

“Well, find out who was then, ’kay?”

“Yeah, yeah,” I muttered as I headed back outside.

I braced myself against the cold and hustled back to my car. As soon as I shut myself back inside, I blasted the heat. The Spirit Ranch was a wedding venue on the north side of town that we’d gotten at an uber discount since it was the off-season. But Cézanne had somehow still made the space look gorgeous, even going as far as renting an outdoor tent, complete with heaters. But with the sun already going down, I couldn’t imagine standing out there. Maybe with enough alcohol in me.

I winced.

Right…alcohol. That thing we didn’t have.

With a groan, I peeled away from the building and headed toward downtown. The Wine Boutique was nestled in the heart of the city between an old city hall and a historic hotel, which had recently been renovated into high-end apartments. Downtown was finally—finally—beginning to blossom into the Lubbock local scene that everyone had always hoped for. It had a long way to go, but I could see where it was headed.

I parked out front, bracing myself for the cold, and rushed toward the front door. My hand settled on the gilded doorknob, and I yanked on the door. I groaned, feeling my shoulder give as I pulled too hard on a door that wouldn’t budge.

“f**k,” I spat.

The hours on the front door said I had another fifteen minutes before they closed—because, of course, it had taken me longer to get here. I peered inside at the darkened interior. A few lights were still on, and a woman sat behind the counter, typing on the computer.

I banged on the front door. “Hello!”

The woman’s head popped up in confusion. Then she dashed across the room, unlocked the door, and threw it open. I nearly fell inside.

“Hey! Sorry about that. I didn’t expect any other customers,” the woman said. She wore a blue dress with sensible heels. Her brown hair was severely parted down the middle and pulled back into a bun. Her lips were painted a pretty pink, and her dark eyes were lightly lined.

“Not a problem.”

“I’m the owner, Sophia. How can I help you?”

“Annie,” I said, taking her outstretched hand and shaking it. “I’m actually here from the medical school. We’re hosting a retirement party for one of our distinguished faculty up at the Spirit Ranch today. We ordered a few cases of wine from here, but it was never delivered.”

I passed over the order form to Sophia, who looked even more surprised when she scanned it over.

“I have this order,” she said, “but it’s for next weekend.”

“No, it’s for today. We’re all back in rotations next weekend.”

“I don’t even have to look it up. I know that I have it for next weekend.”

Sophia immediately went to the computer. I followed her, standing before the desk. She quickly printed out a similar form and passed it to me.

I glanced down at it. It was nearly identical to the draft form I’d handed her, except that the date was filled in on the completed form and it was in fact for next weekend. What the hell?

“Oh God,” I groaned as I looked at the signature.

Who the hell put Bryan Clifford in charge of this?

Bryan was our resident fuckup. He’d only gotten through the last three years of medical school because his mother was on the board and kept bailing him out. I prayed for anyone who had him as a doctor after we finished all of this. Lord, save me from mediocre white men.

I had no idea how it had gone from my name on Cézanne’s list to Bryan ordering the wine and putting the wrong date on it.

“You’re right. It is for next weekend.”

“I’m really sorry,” Sophia said.

“Do you have the wine in stock?”

“Sure, I have it, but my drivers are already gone for the day. I don’t even have a van here tonight to deliver it myself.”

My heart sank. “Can’t you call someone?” I asked, teetering toward desperate. “It’s, like, a three-thousand-dollar order. You’ll lose that if we don’t figure this out.”

She shot me a pained expression. “I don’t know who I could get to come in time. I can text a few drivers, but I’m sorry. It seems like a stretch, and I have a meeting after I close.”

“I’d appreciate it. It would be really helpful. I don’t know what else we’re going to do.”

Sophia patted my hand across the desk. “Let me shoot off those texts. Hopefully we can fix this.”

“Thanks,” I said with a sigh and then pulled out my phone to text Cézanne about the disaster. I had a feeling Bryan was about to get eaten alive by her after she found out.

I waited for news from Sophia when the bell over the door jingled.

I glanced up from my phone, praying to whoever would listen that one of the drivers had come back for some reason or another. Some serendipitous reason that would save my shitty day. We could pack up the van and drive out to the ranch, and I’d look like a hero.

Instead, I turned around and found the last person in Lubbock I wanted to see. The one person who had fractured my trust and left me a little more cynical than I’d been before. A line had been drawn in the sand. No matter that we’d had a one-night stand with the best s*x of my life, I wouldn’t open myself back up to be shattered by Jordan Wright again.