“Son of a bitch,” I cursed, massaging my knees before pressing a palm to my stinging cheek. An imprint of half of my face remained on the desk and I used my shirt sleeve to wipe away the oil. My jaw itched, so I scratched at the stubble forming there and on my cheek and neck as I looked blurrily around my office at Apple headquarters.
What time was it?
My phone continued to ring. The time on the screen read seven forty-five. Who the hell was calling me so early?
With a groan and a crack of my neck, I answered the call. “This is Max Fisher.”
There was a long stretch of quiet on the other end.
“Hello?” I stood and indulged in a stretch. Cracks echoed up and down my spine. I was getting too old to be falling asleep at my desk and spending the night hunched over in a chair. This would leave kinks in my back and neck for days.
“Max?” A feminine voice filled the line.
I hadn’t recognized the number on the call display. “Who is this?”
“Are you serious?”
“If I wasn’t serious, I wouldn’t have asked. Who is this?”
“It’s me, baby,” the woman said, her voice a husky purr. “It’s Sienna.”
Of course.
I held the phone away from my ear and spoke directly into the speaker. “Stop calling me.”
With that, I hung up and blocked the number. At that very moment, someone poked their head through my half-open office door. I glanced up and squinted at Shawn Bowen, my assistant, who narrowed his eyes as I tossed my phone down on the desk.
“Was that who I think it was?” Shawn’s blond curls were tight and still damp. He must have just arrived at the office because he usually showed up earlier than everyone else and let his hair air dry over the first half hour of the day. His eyes were bright and blue and there were no purple bags beneath them like I was sure there were beneath mine. Shawn was a young, energetic, somewhat frantic young man who had no off-button and relentless energy that I had to admit I was mildly envious of.
I sighed and paced around my office to the coffee bar, where I began brewing a pot. I held it up in way of offering Shawn a cup.
“No thanks, sir,” he said.
I shot him a dark look. “I thought we established that you don’t call me that anymore.”
Shawn smoothed down the lapel of his gray suit. “Sorry, sir. I mean Max.”
“Better.”
Shawn chewed the inside of his lip and gazed pointedly at my phone on my desk. “So it was her?”
“Sienna? Yes.”
“Not to overstep but I think you might need a restraining order, sir—sorry. Max.”
“She’s not worth the trouble.”
Shawn blinked. “Cold.”
I shrugged. “Maybe.”
The coffee finished brewing and I poured myself a cup. I sipped it black, scalded my tongue, and appreciated the burn for bringing me all the way around to being fully alert.
The last thing I needed was Sienna Cuthbert circling back around like a vulture ready to pick at my bones once more.
She and I had a six-week-long relationship near the beginning of the year but I’d quickly put a stop to things when I realized she wasn’t the kind of woman I wanted in my life. She was beautiful, to be sure, and when things first started between us, I’d fallen for the big doe eyes, the curtain of luscious blonde hair, and the voluptuous figure. She’d reeled me in with sweet words and pretty smiles and tricked me into thinking she was someone she wasn’t.
After Piper, I wanted to believe there were other women out there with hearts like hers and maybe that had made me a little more vulnerable than I used to be. And naïve.
Sienna, it turned out, was legitimately unhinged.
After just four weeks, she started talking about marriage and asking me if she could borrow my credit card for shopping sprees. She didn’t take kindly to the word “no” and spiralled off the deep end and unleashed unholy hell on me and my house like a spoiled teenager. That little episode sealed the deal for me that she and I were over. I broke it off and sent her packing, and the following evening, she’d showed up in my driveway drunk as a skunk with a baseball bat and beat the shit out of my McLaren, a three-hundred-thousand-dollar car.
At the time, I didn’t know if I was more furious or confused.
I never saw that kind of backlash coming. Sure, I’d had my fair share of bad breakups, but Sienna took the cake when it came to crazy ex-girlfriends.
After trashing my car, my sister, who’d been at my house that night so we could call my grandmother over video call together, had called the cops. Down at the station, I was presented with the option of pressing charges or not. Holly insisted I use the law to my advantage and charge Sienna but that didn’t feel right. I agreed not to press charges as long as Sienna got some help for herself. She agreed and I hadn’t heard from her in months.
Until two weeks ago when she started calling me up out of the blue, begging for me to take her back. She said she’d changed. She was a new woman. She was sober. And she was sorry.
But she couldn’t have changed that much because here she was, calling me for the sixteenth time in four days after I’d told her to leave me the hell alone.
With a nod, I gestured for Shawn to follow me and we stepped out of my office and made for the conference room, where I had a call with several board members scheduled for eight thirty.
Shawn hurried along beside me, taking quick steps to keep up with my long strides. “What is she asking for?”
“She wants to get back together. And she claims there’s something important she needs to tell me. I don’t have the time or energy to listen to a word she has to say.” I sipped my coffee as we swept into the conference room.
Shawn and I began making sure each place setting had a coffee mug and water glass. It would be a long meeting. Pastries and snacks already waited on a silver platter in the middle of the table.
Shawn and I took our seats. We had half an hour to kill and we usually used this time to go over changes in the office or upcoming commitments of the day.
Shawn had his schedule in hand where he kept all his notes and he flipped it open while shooting me a wary look.
“What?” I asked.
“You slept here again last night, didn’t you?”
I tried to fix my suit by tugging at the sleeves. “Is it that obvious?”
Shawn nodded.
“Shit.”
“Maybe that’s only because I see you every day. The others won’t notice.”
Unlikely. I raked my fingers through my hair in an attempt to smooth it down. It felt coarse and unruly, and based on the way Shawn winced as I tried to tame it, I was failing. With a disgruntled sigh, I gave up trying.
“This is as good as it’s going to get today,” I said.
“We need to hire a new office manager,” Shawn said pointedly.
The reason I was stretched so thin at work was because I wasn’t only doing my job, but I was doing the work of an office manager too. It was starting to cut into every facet of my life. I was back to being at work twenty-four-seven just like I had been before Piper came along and pointed out my workaholic ways. Our previous manager had left six weeks ago to pursue an opportunity overseas.
Since then, every day seemed to blend into the next. Sometimes I went home at night. Sometimes I didn’t.