by Lee, Nadia
On the other hand, they said she doesn’t seem to care for their attention. That puts a small spring in my step as I stop by the break room to grab another coffee.
When I’m back in my office, drinking fresh brew and reviewing the new marketing plan for the fourth quarter, Erin finally comes in. She’s in a bland pale oatmeal-colored blouse with lots of buttons and a gray pencil skirt. Her feet are in Mary Janes again. A pair of pearl studs glows from her earlobes, and her hair’s held at her nape in a ponytail.
All professional. All neat.
But I can’t stop thinking about how she looked at the auction. Bright. Arresting. Waistline cinched and hips flaring. Hot as hell.
Yeah. I wasn’t going to think about that again, but it’s true. She was smoking. And still is, because now I’m mentally dressing her in other hot, sexy red outfits, with no back. Or a plunging neckline. Or both. And a super-short skirt. And stilettos.
I’m glad she dresses so conservatively at work because I don’t want any of those geeks seeing her like that.
My dick’s stirring. Shit. Not what I need when I should be getting ready to give her the chocolate and apologize for what happened on Saturday. How well is it going to go over if I do it with a crotch tent?
Erin sets her laptop on her desk outside my office, then walks in with a pen and legal pad.
“Good morning, David. I’m sorry I’m late,” she says, taking a seat opposite me.
Now that she’s closer, I can see dark half-moons under her eyes. Maybe she needed extra sleep, but didn’t get it. “No problem. I was just early today.”
“How was your weekend?” she asks with a smile.
She’s asking me about my weekend? I thought she’d be saying something like “How could you?” or “I’ve given it a lot of thought, but I had to send an email to HR about what you did.”
She flushes. “I mean, you know. Sunday.”
“It was…fine,” I manage. “Yours?”
“Quite productive. Thank you.”
“Did you finish the training?” I ask. I should be giving her the chocolate and apologizing, but I’m delaying the inevitable. Besides, I want to know if she did or not. It’s a matter of a boss managing his people correctly—to ensure she gets enough rest. Or so I tell myself.
“Not quite. I still have a few minutes of the final video left.”
So she followed the letter but not the spirit of my instructions. Sneaky. I didn’t realize there was a subversive side to her.
“I also watched the cooking videos you bought for me.” Her eyes sparkle with excitement.
“Oh, good.” Maybe she picked up some baking tips. I had to get those, more for me than for her. “Were they any good?”
“Yes. I made a chocolate lava cake. Speaking of which…” She goes out and comes back in with a small cake box. “I thought you might want to try it.” She opens the lid and places it on my desk, next to my laptop, along with a small disposable fork.
I stare at the black, round thing. Is it glistening? I can’t smell any chocolate coming from the cake. It should smell chocolaty, right? And isn’t lava cake supposed to be served hot?
Finally, I raise my eyes and look at her across my desk. She’s smiling expectantly, her cheeks slightly flushed.
She wants me dead. I know it.
“Did your phone go off all weekend?” I ask, trying to figure out why she’s doing this. I’m entitled to that much. Some tabloid writers can be surprisingly resourceful. Some of them might’ve figured out it was her in the picture and bugged her. Or maybe some acquaintances from Virginia did. Okay, the chances of that are small, but… There has to be a reason for these continual attempts to murder me.
“No. I turned it off after I came home from the auction,” she says. “You told me to ignore calls from you and your mom, and it wasn’t like anybody else was going to try to get in touch.”
Okay. Well, that’s good. So maybe this is about the kiss. Or bothering her on a Saturday. I look down at the cake. Penance. Just think of it as penance.
Inhaling deeply—and still not smelling any chocolate—I pick up the fork and cut off a small piece from the thing. It holds. At least the texture feels okay. It doesn’t resist like a brick.
I take a careful bite. My mouth almost rots on the spot as something incredibly bitter, vinegary and salty explodes on my tongue. I press a fist against my lips, hiding any involuntary grimace from her view.
Be grateful. At least it isn’t dog poop.
“How is it?” she asks, searching my face.
I force a smile like I always do when she feeds me baked poison and I pretend I’m not dying. “Mmm… Nice. Very nice.”
She beams.
“Thank you, Erin.” At least my eyes aren’t tearing up like they did when she gave me that chili-sauce carrot cake.
“My pleasure.” She picks up her legal pad and places it on her lap. “So. Let’s go over the day’s agenda. Feel free to have some more while we talk. It won’t bother me.”
Chapter Eleven
Erin
After I go over the agenda with David, I smile at him. “Do you need anything else?”
“I don’t think so.” His voice is calm and even. So is his expression. “Thank you, Erin.”
“No problem. I’ll leave the rest of the cake here for you. Would you like me to bring you something to drink with it?”
He smiles. “I’m fine. I’ll…get some juice later.”
Nodding with relief, I leave his office. That went a hundred times better than I expected! I spent Sunday wondering what I should do to erase the awkwardness from Saturday.
Because after thinking for a while, I decided he didn’t mean anything by the kiss. He was just giving me a friendly good-night smooch. I shouldn’t have reacted like I’ve never kissed a man before. I probably made it weird for both of us by acting like he shoved a tongue down my throat or something.
Regardless, it was smart of me to review the baking videos David bought. He got them to do something nice for me, even though it was his birthday, not mine. The chocolate lava cake did the job of smoothing things out. Mom was right when she told me that a little sugar can always make things better. She also told me only the people with the clearest, sharpest minds can make really good cakes and cookies.
I type up the executive memo David needs for his teleconference with Joe Choi’s dev team in San Mateo half an hour from now. When I’m done, I send it to him.
Bev Sanders comes by. “Hey, Erin.” Her hair is a shocking shade of red, which I’m certain came from a bottle. She wears lens-less glasses, which she says are for fashion only, and she color-coordinates her lipstick to the frames.
“Hi, Bev,” I say with a polite smile. Bev’s an accounting assistant, and quite friendly. Sometimes overly so. I’d prefer that she stay a bit more neutral…and far less nosy, but I keep that to myself, since I can’t think of a good way to tell her to leave me alone without appearing rude.
“Tiring weekend, huh?” She winks mischievously.
“Huh?”
“You’ve got dark circles under your eyes.”
Crap. I thought I hid them with concealer. I didn’t get much sleep last night, thinking about the kiss. And what to do about David when I faced him again. Okay, I might’ve had a dream about David, too. It wasn’t dirty or anything. Just maybe slightly PG-13. Because in it, he was in nothing but a white towel around his waist, displaying his impressive chest and shoulders. And he was outside my door kissing me. And I didn’t freeze. I kissed him back. And it felt like the sweetest fairy tale that sweeps you off your feet and gives you everything you’ve always longed for.
Just thinking about that makes me want to squirm in my chair to relieve the uncomfortable pressure between my legs.
Bev braces her forearms on the partition and leans closer. “So. Who’s the lucky guy?”
Good thing I wasn’t drinking when she asked me that, because I might’ve spewed it on my laptop…or her. Either of which would
be bad.
“What guy?” I ask, freaking out inside, wondering if she can tell I was fantasizing about my boss.
“Come on. You wouldn’t be missing sleep otherwise. Amazing stamina, huh?” She giggles.
“Oh. That.” I try for a carefree laugh. “No, I was up watching some training videos.” It’s half a lie. Or, come to think of it, a half-truth. I’m trying to be a “glass half-full” kind of person.
She makes a face. “Insomnia, huh? Nothing cures it like those videos.”
“Actually, they’re really interesting,” I say. Besides, I feel like I should make up for the deficit of not having a college degree. I overheard HR people gossiping, and they basically said all the assistants at Sweet Darlings have bachelor’s degrees.
“Giiiirl.” Bev straightens, waving a hand. “I need to show you interesting. You should join us for a movie. There’s a new Ryder Reed action flick out. Operation: Termination.”
“No thanks.” Agreeing to spend time with her outside of work is only going to invite even more friendliness and more nosiness. “I’m busy.”
“You have free time on weekends, right?”
I give her a pat smile. “It really depends. I have to check my calendar.”
“Well. Somebody’s got a busy social life.” Bev’s voice is half teasing, half wistful. “All right. Text me if you can hang out.”
“Hey, can I text you?” Gerry says. He’s a new hire in marketing. A clean-cut Northwestern graduate. He’s got that golden all-American look that makes him seem almost angelic. So long as you don’t notice the smarmy way he talks to women.
“You?” Bev says, surprised.
“It’s an action movie, and you know I like those,” he says, then tosses a flirty smile in my direction. “Right, Erin?”
“No idea,” I say.
“Ah, come on. I mentioned it at the last meeting.”
“I was busy taking notes.”
“Well, apparently you didn’t take all of them,” he says, acting like a professor reprimanding a particularly dimwitted student.
I make a small, noncommittal noise. “Just the important stuff.”
“If you want to hang out with us hot admins, I guess you can,” Bev says. “I already asked several people, and there’s a good group going.”
“Awesome.” He smirks. “I’m going to get back to work. Gotta leave in time to hit the bar.”
“You aren’t asking me to join you?” she asks, her eyebrow raised high.
“Normally, I would, but it’s a guy thing. There’s an exercise studio nearby, and a bunch of hot girls show up after their workout to quench their thirst, if you know what I’m saying.” He gives a wink that I’m sure he thinks is sexily endearing. “But if you want to go later, maybe over the weekend. What do you think, Erin? Make it a group date?”
I shrug, not quite yes or no. But I have no intention of spending my free time with Bev or Gerry. Or anybody, really.
Making friends can be…complicated. And it can leave you too vulnerable. They start to know too much about you, and then you start to care what they think of you.
And I don’t want to worry about anybody’s opinion of me.
Bev and Gerry finally leave, and with a small sigh of relief, I turn my attention to the emails I need to clear out on David’s behalf.
I’m about halfway through when David comes out of his office. Sunlight streaming behind him from the windows creates a sort of Renaissance, beloved-by-the-gods effect. Does he glow, too? Is that smile on his face for me?
I can’t seem to look away. Then I realize I’m ogling him and tear my gaze away before he notices. Staring like an idiot is only going to undo the good work that my cake did. I have to stick to being a professional.
Besides, it isn’t like I never knew he was handsome before. So I don’t know why I’m acting like a silly junior high school kid, rather than a responsible adult with a functioning brain and good judgment. He’s smiling because he’s in good mood after the cake and he has a winning personality.
Composing myself, I stand and follow him with a pen and a legal pad until we reach the conference room that I reserved for the call. We sit around the table, and I dial for the San Mateo office. Joe picks up immediately. He’s one of the most punctual people I know. And his team is the same way because that’s what he expects.
I listen to the dev team and David talk, their faces on the huge screen, scribbling down key points. They’re trying to enhance the video portion of the app. Sweet Darlings, Inc.’s app used to focus on photos only, but these days, people want a more immersive and varied multimedia experience. And that means video.
Joe’s developers are trying to implement changes that’ll make video streaming consume less data and still provide good-quality images and sound for people on limited data plans. David is trying to figure out a snappy way to showcase the new functionality as a selling point and incorporate it into our marketing. Plus, he’s thinking of ways to use it to lure in more advertisers and partners. Although the app has lots of paid users, there are a ton of people who are using the free, ad-supported version as well. David already has an academic scholarship foundation from Korea lined up to pay to use the app for their PR efforts, but he’s always looking for more opportunities.
As the meeting winds down, Joe says, “That was a good call. And David, quit working Erin so hard. She looks tired.”
My face heats. Et tu, Joe? Do I look that bad just because I didn’t sleep well last night and I don’t have the best makeup technique to cover it up?
David spreads his hands. “Hey, I try not to. But she’s very driven and self-motivated.” Is there a hint of pride in his voice? “She even goes over our self-paced training on weekends. What can I do?”
Joe’s eyebrows jump up. “Give her a raise, obviously. You seem to be attracting ambitious women. First Jan and now Erin.”
“Haha. Erin’s not going to join your team.”
There is an edge to his words that I can’t fathom. I don’t think Joe said anything offensive…did he? Besides, we all know I can’t be on Joe’s team. I don’t know a thing about computer programming.
David adds, “I’m not letting app dev poach my people again. Find your own talent.”
Wonder why he’s saying that. Jan is David’s former assistant, the one he had right before me. She transferred to an app dev team, but the one in Dulles, not in San Mateo under Joe. And contrary to what David said, she wasn’t poached. From what I’ve heard, he encouraged her to take the opening because it was a good career move for her, and she was already really good at programming.
The call ends, and I gather my notes, vowing to rush to the bathroom to apply more concealer as soon as I can grab my purse from my desk. Makeup tutorials claim that concealer can hide anything. Otherwise, why name it concealer, right?
David turns to me. “Are you feeling okay, Erin?” he asks. “If you’re tired or something, you can go home early.”
I shoot him a reassuring smile, but it feels tight and uncomfortable on my face. “It’s all right. I’m fine. Really.”
“You didn’t stay up too late watching the training videos and making that cake, did you?”
“No. Trust me,” I say, unable to tell him the real reason: that I had a kissing dream about him. He’d fire me for mental sexual harassment. Or at least have me written up with HR.
We leave the meeting room together. I hear excited whispers in the open area, where the cubicles are. Probably some celeb released a sex tape or flashed somebody at a party. Katie, who sits in the section, is perma-glued to TMZ and other Hollywood gossip sites.
David walks ahead of me. I try not to stare at his butt—or think about the way those slacks hug his narrow hips. I’m definitely not thinking about the way he looked in those boxers Saturday morning.
I lift my chin. The ceiling is interesting. Hey, is that a hairline crack? I can see a very thin, wiggly line. It looks like a worm if I tilt my head slightly to my right…
&
nbsp; David slows, and I almost bump into him. “Want to grab some coffee?” he says, gesturing at the break room.
Does he need some? Then I remember he probably needs a drink for the cake I brought him. He said he’d get juice, but that might be too sweet to go with chocolate cake. “Sure.”
We head into the brightly lit room together. Sweet Darlings always stocks it with every fancy coffee and tea imaginable because that’s how the founder and CEO, Alexandra Darling, likes it. She believes in treating her workers like gold, and I’m lucky to work here.
A couple of brunettes from HR are by the fridge, gossiping. Their backs are to us, and from the way they keep talking, I don’t think they noticed we walked in.
“Who would you rather have win? David or Warren Fordham?”
What the hell? Why are they discussing Warren? From the titillated way she said David, I’m almost certain my boss is their topic. But what “win” could this be about?
“Oh, definitely David. So much hotter.”
David goes absolutely still. I do too, and steal a glance at him. He’s wearing an unreadable expression, the kind he gets when he’s negotiating with other teams for more time or resources.
He puts a hand out, then places a finger over his lips to signal me to stay quiet. My loyalty is to him, but I hope they don’t say more than they can handle.
The same woman continues, “And I’m not sure about that Fordham guy.”
Smart of her.
“Why not? He’s cute.”
“Yeah, but date a politician? Everything you ever do is going to be scrutinized and talked about forever and ever. Or at least until he’s too old to run for election anymore. Super stifling.”
Stifling is putting it kindly. A shudder runs through me. You have to play the right role depending on the voter sentiment and the media’s whims. Scripts are never provided, but if you say the wrong line, everyone will know and roast you.
