Liz Donovan

Prologue

Byron smiled pleasantly as they passed in the hall, but after she was out of earshot, he muttered her last name through clenched teeth, under his breath, "Donovan."

Disgust dripped from every syllable as he uttered it.

He hated the memory of when they first met. He wished he could purge it and the memory of happiness from his mind. He had been a fool and seeing her so often didn't help. It also didn't help that so many other people liked her, and her stupid horse face so much. If only they knew her like he did, they wouldn't.

"Donovan," he uttered under his breath again and shook his head.

Chapter 1

Fluorescent lights illuminated the office with a brightness that stood in contrast to the way Byron felt on the inside. The gray of the cubicle walls more closely matched his morale. Those walls surrounded his desk on three sides, extending halfway to the ceiling. The side by the aisle was open, and the cubicle across from him was a mirror to his own. It was unoccupied. The two cubes were open to one another, but IT set it up so that the occupants faced away from one another. It reminded him of grade school when the teacher sent him to the corner for misbehavior. Only he hadn't misbehaved. His job just sucked.

He stared at the monitor and slumped in his chair. He heard murmurs from other cubicles but couldn't hear well enough to eavesdrop. The guy right over the wall used his speakerphone to talk to another guy within earshot. The second voice reverberated as he heard it twice.

Stuff like that is why people cuss. Why doesn't one of them just get up and go to the other's desk? Then aloud, but in a whisper, he said, "Idiots."

The smell of burnt popcorn wafted over from somewhere and mingled with the aroma of the bad coffee he got from the break room. He sipped it reluctantly. Then he rested his forehead on his palm. His elbow was on the desk, and his fingers ransacked what little effort he made on his hair. Frustration brimmed as the CAD software bogged down on the company's aging network. At least he was trying to work. Oftentimes, he couldn't say as much. Boredom would take over, and he would get lost in thought or the internet for hours. Honestly, he could only claim to work a good ten percent of his time, but the job was so boring that he should be congratulated for that rather than criticized.

Then he heard the soft shuffle of feet. He jerked his head up and tried to sit straighter in his chair. John Bayer, a manager from somewhere else in the building, stepped into view, and he had a young lady in tow. Obviously looking at the nameplate on his cubicle, John said, "So uh, Dwayne, this is Elizabeth Donovan. She's going to be a temp clerk with us for a while. I talked to Mike, and he cleared me to use this cube over here. She's going to sit across the aisle from you for a while."

The bastard can't even get my name right before introducing my new neighbor. He took a breath. It was IT and the label makers who got my name wrong. It's not actually John "the Bear's" fault. He smiled at his inside joke with himself, changing Bayer to "The Bear."

Then he looked at the girl. Her dark brown hair hung past her shoulders. Her eyes were green, and she had kind of a long face.

Not bad. Not hot, but she'll do. She'll do? She'll do, for what?

He could feel the hot spot on his head where he rested it on his palm. He brushed his hair down as he stood up, and he extended his hand to her. "Actually, I go by Byron, my second, I mean my middle name."

"Well, I actually go by Liz, short for Elizabeth," she said, accepting his hand and shaking it. Byron noticed her perfume as he stood close enough to shake hands. She smelled nice.