I gripped her by the elbow and pulled her away from the office and our audience into a small conference room. It was the same feeling as when I’d held her wrist in the restaurant. An awakening, a hum in my blood.
“Are you dragging me in here to dismember me?” she demanded, swatting at my hand.
Reluctantly, I let go.
We were toe-to-toe just like we’d been in the restaurant. I could smell lemons again. And as angry as I was, I realized it felt pretty damn good to have someone looking me in the eye even while they hurled insults my way.
If I had to have one more conversation with a woman in this office while she spent the entire time looking at her shoes or at some distant spot over my shoulder, I was going to freak the fuck out.
“Because of me,” I explained, “you landed a full-time job with benefits that doesn’t make you smell like garlic and allows you as many restroom breaks as you require.”
“Gee. Thanks, Charming.” Her sarcasm was so thick I was surprised it didn’t drip onto the floor.
“You’re welcome,” I shot back.
She leaned in. “I really don’t like you.”
“I’m not a fan of yours either.”
We were too close. Much too close for boss and employee. And I wouldn’t put it past her to produce a knife and stab me with it.
I took two self-preserving steps back.
“Good,” she said.
“Great,” I agreed. It looked like Ally, the disrespectful pain in my ass, was the only woman in the building besides my mother who was brave enough to make eye contact with me.
Lucky me. And what in the hell was my mother thinking?
“Listen, Charming. How about you try acting like a grown-up? It’s a big company. We’ll probably never see each other.”
I tapped out a staccato rhythm with my thumb against my leg. “You’re fired.”
She smiled evilly at me, and I was taken aback by how attractive I found that. “That’s something you’re going to have to discuss with your mother. I don’t believe you have the authority to fire me.” She tapped a finger to her chin.
“That’s something I will be remedying, Maleficent,” I promised her.
“See how well we’re getting along already?” she said. “We already have cute nicknames for each other. We’re practically mani-pedi buds. Now, if you can point me in the direction of human resources, I’ll get out of your hair, and if we’re both very, very lucky, we’ll never see each other again.”
I would have liked to point her in the direction of an open window.
At least, that’s what I thought that urge was. I was confused by the fact that my dick seemed to be waking up.
“You stick to your ring of hell, and I’ll stick to mine,” I agreed.
“Perfect solution.” She yanked the conference room door open.
“HR?” she said, in a much friendlier tone to my mother’s assistants who just happened to be lurking outside.
“I can show you,” Gina volunteered. She ushered Ally away but not before the woman shot me a look of pure contempt over her shoulder.
8
Ally
“You need an emergency contact.” The same woman who had glared her way through an introduction with my bus stop buddy was tapping an impatient fingernail on my screen as I scrolled through onboarding paperwork.
Label’s HR department was made up of five very stylish women sitting behind neatly decorated desks arranged in what I assumed was an approved feng shui flow. None of the other reps looked nearly as pissed off as the short straw I’d drawn.
“Uh,” I hesitated.
“No family in the city?” She sounded like it might actually kill her to care.
“None, that I can count on in an emergency,” I said flatly.
“Then pick a friend,” she said in exasperation. “You do have one of those, don’t you?”
I guessed she was projecting.
I entered my best friend Faith’s contact information and hoped to the gods of workplace emergencies that if HR ever needed to call her at work, this lovely flower would have the honor of hearing “Club Ladies and Gentlemen, we’ve got tits and dicks.” Faith was part-owner of one of the most over-the-top strip clubs on the island.
I completed the paperwork to the background music of Lady HR’s annoyed sighs and fingernail tapping on her watch. The salary listed with the job description had me doing a little shimmy in my chair. It wasn’t “I can afford a one-bedroom in Manhattan money,” but it was “I only need three part-time gigs on the side to almost make ends meet.”
“Almost make ends meet” was way better than where I’d been when I woke up this morning.
I’d keep the dance class, the highest paying bar shifts, and take one or two catering jobs a week, I decided, running through the calculations in my head. I still wouldn’t have much time for doing the actual renovations, but this was a medium-sized step in the right direction.
If I could just hang in there until the renovations were done and the house was on the market…
“Look here.”
I looked up in time to wince at the flash of a camera.
The picture loaded onto the computer screen next to her. It looked like I was mid-sneeze. I suddenly had a good idea of who had shot Gola’s company ID.
“You’re seriously going to put that on my ID?” I asked, actually impressed with the woman’s “I don’t give a fuck” attitude.
“I don’t have all day to orchestrate a photo shoot to please new admins,” she snapped.
“Well, all right then. Let’s go with the mid-sneeze. It’ll be a nice ice breaker.” It was rather freeing to know that this was all temporary and I didn’t have to worry about fitting in or making a good impression or staying on track for a promotion.
Finish the renovations. Sell the house. Mango margarita.
The printer spat out my badge which doubled as a key card. HR lady smugly handed it over. It was even worse offscreen.
“Admin pool is on the forty-second floor. Ask for the supervisor.”
And with that, I was unceremoniously dismissed.
I found my way to the stairs and went down a flight, using my spiffy new key card to enter the suite of offices. The mood here was similar to the forty-third floor. A lot frantic, a little distrustful.
On the blindingly bright side, I didn’t have to deal with Grumpy HR Lady or Charming on this floor.
I asked the first beautiful, six-foot-tall woman I saw where to find the admin pool. It turned out that I was standing in the middle of it. Label’s second floor of offices opened into a sea of low-walled cubicles taking up some serious acreage surrounded on two sides by glassed-in offices.
Everyone was, if not breathtakingly beautiful, perfectly coiffed and tastefully accessorized.
I asked a stunning brunette who was frantically trying to fold some kind of silky chartreuse fabric into a white gift box to point me in the direction of the supervisor and caught the woman at her desk between rapid-fire phone calls.
The nameplate said Zara. Her long, black hair was tamed in a sleek braid. There were sticky notes of every color organized in neat little rows on her desk.