by Clover Hart
I watch him exit the building from my laptop, which is connected to the camera in the lobby. I also saw Penny come in earlier. She looked so uncomfortable in her business outfit and, goddammit, a pair of heels. Thanks to those, I had to gather my shit before meeting her and Zach in the conference room.
Now I’ll have to gather my shit again.
I look up her file, then access my phone from my laptop. She answers on the third ring.
“Hello?” she sounds frantic.
“Penny, I think we need to have a chat.”
Chapter 12
Penny
Barry says he doesn’t want to talk in the offices, just in case Zach returns from Screaming Beans unexpectedly, so I tell him to come over to my apartment, then I hang up the phone. Only afterward do I realize that maybe having him in the place where we did the deed isn’t such a spectacular idea. But it’s not like I’m going to allow him another full access pass to my bod.
I’ve got a great job with FCT now, and I am not going to blow it. So to speak.
As I wait for him to arrive, I start to freak out like I did when Zach told me that Barry would be training me. Then I freak out some more. I’ll have to work closely with the man I saw naked. Seriously. He’s coming over here so we can hash this out and decide how we’re going to navigate around each other, but is it really that simple?
When I hear him knock on my door, I get a flashback to the other time he knocked, and my sex drive gets in gear with a crazed lurch.
Back away from the lust, Penny.
I adjust the jacket of the cute pink sweat suit I put on after I dried off from the rain, and then I march to the door. When I open it to find Barry looking like a Gloomy Gus under the gray skies, I let him in without a word. As he passes right by me, it doesn’t matter that his hair is windblown and sexy, or that this broody thing he’s got going on is kind of hot. Uh-uh. I’m so over it.
He takes his hands out of the pockets of his fancy winter jacket. Then he braces them on one of my dining chairs on the other side of the table as if he’s barricaded himself there. “We need a plan.”
“Do we ever.” I wish I had a better one than standing on the opposite side of the table where I haven’t even put away the personal files piled on top. You know, the folders that fell to the floor when Barry slid me onto this table, right before he went down on me?
I walk to the kitchen, where I put the counter between us instead. He glances at the table, and I swear I see his eyes go completely unfocused before he moves to the other side of the counter where I’m standing.
“First and foremost,” he says, “we need to agree to forget what happened and just do our jobs.”
“We need to keep it professional.”
“Can you do that?”
I point to myself. “Can I …?” Wait. I’m the problem here? Because I seem to remember that I wasn’t alone in making those bed springs squeak. “Excuse me, but can you?”
“Of course I can.”
He sounds pretty sure of himself. Maybe I should be offended and wonder why he’s so able to resist my charms, but the opposite happens. I actually feel a load drop off of my shoulders.
“Oh, boy.” I sigh. “I can definitely be professional. I mean, we wouldn’t have done what we did if we’d known I’d be working for FCT. What happened that night was based on availability and ignorance, and we don’t have either one of those qualities now. I guarantee I can work with you, Barry.”
“Shit, you’re gonna be working with me. Right down the damned hall.” He shakes his head. “I’m not going to tell you how awkward that’s going to be.”
“Only if we make it that way.” I cross my arms over my chest. “As I said, no one could’ve predicted this turn of events. But now we know better.”
He gets a slightly cocky look on his face. “If you’ll remember correctly, I did predict that WayvComm would do something like this. It was at the saloon, before—”
“You don’t need to refresh my memory.” I’m doing a good enough job of that myself every time I look at that table of sin.
He shoves his hands into his jacket pockets, then starts to walk away from the table as if we’re done. Wham, bam, thank you for listening, ma’am. Then his gaze snags on the file folders, and I get a hot flash as I remember them tumbling to the floor right before Barry reached beneath my dress to take off my panties …
He gives me a lowered gaze, and for a moment, I think I might’ve just made a distressed yet turned-on little sound at the memory. Did I?
Maybe not, because he talks in that low voice I hate so much.
“I know we said we’d act like professionals, but I’d like to know exactly what that means. For instance, what happens on Monday when you come into work? We’ll have to spend a little time together before I send you off for training in Marloe.”
“I’ll just act like everyone else in Cherry Valley acts around you.”
“And how’s that?”
“Like I think you’re an egomaniac and it’s all I can do to tolerate you.”
He frowns.
I laugh. “Kidding?”
“Penny, anything that resembles kidding or teasing is out of the question from this point forward.”
He’s right, but I wanted to get in that one last jibe before Monday.
I walk farther down the kitchen counter, putting more distance between us. “So there’ll be no kidding and no teasing. We’ll be utterly humorless with each other. Understood.”
“The only trick will be to act natural so that Zach doesn’t suspect anything. We’ll have more people working in the office that day, so that should take some of his focus off us.”
“Here’s an idea: maybe the two of us should stay in our offices and communicate solely through text messages and phone calls.”
See what I did? I threw in one last jibe. I swear, I won’t do this on Monday.
He’s giving me an intense look that has me doing the international sign for zipping my lip. But then I say, “Sorry. I’m just nervous about this. When I’m nervous, I often joke.” I swallow heavily. “You know, I really do appreciate getting this job.”
He sighs as if that’s the last thing he wants to hear. Wow, he’s heartless. Then again, I pretty much knew that. It wasn’t his heart I was after the other night.
“In any case,” he says, “don’t be surprised if I’m distant with you. It’s nothing personal.”
“Same here.”
We both nod, and a moment of strained silence picks at the air between us.
But he’s still not leaving.
“There’s one more thing we should cover,” he says. “As awkward as it is to mention this … as we continue on with our personal lives, things could get weird.”
“You mean weirder?”
“Exactly. Just so you know, I’ll be going on dates like I always do.”
He looks at me as if this might shatter my world, but all I say is, “Cool.”
He raises his eyebrows.
I laugh. “What I mean is that I’m not interested in you like that, Barry. I already got you out of my system, so when you go off to cut a romantic swath through your dating apps, it won’t be a big deal to me. I wish you happy trails and many conquests.” He looks at me like I’m full of hogwash, but I roll my eyes and say, “As fun as it was, you’re actually not my type.”
He chuffs. I know he knows that he was definitely my bad-news type, and that’s why we had so much fun.
“You’re not my type anymore,” I add. “I’m done with those kinds of flings.”
Apparently, my full meaning is slowly seeping into his thick head. “So even though you’re not moving to Chicago, you’re still turning over a new leaf here.”
“You’ve got it. I’m starting off fresh with a new job and with men. Hell, I might even swear off guys for a good while.” This wasn’t my plan before, but it’s starting to sound really good. “I’m going to go on a cleanse. I’m detoxing. So that means I will not give a tinke
r’s damn about how many dates you go on. You can do what and who you want, and it won’t bother me a bit.”
He looks surprised. Dear Lordy be, maybe he’s realizing that he isn’t God’s gift to all women! But then he seems satisfied by my answer.
“That’s good,” he says as he walks toward the door.
“It is good.”
I follow him there, minding how close I get to him. It’s just that he smells like clean laundry, and that really does it for me. If it’s his designer cologne, he knows not to put on too much, and I’m so sick of guys who do that. In fact, I’m sick of cologne, period. I’m on a man cleanse. I’m a new, shiny Penny.
He opens my door and walks out. Then he looks back at me as if he wants to say one more thing, but all I get from him is a flummoxed glance instead. I have no idea what that’s about, because then he jerks his chin at me in that arrogant way he has, and heads off.
I shut the door on him, and it’s like I’m closing the book on my past. I’ve got a new job and a new life, and not even a mistake like Barry Aaronson is going to get in my way now.
Chapter 13
Barry
On Monday, I drive to work from the McModern house I bought for a steal out on Pinot Terrace. They’re calling the area “Newbville” because of the trendy newcomers who’ve purchased property there. Before Full Circle decided to set up shop in town, the mini-community had been put on hold for a lack of interest and money, and half of the buildings were left unfinished, but now construction has picked up again. I settled there, but Newbville isn’t to Zach’s tastes — he decided to buy an old Victorian on Jamboree Lane. To each his own. He tells me that McModerns are cheap and artistically bankrupt, and I tell him I’d rather have a three-car garage than old, leaky pipes.
The closer I get to the FCT offices, the more I grip the wheel of my car. Ever since I had that super top-secret meeting with Penny last week, my head’s been on backwards. Sure, we ironed out the logistics about how we’re going to act around each other at work today, but the way we left things put me off in a really strange way.
Did she really diss me as much as I think she did? You’re not my type, Barry. And guess what? You suck so much that I’m going to detox guys like you right out of my system.
It’s not like I’m into her or anything, but what about that pretty fuckin’ awesome night we had together? Would it have been too much for her to acknowledge that? She was even joking around about us, basically fearless about how awkward things might get now that she’s been hired. It was almost like she didn’t give a rat’s ass about any of it …
I almost have to laugh. Look at me, all butthurt. At least she won’t tattle on me to Zach or be difficult. She has as much to lose as I do, so I’ve got no reason to be gripping the wheel.
Everything is going to be cool.
As the sun peeks out from the clouds, I loosen up. I get a little optimistic. So Penny’s going to be working alongside me. Fine. And you know what? If Zach wants me to mentor her, I can do that, too. She could sure use it.
I turn onto Rainier Street, and the few boutique owners who are sweeping their stoops pause to look at my car driving by. Cherry Valley is still all about rusted pickups and American-made nostalgia instead of fine, sleek machines such as my new BMW 5 Series. As I slow down near the corner of Main Street where the stony front of the Acentric Alchemist awaits its reopening, I notice that the façade of the building across the way is nearly finished. The roof tiling is completed, and it’s beginning to look like a small pagoda. I slow down to read the sign in the window.
Hana Sushi — Coming Soon!
The grand opening is two Fridays away, and I start to salivate like a beast at the thought of a caterpillar roll or some nigiri. And sake. Damn, I really look forward to the premium spirits that Linus Inouye, the restaurateur I persuaded to open Hana, promised he’d have on the menu. The Alchemist used to supply me with some of that good stuff, but the place been shut down for a while because of water damage from a recent rainstorm.
Life is about to get so much better with some real food and booze in this town.
I gun the car and turn onto Main Street, then park in the new structure by FCT’s temp headquarters. I arrive at my office, not expecting any of the new employees to be there yet, but I find Penny sitting in the chair in front of my big glass desk.
I stop short in the doorway, the strap on my Louis Vuitton computer bag slipping off my shoulder. I catch it just in time. The same goes for catching my breath, because Penny has taken it away. Her red hair is down but clipped back from her gorgeous face, and her cheeks are flushed with first-day excitement. The dark green dress she’s wearing brings out the color in her big blue-green eyes. At least she has on knee-high boots instead of hot high heels, and it’s easy for me to recover.
She’s just as busy checking me out — mainly the tee I’m wearing under my sport coat. I’ll try to be nice if you’ll try to be smart is the graphic of the day, and I didn’t wear this on accident.
Her gaze meets mine, and we both tense up.
“Good morning,” she says. “Zach already set me up with a company phone for communications, and he sent me here to wait for you before I leave for Marloe.”
Did she need to clarify that just in case I thought she was waiting in here to give me a hello-Monday hand job? Don’t think about hand jobs. “Good morning to you, too. Did Zach already show you around your office?”
“Yes. I was early, and he was already here. It’s a very nice little office.”
She’s clutching the knockoff Coach workbag I noticed from her interview, and something in my chest twists around in sympathy for her. Don’t go too hard on her, I tell myself. Just remember your manners, but keep things distant.
I set my bag on my desk. “If you’re ready to head out for training, you’re free to do so. Just remember to keep track of your mileage so you can be reimbursed.”
“Absolutely.”
“Do you have the company email I sent you with the directions to the training site?”
“Yes, and I’ll be returning at around three thirty so we can debrief about what I learned.”
She sounds like she’s looking forward to that about as much as eating leftover hair from the beauty salon down the street. I have to agree, but we can do this. “That’ll be the schedule for the whole week. Any questions?”
She stands up from the chair and sticks out her hand for me to shake. “None at all.”
Reluctantly, I shake her hand, then drop it like a hot motherboard. Then I sit in my boss chair and wait for her to leave. Hopefully soon.
She still hasn’t gone anywhere. In fact, she’s smiling at me as if she’s very pleased that I’m being all business, just like I vowed to be. I see something else in her that makes me feel like a real pecker for fighting Zach in hiring her — she clearly wants to be taken seriously and is eager to learn.
Before I start menstruating in sympathy or something, I busy myself by taking out my computer. “Have a good day, Penny.”
“You too, sir.”
Sir?
“We’re pretty casual around here.” I lower my voice. “Just call me Barry, would you?”
“Will do … Barry.”
I couldn’t be more relieved as she exits the room, out of sight and out of mind for at least the time being.
The week flies by, mostly because I reluctantly find myself looking forward to 3:30 every day when Penny returns from Marloe to debrief with me. Of course, we hold our meetings in the very open, very public conference room. Before we hired Penny, Zach had already hired those new employees for his action team — young, recently graduated techies from the community college who’ll be his right-hand guys in bringing the work campus up to snuff — and they’re all over the office now. We brought on some coders, too, and I take great pains to show them, as well as Zach, that there’s absolutely nothing going on with Penny and me. If only she wasn’t getting interested looks from those dweebs who seem to come off lik
e puberty-stricken kids who’ve never seen a pretty girl in anything but a videogame before.
But Penny and her newly turned-over leaf are showing no interest in them, so I let it go.
The following week, most of my time is spent showing Penny the specifics of what she’s responsible for and how it’s done at FCT. Payroll, benefits, hiring, firing … we cover it all, and Zach was right about her — she’s sharp and takes to all of this as if it’s nothing. When she goes to her office to process some new employees, she figures most things out on her own. She comes to me only now and again with questions, and all of them are intelligent. It’s obvious she’s working things out before knocking on my door as a last resort.
I’ve never been so glad to be wrong about someone. Actually, I’m impressed with her work ethic and smarts, but you know what the best part is? She’s an ace at separating business and pleasure. Well, at least the pleasure we got from each other.
Today I’m having a work lunch, going over the notes from a conference call with one of our investors and noshing on one of those tasteless vegetable sandwiches from the health food store. I’m wishing it was sushi, but I’ll have to wait until Friday for some of that. I’ve also got my phone out, going over my dating apps. I haven’t had time to run over to Marloe for a drink and a doink lately, and I need to get some action before my nads fall off. Seeing Penny around the office only reminds me of that.
She knocks on my open door and sticks her head in. “Got a second?”
Speak of the devil who always seems to be yanking at my increasingly blue balls. I wave her in. She’s wearing a long-sleeved beige dress with a lace collar and knit stockings with ankle boots. She looks like a Puritan. Mostly. The skirt is slightly above her knees, showing some leg, but hell, even a knee from Penny is too much for my imagination to handle.
I force myself back to boss territory. “What’s up?”
