Desire: A Contemporary Romance Box Set

by R. R. Banks

  I stalked past the security guard posted in the front, ignoring his pleas, albeit half-hearted, for me to stop, and moved directly to Lucille’s office. Too infuriated to care what anyone thought of me and fully embracing the idea that I wasn’t going to walk out of this office with my career intact, I planted a brutal kick into the middle of the door. The heel of my shoe splintered through the cheap wood that I wouldn’t be surprised to learn had been there since the day that the company opened. It was something that I had mentioned to Mr. Royal before, telling him that the appearance of his office was a major part of the impression that he made on prospective clients, and that that started with his door. It was one of the few suggestions of mine that he hadn’t heeded, but as I listened the satisfying sound of my foot cracking through the door and the gasp of surprise from inside, I was happy that he had ignored me.

  Lucille was on her feet when I pushed the door the rest of the way and stepped inside to face her.

  “What the fuck do you think you’re doing?” she demanded.

  So, we have dispensed with the decorum all together.

  “Me?” I said, taking a step closer to her. “Me? What am I doing? What do you think you’re doing writing something like this about me?”

  I tossed the newsletter to her feet and saw a sickening smile come to her lips.

  “Oh, that,” she said. “What? You don’t like it? I know that I don’t have the same quirky little style as my husband, but hopefully everyone will be able to rise above their seventh-grade reading level to understand without all the colloquialisms.”

  “How dare you say those things about me?”

  “What things, Snow? That you went to a retreat that specializes in giving you men to fuck? Is there something about that that is not correct?”

  I felt a shudder go down my spine. The reality was that that was absolutely the truth. It may have been put into cruder terms than I would have appreciated, and she completely missed the point of why I was there, but I couldn’t argue that she was wrong.

  “I earned the time off that I took,” I said, deciding that I was going to skirt around what she had said. “What I did during my leave has nothing to do with you and is none of your business.”

  “Oh, but you see,” she said, walking around to the back of the desk and settling down into the chair slowly, “that’s where you’re wrong. What you did during your leave has everything to do with me. When you started working here, do you remember being given a personnel handbook?”

  She looked at me with an expression of mock curiosity and reached down to one of the drawers beside her.

  “Of course, I do,” I said though my gritted teeth.

  Lucille withdrew a worn copy of the same handbook that I had been given when I first started working at the agency many years before. She set in on the desk and rested her hand flat on top of it.

  “So, I can assume that you read it?”

  “Yes, I read it.”

  The condescending tone of her voice was making my blood boil and my fingers were clenched into my fists at my sides. This wasn’t the first time that Lucille and I had butted heads. It wasn’t even the first time that she had done something shady in an effort to humiliate and discredit me. This time, however, she had gone too far.

  She turned her head to the other side, continuing to look at me in that sarcastic, simpering way.

  “Really?” she asked.

  “Yes,” I said with a hint of a hiss in my voice. “It was part of the orientation process.”

  “Well, it doesn’t seem that you read through it very carefully.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “Because if you had, you would remember the morality policy.”

  “What morality policy?”

  Her expression turned to a slight grin.

  “I’m glad you asked that.” She flipped through the handbook and slid it across the desk toward me. “Why don’t you give yourself a little refresher.”

  Mr. Glass was standing a few feet behind the desk, positioned diagonally from Lucille as if he didn’t want to be close to her even though he knew that he couldn’t just walk away. I looked up at the advisor, hoping for some kind of encouragement. He only stared back, his face stony, his eyes registering no emotion. I stepped up to the side of the desk and looked down at the handbook. The text was old and nearly faded into the page, obviously printed decades before I even came on the scene. I felt like I read by the words too quickly for them to really sink into my brain and I went back to read them again. As I did, they started to swim on the page.

  “In an effort to preserve the wholesome and family-focused corporate culture of Royal and Company Advertising Agency it will be policy that no employee shall engage in relationships with more than two persons in any given six-month period. If it is found that this policy has been broken, or if it is suspected that any employee has engaged in inappropriate or egregious sexual practices, it is cause for immediate and unnegotiated dismissal from the company.”

  I felt like I couldn’t breathe. The sickness in my belly had increased to the point that I was afraid I was going to throw up. I straightened and stared directly across the desk at Lucille, refusing to show any emotion.

  “I know for a fact that you couldn’t know what I was really doing.”

  “Are you sure about that?”

  I had to try to cling to the hope that the same vagueness and ambiguity that I had found in the information I could locate about the Enchanted Woods was all she knew, and that she had taken it and used a flight of fancy to bring her to her conclusions. Though they might have been right, at least in the fact that I had engage in sex with multiple men in less than the six months permitted, I wouldn’t give her the satisfaction of admitting it.

  “Yes,” I said.

  “You were at a retreat called The Enchanted Woods. It is located, appropriately, in the middle of the woods and services only exclusive and limited clientele. You were provided with a selection of men to have sex with, presumably on a paid basis. Is there anything that I missed?”

  I was shaking, the humiliation and anger that I was feeling starting to make cracks in the hardened shield that I had put up on my way to the confrontation. I didn’t know how to respond to her. Part of me wanted to deny it, to tell her that she didn’t know what she was talking about and that she was completely wrong about my activities during my leave. I knew that if there was some way for Lucille to check back after me, Fawn would protect my privacy and not offer any information. There was another part of me, however, that refused to lie, that refused to back down and hide behind the same demure cover I had hid behind for so long.

  “That policy hasn’t been enforced in years, not since I’ve been working here, and you know it.”

  “It doesn’t matter if it hasn’t ever been enforced,” Lucille said. “The point is that it is policy, and you went against it with your little escapade. That means that I have every right to do exactly what the handbook dictates and dismiss you.”

  “I find it incredibly ironic that you are trying to fire me for doing nothing more than exactly what you have done every single time you have wanted to get a little bit higher in a company.”

  “I’m not trying to fire you, Snow. I have fired you. Your ID chip will no longer allow you in the building as of tomorrow. I could have deactivated it today, but frankly I was looking forward to seeing the look on your face when you found out. Face it. There’s nothing for you to look down on me about anymore. We are exactly the same.”

  The thought curdled my blood and I shook my head at her.

  “No,” I said. “We’re nothing alike.”

  Lucille nodded slightly.

  “You’re right. We aren’t. At least I married the man.”

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Hunter

  It had been two weeks since Lucille had finally succeeded in getting Snow out of the company and I was still struggling to deal with it. The office just wasn’t the same without her there. She
brightened up the entire space, seeming to bring happiness and levity to any situation that we might find ourselves in, whether it was a client who decided last-minute that they needed their entire campaign redone to suit the marketing epiphany that they experienced in their tequila-fueled dream, or the fact that our doughnuts and coffee had still not made their return to the kitchen. When it came to the clients, Snow was always thinking a step ahead of everyone and ensuring that the accounts were managed in the best way possible, even when she wasn’t a formal part of the team working on it. She was always willing to offer a thought or give a bit of constructive criticism, but was just as fast to tell the team that the campaign they came up with was phenomenal and that she never would have been able to come up with it, even though the truth was more likely that she would have been. Now the clients were upset and accounts were threatening to leave the firm because Snow was no longer there to handle their campaigns and give them exactly what they wanted.

  Beyond that, though, just being in an environment that was completely controlled by such a vicious woman as Lucille who had been handed everything that she wanted was intolerable. Her mere presence hung over the office like a thick, dark cloud, and everyone had seemed to shut down, pulling in within themselves more with each passing day with Lucille at the helm of the company. I had held out hope for a few days that Mr. Royal would catch wind of the firing and make a valiant return from his vacation, snatch back his company from his evil wife’s claws, and send her back into the smarmy corporate swampland from whence she came. A postcard that I received halfway through the first week without Snow, however, destroyed that hope for me and I was forced to confront the reality that this was what we were going to have to deal with throughout the course of our contracts. Unless we could find legitimate reason to sever our agreements, quitting would mean giving up our severance packages and all of the benefits we had been promised when we started working with Walter. It felt oppressive and frustrating, sucking the life and the motivation out of everyone in the office.

  I had just returned from a run to the coffee shop for lunch, the one break that I was able to get during the day, when I noticed a man standing in the lobby. I didn’t recognize him as anyone who worked with the company or as any of the clients that we had been working with recently, so I stepped up beside him. I purposely stayed several feet away from him so that I could try to see his face without him noticing what I was doing. As I masked my curiosity by shifting through some of the magazines piled up on the table in the reception area as if I was checking the dates, I noticed that the man was staring through the glass case hanging on the wall at the pictures of employees who had been honored with awards and superlatives over the years.

  I stepped a little closer and noticed that his gaze didn’t seem to be moving as though he were looking at all of the different pictures and plaques, but rather that he was staring at one specific one. He glanced slightly to the side as if he had noticed that I was looking at him and then turned to look at me fully.

  “Hey,” he said, gesturing for me to come closer. “Who is this?”

  I walked up to him, thankful that his interest had glossed over the fact that I was at least slightly stalking him. He was pointing into the glass and I followed the gesture. Snow’s face smiled at me from behind the glass, her eyes sparkling from a picture taken when she earned special recognition for being the top account earner the year before. It made me feel even sadder to look at her face shimmering there behind the glass, her presence there in the office and yet gone.

  “That’s Snow Whitman,” I said. “She used to work here.”

  “Used to?” the man asked.

  “Yes. She…stopped working here recently.”

  I hesitated to tell him what really happened. I still didn’t know who he was or why he was there so I didn’t want to give too much personal information about Snow and her situation. The man nodded as he continued to stare at her picture.

  “Did the current acting president of the company have anything to do with her leaving?” he asked.

  Well, since he asked.

  “Yes. Lucille Royal stepped into the role of acting president a few months ago after she married Walter Royal, the owner of the company. She is the one responsible for dismissing Snow.”

  The man nodded again, and something about his expression told me that I wasn’t really giving him any new information. He stared at the picture for a few seconds longer and then turned to look at me.

  “Will you please show me to Mrs. Royal’s office?” he asked. I was slightly taken aback by the request and I hesitated in saying anything. He gave me a slightly quizzical expression. “She’s expecting me.”

  I nodded.

  “Oh,” I said, feeling like that was all that I could manage to get out in that moment. “Sure. Right this way.”

  I led him in silence through the quiet, depressed-feeling floors of the building until we reached Lucille’s office. The door that had to be replaced after its unfortunate encounter with Snow’s shoe looked dramatically out of place and I felt the urge to knock more formally on its elaborate carved wood surface than I would have on the simpler door that Mr. Royal had had on the office ever since I had worked with him. I withheld the formality and rapped on the door twice.

  “Yes?” Lucille said in the annoyed, burdened tone that had become her usual approach since before Snow’s departure.

  I opened the door without bothering to announce myself.

  “Your appointment is here,” I said, realizing that I didn’t get the man’s name and feeling as though I was failing in the assistant department.

  “Hello, Lucille,” the man said as he stepped around me and into the office.

  Lucille’s face dropped when she saw him and I noticed her grip on the pen that she was holding tightened.

  “What are you doing here?” she asked.

  Ooo, not a pleasant meeting, I see.

  Feeling the hint of a smile coming to my lips knowing that this man was able to fluster and unnerve Lucille so much while remaining absolutely calm and collected, I turned and started to pull the door closed.

  “You know why I’m here,” the man said as I stepped out into the hall and closed the door.

  I didn’t know at that time what was happening, but somehow I felt a bit more optimistic.

  Robin

  I watched Snow as she peeled out of her sweater and draped it over the back of her chair. In one smooth movement she walked around the side of the chair, dropped down into it, and collapsed forward onto the table as if her spine was suddenly made out of ribbon. I pushed a cup of coffee toward her with my fingertips, but she didn’t respond.

  “Snow? Are you still in there?”

  “I don’t know,” she muttered back.

  “Well, you spoke. That’s a plus. I haven’t heard actual words come out of you in a while.”

  She looked like someone had grabbed onto her spine and pulled up, lifting her off of the table and unfolding her until she leaned back against the chairback.

  “What am I going to do?” Snow asked.

  “What do you mean?” I asked, taking a sip of the sweet hazelnut coffee in front of me.

  Watching me take the sip seemed to bring Snow into the reality of the coffee in front of her.

  “Since when does The Wishing Well serve coffee?” she asked.

  “I think that they always did,” I said, looking down into the light brown swirl of my coffee, “but tonight they are trying specialty coffee.”

  “Interesting,” she said.

  A waiter was roaming past and Snow reached up to touch his elbow to get his attention. He looked down at her expectantly.

  “Is there something I can get for you?”

  “Ice cream,” I said. “Please. Just a…” I gestured with my hands, indicating the sheer size of the bowl I wanted, “a big ass bowl of ice cream.”

  “Flavor?”

  “Vanilla bean if you have it. Chocolate. Anything, really. Just ice cream.”r />
  The waiter gave a short laugh and walked away toward the kitchen.

  “What am I going to do?” she asked.

  “Oh, we’re back to this now,” I said. I took another sip of my coffee and set the mug down resolutely. “Ok. What do you mean?”

  “Without my job.”

  “Snow. Seriously. I know that you’re sad about your job. I know that you’re extra sad because it was Lucille who was able to fire you and you feel like she finally got the one-up on you after all of these years.”

  “She did get the one up on me,” she snapped. “She humiliated the living bejeezus out of me and then fired me. Well, technically she fired me and humiliated me simultaneously and I just didn’t know what was happening at first.”

  The waiter returned with approximately half a gallon of ice cream piled into a serving bowl and placed it on the table in front of her.

  “I gave you half vanilla bean and half chocolate,” he said.

  “Bless you,” Snow said.

  The waiter walked away and Snow picked up her mug of coffee and poured it over the ice cream.

  “I just can’t believe that this happened. I worked so hard. So…hard. For so long. I always thought that I would be able to stay one step ahead of her.” She scooped up a spoonful of the ice cream-swirled coffee from the bowl and shoved it in her mouth. “Even when I left for that stupid leave of absence, I was pissed off but I thought that I was going to figure something out and be able to get back to where I was supposed to be when it was all over.” She stared down into the bowl and shook her head. “I never should have gone. I never should have let her run me out of the office.”

  “What exactly did you think that you were going to do? She’s the president of the company. She’s also a crazy bitch. If she couldn’t figure out how to get you out that day, she would have just kept going and figured out another way to get you gone.”

  “But it didn’t have to be this way. It didn’t have to go down this ugly path. I should never have gone to that retreat.”

  I hated hearing her say that. It didn’t escape my awareness that I was the one who was responsible for sending her to The Enchanted Woods. I had made it seem that I had just happened upon the brochure for the place, but the truth was that I had sought it out for her. I knew someone else who had spent some time there and thought that it could really benefit Snow. She needed to relax. Like I had told her, she needed to learn more about herself and what she really wanted in her life. I hadn’t necessarily expected her to go straight for seven guys, but in a way, I was proud of her. I thought that if she went along with the situation at all that she would choose one or two types of men, then be finished. When I heard that she had chosen seven, bringing her right on up to the Dirty 8, I had been shocked, but also proud that she was willing to put herself out there like that. She was nothing if not committed.