P.S. You're Intolerable (The Harder They Fall, #3)(28)

P.S. You remind me of porridge.

Frowning, I read it again and again, but clarification didn’t dawn. What was this?

I read more, one by one.

P.S. Your cyborg is showing.

P.S. I bet you sing Barry Manilow in the shower.

P.S. You wear pleated khakis on the weekend. I just know it.

It took me until the fourth strip to realize they were all exactly one inch wide and the paper matched the notebook.

Son of a bitch.

I scooped the strips back into the envelope and carried them into my office. There, I dumped them all out again and matched one perfectly to Catherine’s previously written schedules.

My heart slammed in my chest, but my brain was five steps behind. I read more of them, still trying to comprehend what I was seeing.

P.S. Are you even human?

P.S. Do you shower in your bathing suit?

P.S. You’ve memorized the lyrics to every single Nickelback song, haven’t you?

P.S. I would rather be trapped in an invisible box with a mime before hanging out with you.

What the fuck?

Understanding slammed into me like a Mack truck. These were directed at me. They had to be. Catherine had written her scathing opinion of me on the bottom of my daily schedules, then precisely cut them off and saved them in an envelope.

There must have been over a hundred.

One for each day she’d worked for me.

Holy shit. That little…

My head fell back as laughter rolled out of me. Thick, rumbling laughter from deep in my chest traveled down my limbs through my veins.

I knew it.

All these months, I knew Catherine had been biting her tongue. It had always been there, right in front of me, but she’d cut it off. Every time she’d wanted to tell me my cyborg was showing or ask me if I was human, she’d stop herself and save it for her morning ritual.

Christ, this woman. She was something else. I should have fired her for putting me through weeks of being driven insane by paper length, but this was too funny to be angry over.

My little prim and pressed Catherine Warner was an undercover firecracker. I’d always known it, but seeing the undeniable proof was wholly gratifying.

Her insults were so creative and cutting I couldn’t stop myself from reading more.

P.S. Rocks have more emotions than you do.

P.S. I hope both sides of your pillow are always warm.

That was cruel. What could I have done that day to deserve such a terrible thing wished upon me?

P.S. I’m jealous of the people who haven’t met you.

P.S. I’d rather give birth a hundred times than be in your presence.

My laughter died down, and I wondered if she still felt the same now.

My hands twitched with the urge to pick up my phone and call her to discuss this. Calling her wasn’t something I’d ever done, but I needed to hear her try to explain these postscripts away. Email wouldn’t cut it. It would give her too much time to come up with an answer.

I stopped myself, however, and called Weston instead.

“I’ve gotten to the bottom of it.”

He chuckled. “Hello. How are you?”

I leaned back in my chair, grinning to myself. “Brilliant, actually.”

There was a pause before he spoke. “You sound…chipper. It’s alarming.”

“Chipper is a bridge too far. I’ve never been chipper a day in my life.”

“Fine. You sound pleased with yourself.”

I picked up a strip, running it between my fingers. “That I am. I’ve gotten to the bottom of the notebook mystery.”

“Why does this sound like a Nancy Drew book?”

“Nancy Drew? I recall you were always a Hardy Boys devotee.”

“You’re right,” he conceded. “But The Secret Notebook sounds more like a case for Nancy. If the Hardy boys were solving it, it would be more like The Curse of the Haunted Notebook.”

I laughed as I scrubbed my face. This was the kind of conversation I could only have with Weston since we’d been friends for nearly twenty years.

“All right. Nancy solved the notebook mystery.”

“Are you Nancy in this case?” Weston deadpanned.

“Yes. Now, do you want to hear what I discovered, or would you rather name every Hardy Boys book you’ve ever read?”

“Hit me with it,” he said.

“Here goes: since I hired Catherine, she’s been handwriting my schedules, just like all my other assistants.”

“I still don’t know why you do that,” he interjected.

“Because it works for me—and that’s not the point.”

“By all means, get to the point.”

“I discovered her stash of one-inch strips of paper.”

Another pause. Longer than before. Then, “What?”

“Yes. She’s been cutting the bottom of the paper off and stashing it.”

“Okay…why? Is it an OCD thing?”

“Not that I know of.” I found myself grinning again. “She writes scathing postscripts.”

Weston exhaled, probably fed up with me dropping only bread crumbs of information. “Care to clarify?”

“Here’s one: P.S. Being with you is like wearing wet socks all day long.”

He let out a startled laugh. “That’s directed at you, isn’t it?”