The F-Word: A Sexy Romantic Comedy

by Sandra Marton

  “Don’t be silly. Deal with it now.”

  “Later,” she says firmly. She hits the button that turns off the phone, then jams it back in her pocket. “We were talking about the teak doors.”

  “The teak doors,” I say, but it’s difficult to get my head back to the topic. What’s going on with Bailey? I can’t help but wonder.

  She nods. “From Thailand? The ones that date back to the fifteenth century.”

  “The temple doors. Of course. What about them?”

  “They’re due to arrive today and Bob—”

  “And Bob’s the only guy I want handling them.” Shit. I blow out a breath. “Any chance we can hold off delivery for a couple of days?”

  “I already called the dock transport people. No way.”

  Double shit. I trust all my people, but trusting them to deal with doors that set my client back six hundred thousand bucks…

  “We must have somebody who knows teak.”

  Bailey nods. “We do.”

  “Well, call him.”

  Bailey looks at me. “Ring-a-ding,” she says.

  “What?”

  “You know teak, Mr. O’Malley.”

  I stare at my PA. There are two things wrong with her statement.

  One, I don’t know teak. I mean, not compared to Bob the Barfer. I’m into wood, yeah. I have this thing about looking at a piece of oak or redwood and kind of seeing what form or shape is hiding inside it, but knowing teak that’s centuries old? Not my specialty.

  Two, after all these years, I have yet to convince Bailey to call me Matt. Each time we have this conversation, she tells me she’s old-fashioned, that she believes in proper form in the business place, and I tell her that calling the boss Mister went out with typewriters and landline phones.

  “I call you Bailey,” I invariably say, and she invariably nods and says Yes, that’s right, you do. And then she calls me Mr. O’Malley again and I sigh and give up the whole dumb thing for another couple of months…

  But right now, that isn’t the problem.

  She can call me anything she wants except an expert on teak or antiquities, because I am not either.

  I tell her that. She shrugs.

  “You did that entire teak wall of built-ins in the Genovese house,” she says. “Not Bob.”

  “Yeah, well, that was different. It was a wall, and the teak wasn’t older than the hills behind the Schecter place.”

  “Neither are these temple doors.”

  This is the kind of answer you get when you deal with a logical person. I shove back my chair and rise to my feet.

  “You know what I mean.”

  “And you chose these doors yourself. You went all the way to Bangkok to see them and make sure they were really what you wanted.”

  “Who else was gonna do it?”

  “And you texted me and told me to tell Mr. and Mrs. Schecter that the doors really were genuine temple doors from the fifteenth century.”

  “You think that makes me an expert? What it makes me is a guy who read a couple of books before I saw those doors.”

  Bailey folds her arms over her chest. I say chest because I don’t think she has breasts under those suit jackets. Not that I spend time thinking about it. Man, what am I talking about? What I mean is, she’s flat chested. The suit jackets all hang straight from the top button to the bottom one…and, hell, what has that to do with anything except to remind me that I’m arguing with a woman who graduated Magna cum Laude and who is rarely, okay, maybe never wrong when it comes to knowing what’s best for O’Malley Design and Construction?

  And what was that all about? That text message she didn’t want to deal with? That text message at all, when she never gets messages or calls, at least not here?

  I sigh.

  I should be concentrating on the teak doors.

  She’s right.

  Somebody has to sign for delivery. More than sign. Stuff like this, there’s sure to be a shitload of paperwork. Plus, somebody has to supervise the unloading and uncrating of the doors, check them over, install them, and the only somebody in sight for the physical part of all that is me.

  So I sigh again and head for my closet, but Bailey beats me to it. She opens the door, reaches in, takes out a pair of jeans, a blue chambray shirt, heavy cotton socks and the roper boots I mentioned earlier. They’ve been with me, same as she has, since day one.

  Added to everything else, the woman reads minds.

  “I’ll phone for a car.”

  “No car,” I say as I undo my tie. “We’ll take one of the trucks.”

  I toss the tie on the desk. Bailey picks it up, smooths it out and marches to the closet to hang it over a hook.

  “Very well, sir.”

  If I’m not Mister, I’m sir. So old-fashioned. So, I don’t know, so obedient.

  Under other circumstances, meaning, coming out of another woman’s mouth at a different time, different place those words—sir, mister—might get a reaction from me. Well, from a part of me. The part behind my fly, which is always ready and happy to participate in something new.

  “Shall I tell José to stand by?”

  “José?” I unbutton my white broadcloth shirt. I’m not into T-shirts so what I’m uncovering is my naked chest. Bailey doesn’t so much as blink. Why would she? That’s one of the benefits of having a neutral relationship. “Why do we need José?”

  “To drive the truck.”

  “I’ll drive it myself.”

  “Very well, Mr. O’Malley. I’ll call and tell the foreman to expect you in half an hour.”

  “Fine.” I yank my shirttails free of my trousers. “And see what you can scrounge up to change into.”

  This time, she does blink. “Me?”

  “You.” I undo my cuffs. “I’ll deal with the doors. You’ll deal with the paperwork.”

  She nods and turns towards the door. “I’ll requisition a pair of coveralls from Supplies.”

  “And boots.”

  “Boots. Of course.”

  She starts for the door again.

  “One more thing,” I say.

  Bailey swings towards me just as I’m peeling off my shirt. There’s barely a pause before she turns away again, but not before I see a faint wash of pink spread over her cheeks. Is she blushing? I’m baffled. Then I realize that no shirt isn’t the same as an open shirt.

  Uh oh. I’ve embarrassed her.

  “Sorry,” I say quickly.

  “No problem, sir.”

  Maybe I misunderstood. She certainly doesn’t sound embarrassed. And when she turns towards me again, her expression is as professional as always.

  “Mr. O’Malley?”

  “Yes?”

  “You were saying…?”

  What was I saying? I’m still puzzled by that blush.

  “I was saying…Oh. Yeah. Call Burt.” Burt’s my foreman. “Tell him we’re on our way and if the truck delivering the doors arrives before we do, he should just stall them. Then you meet me in the lobby. Five minutes.”

  Bailey nods. ”Five minutes.”

  “Fine,” I say, but I don’t reach for my belt or anything else until the door shuts firmly behind her.

  Okay, I think as I change out of my pants. Okay. Today I get to be a construction guy.

  The truth is, even the thought makes me happy.

  3

  My office—actually, a sprawling glass-and-cedar building we designed and built on a couple of acres of woods and meadows—is located just outside New York City in a town called Bedford. I designed the building and the grounds it stands on and, of course, my company built it. It’s a great-looking property and I’m lucky to have a great staff, starting with my PA, Bailey Abrams.

  Bailey snags me as I step through the door.

  “There’s a problem at the Schecter site,” she says.

  I roll my eyes. “And a happy good morning to you, too.”

  Bailey doesn’t even blink and she doesn’t slow her pace as she trots
alongside me to my office. I have long legs and a long stride, and generally I have to slow down so a woman can keep up with me, even the tallest ones, because they wear those short, tight little dresses and those ridiculous nosebleed heels.

  Trust me. In a national election, I’d vote for both.

  But this is my office, where practicality counts. And Bailey is practical. She’s down-to-earth. She’s not into how she looks. She wears suits and sneakers. The sneakers make it easy for her to cover enough ground to match my pace, and the skirts of those suits are what women call A-shaped. A-line. Whatever. You know what I mean. They’re full enough so she can move fast and they’re dark in color, probably because that’s also practical when she’s always rushing around bringing me my coffee—not that I ask her to do that. I mean, I’m an equal op kind of dude. No sexism here, but Bailey thinks keeping me caffeinated is in her job description. Plus she’s always handling chalk, scratching my schedule on a chalkboard because I like to be able to look up and see it, cross out stuff, add stuff…

  The point is, Bailey is just what I need.

  She’s been with me from my Wall Street days. Did I mention Wall Street? I guess I should have. I started there with a degree in finance straight out of New York University. Yeah, NYU, where I studied finance on a full scholarship.

  Fooled you, right? You thought you had me all figured out. First you pegged me as some rich guy from a wealthy family, and I bet you pictured me spending my college years partying, skiing, living life in the fast lane. Then you decided I was a jock and I’d gone to some big Midwestern university on an athletic scholarship.

  Wrong.

  I’m rich, but I made all my money myself.

  I did my share of partying when I was in college—doesn’t everybody? But not anymore.

  As for skiing—Yeah. I ski every chance I get. I’m into sports, not just as an observer but as a doer. I was Jerome High School’s quarterback; I played midfield on Jerome’s soccer team. I ran, I swam, I surfed—bet you didn’t know we surf here on the East coast—and I still love all that stuff, but I also have a functional brain. That’s what got me into NYU on a full scholarship and into a high-profile job with a hedge fund called Hinchley-Finch.

  I stayed with them for three years.

  Three endless, agonizing years because it took me that long to finally figure out that no matter how much money I made—and, trust me, I made lots—I was never going to be happy managing the portfolios of rich dudes who drank fifty-year-old Scotch in the evenings and played endless rounds of golf on the weekends.

  Three years in, I took a deep breath, quit my job, went back to school for some courses in architectural design and opened O’Malley Design and Construction.

  Of course, I’m glossing over the scary spots.

  Like cashing in what I’d invested in stocks in those three years. It was—to me, anyway—a small fortune, but I needed the money to buy two incredibly expensive acres of land in Rye—that’s an upscale town outside New York City—and put up a four bedroom, five bathroom contemporary complete with gardens and an infinity pool, all on spec. Spec is shorthand for sinking money into a house nobody’s asked you to build, meaning you put it up, cross your fingers and hope like hell somebody’s gonna come along and fall in love with the place because if nobody does…

  But someone did. And that’s how I started O’Malley Design and Construction.

  With those first bucks safely in the bank, I drew up plans for my headquarters building—and phoned Bailey, who had been my PA at Hinchley-Finch.

  “I need a personal assistant,” I told her, and before I had the chance to finish explaining my new life and the fact that, for now, I could only afford to pay her half what she was worth, she interrupted and said yes, fine, she’d take the job.

  And she’s perfect for it. She’s organized. Smart. Dedicated. Even better, she doesn’t find me intimidating—some people do. She doesn’t, you know, drool over me either. She doesn’t see me as a guy. And I don’t see her as a woman.

  I’m getting sidetracked here.

  Why was Bailey exactly what I needed? Because she’s a levelheaded, work-oriented person. We have an excellent relationship. She’s a nice girl, she’s bright and quick, and—let me get this out of the way even if it’s gonna tick off some of you—she’s not any kind of distraction for me. How could she be? She’s not tall and stacked; she’s petite and, well, let’s just say she’s not at all sexy—and I mean that in the best possible way.

  She’s definitely not my type of woman, but she’s definitely my type of PA.

  She has a degree in business from Columbia; she’s a model of efficiency; she’s always the center of calm in what can often be a frazzled world, and she’s completely dedicated to O’Malley Design and Construction.

  She is, well, she’s Bailey. What more could a man want? And—a quick side-note here—I can now pay her what she’s worth to me, which is about four times what she earned on Wall Street.

  Bottom line: we’re both happy.

  We reach the door to my office. I open it and step inside.

  Bailey’s right on my heels.

  “The Schecter problem,” she says.

  I sigh. “What is it?”

  “Bob Emanuel ate some bad clams.”

  I look at her. Bob Emanuel is the chief carpenter on a job we’re doing. Four acres. Low slung house. Eight bedrooms. Nine baths. A Zen garden. A pool with a waterfall. A pool house with an attached yoga room. The place is a blend of Asian and contemporary. It’s gonna be spectacular.

  “And?”

  “And, he spent the night puking up his guts.”

  I take off my suit jacket. Bailey takes it from me the way she always does, opens the closet door, whisks the jacket onto a hanger, gives the jacket a quick workover with a brush—did I mention I have a dog? A one hundred and fifty pound mastiff that sheds almost that much fur every day. And then Bailey hangs the jacket in the closet.

  Efficient. Always.

  I sit down at my desk. My mug of coffee, black, two sugars, is positioned just where it always is.

  I take a sip.

  “And I need to know this happy detail because…?”

  “Because he’s the teak guy.”

  “The what?”

  “The teak…”

  Bing bing bing.

  Bailey looks shocked. Actually, I’m shocked, too. It’s her smartphone. The only other time her phone rang while she was with me was two years back, when her mother called to say her dad was in the hospital.

  I look at her.

  No. She doesn’t look shocked. Or worried. Just…I’m not sure. Annoyed? Upset? Something.

  I wave my hand. “Take the call.”

  “It’s a text. And it can wait.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous. See what it is. I hope it’s not bad news.”

  She yanks the phone from her pocket. Looks at it. Then she looks at me. She shakes her head.

  “I’ll deal with it later.”

  “Don’t be silly. Deal with it now.”

  “Later,” she says firmly. She hits the button that turns off the phone, then jams it back in her pocket. “We were talking about the teak doors.”

  “The teak doors,” I say, but it’s difficult to get my head back to the topic. What’s going on with Bailey? I can’t help but wonder.

  She nods. “From Thailand? The ones that date back to the fifteenth century.”

  “The temple doors. Of course. What about them?”

  “They’re due to arrive today and Bob—”

  “And Bob’s the only guy I want handling them.” Shit. I blow out a breath. “Any chance we can hold off delivery for a couple of days?”

  “I already called the dock transport people. No way.”

  Double shit. I trust all my people, but trusting them to deal with doors that set my client back six hundred thousand bucks…

  “We must have somebody who knows teak.”

  Bailey nods. “We do.”


  “Well, call him.”

  Bailey looks at me. “Ring-a-ding,” she says.

  “What?”

  “You know teak, Mr. O’Malley.”

  I stare at my PA. There are two things wrong with her statement.

  One, I don’t know teak. I mean, not compared to Bob the Barfer. I’m into wood, yeah. I have this thing about looking at a piece of oak or redwood and kind of seeing what form or shape is hiding inside it, but knowing teak that’s centuries old? Not my specialty.

  Two, after all these years, I have yet to convince Bailey to call me Matt. Each time we have this conversation, she tells me she’s old-fashioned, that she believes in proper form in the business place, and I tell her that calling the boss Mister went out with typewriters and landline phones.

  “I call you Bailey,” I invariably say, and she invariably nods and says Yes, that’s right, you do. And then she calls me Mr. O’Malley again and I sigh and give up the whole dumb thing for another couple of months…

  But right now, that isn’t the problem.

  She can call me anything she wants except an expert on teak or antiquities, because I am not either.

  I tell her that. She shrugs.

  “You did that entire teak wall of built-ins in the Genovese house,” she says. “Not Bob.”

  “Yeah, well, that was different. It was a wall, and the teak wasn’t older than the hills behind the Schecter place.”

  “Neither are these temple doors.”

  This is the kind of answer you get when you deal with a logical person. I shove back my chair and rise to my feet.

  “You know what I mean.”

  “And you chose these doors yourself. You went all the way to Bangkok to see them and make sure they were really what you wanted.”

  “Who else was gonna do it?”

  “And you texted me and told me to tell Mr. and Mrs. Schecter that the doors really were genuine temple doors from the fifteenth century.”

  “You think that makes me an expert? What it makes me is a guy who read a couple of books before I saw those doors.”

  Bailey folds her arms over her chest. I say chest because I don’t think she has breasts under those suit jackets. Not that I spend time thinking about it. Man, what am I talking about? What I mean is, she’s flat chested. The suit jackets all hang straight from the top button to the bottom one…and, hell, what has that to do with anything except to remind me that I’m arguing with a woman who graduated Magna cum Laude and who is rarely, okay, maybe never wrong when it comes to knowing what’s best for O’Malley Design and Construction?