Having done my due diligence in looking for a job, I collapse back under the covers. And now I wait, until one of these leads calls me, hopefully. If they don’t, I have no idea what I’m going to do.
Chapter 3 – Garrett
2 Months Later
I’m quite literally seeing red as I’m correcting a legal assistant's work. Office Depot probably can’t restock red pens as fucking quickly as I've been going through them.
No, I write, crossing out yet another line of Jeff's latest attempt to draft discovery requests. All the nitwit kid had to do was use some templates from the firm’s “brief bank,” which he had started on as a base, but for some reason insisted on adding his own discovery responses to the mix. Like this one, which asks for what the defendant had to eat a week before the accident.
No one asks for this information because no one will get this, I write in red pen. The judge would overrule this request as overbroad and irrelevant.
Who cares if the defendant ate Honey Nut Cheerios or pancakes? And why a week prior? Perhaps there could be some relevance the day of the accident but a whole before? The kid has lost his marbles.
I shake my head, wondering why I’m wasting so much red ink by bothering to object to my own legal assistant's proposed discovery requests. I'd already explained to him many times how they're supposed to look.
"Just follow the damn templates in the brief bank," I'd told Jeff, but he likes to take poetic license and go rogue. That would be fine if he came up with something that could improve the discovery requests rather than render them useless, which he had routinely been doing.
It seems that if my assistants aren’t being too creative, then they aren’t being ambitious enough. I’d had to have Ruby get rid of the guy before Jeff because of the most basic spelling errors and typos.
I’ve been giving Jeff a little more latitude because at least he takes initiative, but now I’m frustrated that he would spend so much time coming up with discovery requests I can’t use instead of simply copying and pasting some that I can.
Damn it.
If only the other partners would let me choose my own secretary. But they won’t— not since I’d slept with Selinda. Once things turned sour between her and me, which for me always happens somewhere after the third date, Selinda had already worked for the firm for a couple weeks.
That was a longer "relationship" than I'd been used to or comfortable with anyway, so I wasn’t disappointed that it was over. Still, the partners had given me a stern talking to, throwing around phrases like “inappropriate office behavior” and “sexual harassment suit.”
Takes one to know one, I had wanted to say, but of course I didn’t.
Asher, Ron and Jim reminded me of that first conversation we had had in the conference room, and that the deal was that I could pick my own assistants if I didn’t screw them, too. They said that since I couldn’t manage to follow that one simple rule, they would be in charge of choosing my legal assistants from then on.
Fine, fair enough. Except that their two choices have been awful, and I don’t just think that because both have been men. I suppose they were doing it so that I can’t get myself into further trouble.
I understand the precautions they’re taking, for the firm’s sake. I had meant to follow the rules and be a good boy. But I had messed up big with Selinda.
I hadn't meant to, but a man has needs, and my needs included the need to push my eleven- inch cock into Selinda's juicy little pussy, which I'd known was juicy because she’d insisted on telling me every day how wet she was for me and that she was wearing no panties under her black pencil skirt. Then she would ask if I would like to confirm those facts for myself.
Well yes, I would like to, Selinda. What red- blooded male wouldn't? I'd tried to restrain myself since she was a firm employee and since I had promised Asher, Ron and Jim that I’d behave. I'd told myself there were plenty of other fish in the sea, and none of them even required much work to catch since so many of them just threw themselves at me.
I'm rich, attractive, and good in bed, so it only makes sense that women fantasize about me. I’m more than happy to indulge their every fantasy, but since I try not to mix work and pleasure ever since merging partnerships here at the firm— tried being the operative word, since I didn't always succeed— I did my best to exercise restraint around Selinda.
Of course, there’s only so much restraint a red- blooded male is capable of showing day in and day out when a beautiful young woman throws herself at him, and that's exactly what Selinda did. One day she threw herself down onto the floor and crawled over to me with a piece of paper in her mouth, as if she was auditioning for a remake of The Secretary.
At that point, I could resist no more. Just ask my cock. It was tired of resisting. It was ready to stand up, quite literally, and take what was being offered to it. So, I did. When Selinda got to my computer chair and began unzipping my fly, that was the moment I stopped resisting.
She gave really good blowjobs, so I still don't regret giving into Selinda, even if it did get me stuck with the likes of Jeff and the other useless male assistant before him. But don't get me wrong, I only got physically involved with Selinda—not emotionally. Just because I put my cock down an eager woman's throat and then show her the time of her life by putting it in her pussy and fucking her silly, it doesn't mean anything more to me than another day at the office.
But that's not how Selinda took it, and that's where our problems started. Once she started wanting more, I realized I was in trouble. As much as I wished I could give her something more than at least five orgasms a day, I simply wasn’t capable of an emotional commitment.
God knows, I did try to convince myself that I could, for the sake of my happiness at work. But I failed.
I'd never been able to form emotional attachments to women. I guess I’m what they called damaged goods. Except, of course, for my cock. They’ve always said that worked just fine.
And my brain works half decently, as much as it needs to anyway. My father has always been rich as fuck and made it so that I didn't have to do much to get by.
People at my firm talk about me as if I'm lazy, but they should be glad I even bother showing up. My name on the letterhead helps keep the money coming in, and I don’t have to do anything in life except eat, sleep, pay a shitload of taxes, and fuck a lot.
I’m a man with an insatiable sexual appetite and a short attention span. No one should have been surprised that Selinda and I didn't work out, but for some reason, she was. And so were my partners at the firm. In fact, for some reason, they were surprised that she and I had even gotten together, after I had promised them I would refrain from getting handsy at work.
But I'd like to see them turn down a piece of ass as fine as Selinda’s if she was offering herself up to them. Of course, they won’t ever get that chance. Asher and Ron are married and Jim is always known to be super secretive about his relationships but the way he blushed in the conference room when the other men were talking about their conquests let me know that he has something of their own going on.
So, it’s easy for them to be judgmental about me but if they were single guys in my position, they’d do the same thing. Hell, at least two of them already did, and I wouldn’t put it past Jim to have done or currently be doing the same thing, either.
By the time I’m done adding my red pen corrections to Jeff's draft and stewing about the circumstances that lead me here, the whole damn pleading is covered in red. I could have saved a lot of time and ink by just writing "start over."
It dawns on me that it’s time to take my own advice. I’ll start over and find a new assistant on my own, no matter what my partners think. I doubt they’ll get rid of me— and my money and my lucrative cases— over such a minor infraction.
Since I can’t ask Jeff or my partners to perform a search for a new legal assistant, I decide to conduct one of my own. I get on my computer and go to monster.com, intending to advertise a job opening.
But soon I notice there are so many applicants who have posted resumes that I can just look through those instead of wasting time posting my own. See? I’m not lazy, I’m just industrious. The way I see it, there’s nothing wrong with shortcuts that save time and get the job done.
My mouse arrow swims in a sea of applicants, none of which look like the right fit for me. And then I come across one who does: Carolina Abbott. Hers is the first resume that’s worth looking more closely at. Mostly because she’s fucking gorgeous. I’ve been Googling the applicants' names to see if they’re attractive enough to work for me. I need to be happy at work, and what better way to be happy than to treat myself to a little eye candy each day?
And speaking of eye candy, Carolina is some of the sweetest I'd seen. I find photos of her on Facebook, with her dark brown hair and green eyes, hourglass figure, and plump ass.
I know I can’t fuck her. My new partners wouldn't have it. But there’s no harm in thinking about taking her up against my desk and claiming her as not only my legal assistant but also my lover. Although, come to think of it, someone in HR has probably added a "no fantasizing" rule to the workplace handbook without consulting me, because they're killjoys like that.
Still. Nothing permanent could result just by thinking about something, right?
From the moment I lay eyes on Carolina’s photo, I know I have to have her near me— just to think about fucking her, but not to actually fuck her. Also, it seems she would make a much better legal assistant than Jeff Who Dreams Big About Creative Yet Irrelevant Discovery Requests. Sure, anyone would be better than him, I tell myself, but let's not get sidetracked.
She doesn’t seem to have any legal experience. But that doesn’t matter. I can train her. In more ways than one.
Her resume was posted over two months ago and not retracted— usually a telltale sign that someone has gotten a job somewhere else. She’s probably anxious to start working for someone, so why shouldn’t that someone be me?
I call Carolina and offer her the job on the spot. What can I say? Patience has never been my strong suit. Finding a girl's G-spot and hitting it until I make her come has always been my strong suit, and that normally doesn’t take much time, since I knew my way around a woman’s body.
Carolina says yes, of course. They always do, for me.
Her voice trembles a little bit when she says it, and I imagine her pussy quivering. That's another effect I have on women. I’m sure this Carolina from some small town I've never heard of, according to her resume (how cute, she lives in South Carolina and her name is Carolina), would love for me to carry her over to my desk and lay her on top of it and eat her wet-for-me little pussy until she comes. That much is obvious.
She looks like the type who will be too shy to say it, unlike the last little temptress who got me into trouble. She looks like the type I can admire, and even tease, who will blush and daydream but not take the bait because she values her job and her reputation.
She is exactly the type of legal assistant I need. She ticks all the boxes, and I’d like to tickle her box. I have no choice but to hire her. I know the partners will have to see it my way, at least once they get over seeing red at how I have made the decision to hire her myself because I am too sick of seeing red, both literally and figuratively, due to the crappy male assistants they keep giving me.
Chapter 4 – Carolina
I can’t believe I’m getting ready to move not only from one place to another but from one plan to another entirely. Despite all my previous best-made plans, in two days I, as a newly divorced woman, will be starting work as a secretary at a prestigious law firm in a city completely foreign to me.
My new boss, Garrett Mack, is one of the firm’s named partners: a billionaire and one of the most prominent men in Albuquerque. It’s a good thing I’d applied to jobs far and wide, because he was one of the few people who had called me.
Other than that, there hadn’t been many good leads. A perfume company had wanted me to come attend an orientation where they would train me in the art of making lots of money by going door to door hawking their Britney Spears rip-off perfume for commission only— no thanks. A couple guys called, wanting to film me doing nude photography—pretty sure those jobs were code for prostitution.
And I had had one promising call about doing administrative work for a local cooling and heating company, but it had fallen through when they called me to let me know they’d hired the owner’s niece instead. Good ole nepotism was alive and well in America. And apparently, so was the unemployment rate, because it seemed impossible to find a job.
When Garrett Mack called me, I was increasingly desperate, not only hiding out under my covers but beginning to sneak ice cream and vodka and O.J. under there with me as well, to make the time pass faster. Of course I jumped at the chance to work for him, even if it does mean moving more than half way across the country to a place I’ve never been.
It’s still mind-blowing to me that all of this will soon be my reality. I sit with my coffee at my favorite coffee shop for the last time. The movers are at my home getting ready to transport all my worldly belongings to another dimension— or at least that’s what it feels like. It’s all too overwhelming, and I don’t know if I’m ready for it. Of course, I’m not about to admit that out loud.
As I drink my homemade cappuccino, I lock eyes with Martha Grecco, the owner of Grecco’s Coffee House. She has known me since I was a little girl. She isn’t just a barista, although she does make the most incredible bottomless cappuccinos anywhere in the world, but she is also my second mom. I smile at her as I wipe a smear of whipped cream off my nose, which had accidentally landed there as I sipped from the giant mug.
Martha had been the one to introduce me to Jake. She truly was a godsend. And now, as if I needed another reminder, her eyes confirm for me that this is really a final moment, the end of a chapter in my life. Because I’m moving so far away from this town and from her, I suppose it’s an end of a chapter in her life, too.
My coffee is almost empty when I receive a text from the movers telling me it’s just about time for them to hit the road. The tears begin to well up as I imagine the long journey before me and all that I’m about to leave behind.
There hadn't been a day in my life that I ever pictured myself leaving this beautiful place I called home. After all, Stone, South Carolina may be small, but it’s a tight knit community, with beautiful rolling green hills, close to the Atlantic Ocean and not far from the Appalachian Mountains.
Plus, this is where Jake Wharton and I first met. This is where I cheered on the varsity team at every one of his football games. This is where we planned to raise our children someday.
We’d had it all, and then some. Our lives had been so carefully planned. We would have a boy and then a girl. The first would be Jackson, and his sibling we’d name Lucy. It was all so beautiful… naïve, but beautiful. So many of the firsts in life had happened right in this town.
Gazing through the glass for a moment, the place seems suddenly magical— my town, my home. But no longer. The day is a bit cloudy and overcast, yet somehow the sun is still peeking through, providing a bit of optimistic light. It looks like a Norman Rockwell picture, a comparison that isn’t lost on me. My life was supposed to turn out like that— a slice of hometown Americana, a dream come true.
As I look out from Grecco’s front window from my favorite table in the corner, I can see the Kennedy High School football field where Jake had played, and the Burlington Heights Hotel, the site of our senior prom. Just around the corner from the hotel is the skate shop where Jake worked all through high school.
I can see just a smidgen of the bleachers jutting out from behind the school. The first time Jake kissed me was on those bleachers. Mrs. Mullen told us to tone it down, although I think she was a little late with her request, since he already had his fingers in my shorts.
Further down the road is the dry cleaners where we snuck my prom dress in for clea
ning, desperately hoping to get the red wine stain out before my dad saw it. I thought for sure he would know that I had drank that night, gotten sloshed, and spilled the cheap Merlot all over myself.
I wonder now as I reminisce: will all these memories fade away once they aren’t so ever present in my day to day life? I half hope they will, since fewer thoughts of this town will also mean fewer thoughts of Jake and the future we were supposed to have but now never would.
Martha comes over to take my mug. I place a ten dollar bill on the table, and she smiles.
“Cari, it’s on me, baby girl,” she says, using her special nickname for me. “It’s your going away coffee present. I’m gonna miss you, sweetheart.”
I choke back tears and whisper, “I know Martha. I’ll miss you too. But we’ll chat by phone and email.”
We hug. She takes my coffee cup, and I decide to sit for a just a little bit longer. The movers can wait. God knows I’m paying them enough. I’m not quite ready to let go the pangs of nostalgia washing over me. I always was a glutton for punishment, and today— my last day in Stone, my last day in the only life I’d ever known— is no exception.
Chapter 5 – Carolina
I think of all the what-ifs that had plagued me over the last year. What if Jake hadn’t left me? What could I have done differently? Would I be leaving still to take this job at the law firm in Albuquerque? Is life a pre-destined event? Do certain decisions and events change the course of things?
I don’t have any answers. I guess I’m just afraid.
Jake Wharton was my high school sweetheart. Our families knew each other even though he was clearly from a different part of town, the bad part, though that isn’t something I’d ever say out loud.
My mom and dad are prominent in our small community. My dad had been on the Mayor’s Council when I was growing up, and he’s a professor of political science at the community college. My mom is a nurse in the newborn nursery at the local hospital.
Sold on Christmas Eve Page 82
