One day, I’ll make my way up the ladder myself and get to use the intelligence I inherited from Dad, but in the meantime, I’m paying my dues and enjoying my work. It’s busy and constant, but I could do it with my eyes closed and both hands tied behind my back while hopping on one foot.
Hmm, maybe I’ll dare Tiffany to do that later and see how it works out?
Unfortunately for Tiffany and me, we’re ten minutes late, and as we come in, we see the current bane of our existences, our boss Miranda, manning the lobby phones, looking like the proverbial chicken with her head cut off. She used to answer the phones and worked her way up herself, but I guess it’s been a while since she was in the trenches.
She’s perfectly put together, her brown hair frosted just enough to accentuate her maturity while her super-tight-even-after-two-kids body’s tucked into a form fitting mirror of our own business professional outfits.
I wonder if she’d be a good fit for my dad? Then I remember that her kids are barely teenagers and mark her off the list of potentials. Dad doesn’t need that, and besides, he already knows Miranda, so if there were sparks to be made, he’d have already seen them.
There’s definitely some sparks right now, though, her eyes blazing behind the lenses of her glasses as she hisses at us, “Where have you two been? You’re late.”
“Her fault,” Tiffany immediately says, casually hooking a thumb in my direction. “So much traffic and she drives like my Grandma,” Tiffany says before covering her mouth.
Miranda gives her the stink eye then instructs us, “You two get to work. I’ve got to brief Mr. Wolfe in half an hour and I’m not ready, thank you two very much.”
Miranda walks off, leaving us to work at the desk alone. Not that we can’t handle it. Most of the job involves coordinating interactions when visitors, delivery people, or outside contractors come in.
The most common problem we have is explaining to a new visitor that yes, while they are in the lobby and yes, they just walked in the front door, they need to take the down elevator to get to the first floor.
“Why did they do that, anyway?” Tiffany asks me after escorting a lost coffee delivery guy. I’d dared her to use an accent of her choice and she’d used a pretty good fake Spanish accent for the trip to the elevator. Back in her usual voice with no rolled Rs, she says, “We’ve been working here over two years, and I still don’t know.”
“Dad told me that some of the people working on the bottom two floors were threatening to strike,” I reply as I check the pile of mail in front of me for proper postage and labels. “They were pissy about working in the so-called ‘basement’ by having negative numbers. So the board renumbered the elevators and repainted the numbers in the stairwell, and the strike threat went away like that.” I snap my fingers to emphasize the point. “People are stupid,” I say with an exasperated sigh, but I get that sometimes, little things like that can be a sign of something deeper, so I don’t begrudge the complainers too much.
Except when I have to answer the same question for the umpteenth time in one eight-hour shift.
I turn my mind back to checking the mail, ignoring Tiffany for a bit. While I love my job, it can be boring and monotonous, like checking outgoing mail for stamps and labels. Tiff helps me keep it fun by daring me to do silly things from time to time, like wearing a pink sticky note on my butt when I go to get a coffee.
“Oops, how’d that get there? Thanks!” I tell the lady who whispers to me about it like it’s a gross misstep of proper civility.
I laugh lightly as I sit back down at my desk. There isn’t much time to do anything too crazy, which is probably for the best. Instead, we answer phones and take questions and operate as information central for pretty much the entire building.
Just after lunch, I see a large group of suits walk in, talking animatedly among themselves. Nothing unusual about that, either the suits or the talk. Fox is so successful because it doesn’t treat their workers like robotic morons, and a lot of the workers are passionate about their jobs.
There’s one suit, though, who lags behind the rest, and Tiff jostles my elbow as she notices who it is. “Oh, shit.”
My eyes follow hers and I see him. Miranda’s boss. I guess technically, my boss too, since he oversees internal operations.
It’s The Big, Bad Wolfe.
Colton Wolfe.
Tall, dark-haired, and handsome . . . with the sexiest British accent I’ve ever heard. He’s the poster boy for the new generation of Fox executives, the man who’s got it all. Brains, guts, and he’s sexy enough to make even a double-breasted gabardine suit look good.
He never says anything when he comes through the lobby. He doesn’t even look at me, though I’ve tried I don’t know how many times to get his attention.
Including offering him a good morning coffee, faking a sneezing fit, and once, dropping a folder right in front of him and bending down to retrieve it. All dares from Tiffany, of course.
I gave up after the last one, where he literally walked around my swaying ass without so much as a glance.
To say he’s handsome is an understatement. And the fact that I work in a department that he oversees . . . that I work under him . . . yeah, I’ve had a few fantasies with that phrase having a whole different meaning.
But he’s never said a word to me. Two plus years with the company, if you count summer internships, and the most he’s done is give a little two-minute welcome speech at a new hires meeting my first day on the job.
“I dare you . . . to go talk to him.”
I turn to Tiffany, who’s grinning as she looks at me. I guess I can’t blame her. I give her so much shit about her crush on my dad, so she can’t be blamed for trying to get me on my DL crush on Colton. “Tiff, we’ve talked about this. Remember the ass-waving incident? He’s a no-go.”
“I’m serious,” she says, still grinning like she’s just this side of the nuthouse. “You’ve been checking him out since you first laid eyes on him, and he just hasn’t seen you yet. Here’s your chance. If he acknowledges you and then moves on, you’ll know for sure. But until then, it’s just no guts, no glory on your part.”
“Tiff,” I plead, knowing she’s dared me and how hard it is to turn a dare down, “he’s our boss. Or Miranda’s boss, which means if I make an ass of myself, she’s going to chew it right off before the end of the day. And this is bordering dangerously close to rule number two—no sex dares.”
Tiffany isn’t swayed, though, and she crosses her arms over her chest. “I’m not daring you to fuck him over the desk. I’m merely strongly suggesting that you talk to the man. Face to face, eye to eye. I double dare you to go tell Colton Wolfe your name and that you think he’s sex in a suit.”
A double dare. Fuck. I can’t. I can’t. It’s stupid, though her words paint a rather sexy picture of the two of us. Still . . .
He walks by, my heart pounding, and before I know it, my mouth’s open. “Good morning, Mr. Wolfe! Nice suit!”
I try to keep my voice casual, not giving in to Tiff’s suggested words because I’m a daredevil, but I’m also not looking to get fired for sexual harassment by telling him the filthy thoughts really running through my mind when I see him.