Silk

by Heidi McLaughlin

  I nodded weakly. “Clearly.”

  “May I ask why, Miss Gracen?”

  He needs to stop saying my name like that…

  “There are several reasons why.”

  “Name the best ones.” He stepped in front of me and looked deep into my eyes. “But your age and the fact that you have kids aren’t good enough reasons for me.”

  Poker face…Poker face… “Well, as I’m sure you already know, it’s against company policy.”

  “I can have that rewritten by the end of the week.”

  “It’s also completely immoral and highly inappropriate.”

  “That’s…debatable.” He reached out and pushed a strand of hair away from my face. “Is that all?”

  I didn’t say anything. I couldn’t say anything.

  I was too busy getting lost in his incredible eyes. I realized that they weren’t entirely blue; his irises were outlined in a wispy cloud of charcoal gray and there were speckles of emerald green gleaming within them.

  “Miss Gracen? Are there any other excuses?” He inched even closer to me, slightly rubbing his nose against mine.

  Why am I so turned on right now? I shouldn’t be feeling this way…He’s way too young for me, way too young for me…

  “I’m not attracted to you.”

  He raised his eyebrow. “Oh really?”

  “Yes. Really.”

  “Hmmm. Well, I guess that is a good enough reason.” He looked at his watch. “I have another meeting to go to…” He stepped away from me. “It was nice running into you again. I’ll see you around?”

  “I guess so.” I nodded and watched him leave the room.

  I wrote a few notes in my “Zen” journal and sighed. “I love my job….I love my job…”

  Nope. Still not working…

  No matter how many times I said it aloud, I still hated my job. With an undying passion.

  I went through another stack of proposal campaigns and tossed them all into my “No way in hell” pile. My associates were really starting to annoy me. All their recent ideas were more terrible than usual; it was like they weren’t even trying.

  I started typing yet another inspirational email to invigorate them, to inspire them to think of something that didn’t suck, but an email flagged as “important” popped up on my screen.

  From: Statham, Jonathan

  To: Gracen, Claire

  Subject: Employee Relations

  Date: January 8, 2013 2:30 PM

  Miss Gracen,

  I know you rejected my earlier proposal, but there are a few things I would like to discuss with you. Would you happen to have any free time this Friday evening?

  Statham Industries CEO,

  Jonathan Statham

  From Gracen, Claire

  To: Statham, Jonathan

  Subject: Re: Employee Relations

  Date: January 8, 2013 2:35 PM

  Mr. Statham,

  Once 5:00 pm arrives on Friday, I will have no desire to discuss anything related to Statham Industries, especially since I am paid by the hour and overtime is strictly forbidden. The next hour that I will be available to discuss these so called “employee relations” will be Monday morning. At 8:00.

  Please make an appointment with my secretary,

  Executive Marketing Director,

  Claire Gracen

  I hit send and shut down my computer. I walked over to my wall calendar, sighing at the date that was circled, and crossed off yesterday’s date with a red marker.

  Four more days ‘til the big 4-0…

  “Miss Gracen!” Mr. Barnes rushed into my office. “Is there any chance you could run our latest board up to the art department? The other directors and I have just been called into an emergency strategy meeting with Mr. Statham.”

  What! Why wasn’t I called? Is he going to blackball my career because I turned him down? How immature…

  As if he’d read my mind, he gave me a sympathetic look. “I’m sure they’re not letting you go…I’d put up a hell of a fight to get you to stay.”

  “Thanks.” I stood up and took the board from his hands. “Whoa, whoa, whoa! We can’t use this!”

  “What? Why not?”

  “Are you kidding me? This is racist!”

  “How so?”

  I sighed. This was yet another reason why I hated working here.

  We were supposed to be coming up with ways to market the new “sPhone Blue” but my department had missed the mark, once again: On the board was a picture of a cotton field, but instead of cotton blooms growing atop the plants, there were sPhones. There were slaves with baskets at their hips, smiling widely as they “picked” the crop. At the bottom of the picture were the words: “Bring back the good old days, the new sPhone Blue.”

  “With all due respect, Mr. Barnes, I’m not taking this shit up there. We need to come up with something else.”

  “Fine.” He snatched the board back. “Well, at least go get the boards back from yesterday. I’ll come get them from you after the emergency meeting.” He definitely stressed the word ‘meeting’ to irk me since I wasn’t invited.

  As soon as he left my office, I headed for the elevators. I told myself that after I picked up the artwork, I would take a second lunch break since the other directors were more important than I was.

  Five more years and I can quit….Only five more years…

  I boarded an empty elevator and hit thirty, but it went down to the basement. Then it went to level two. Then it went to level four.

  I was about to step off and try another elevator, but Jonathan Statham stepped on.

  Every nerve in my body ran wild. My heart started fluttering against my chest—I could literally hear it, and tingles started crawling up and down my spine.

  He turned around and smiled at me, and like a teenage girl with a high school crush, I turned away from him. I didn’t want him to know that he was affecting me.

  I kept my eyes focused on the golden buttons that lit up as we passed every floor: Ten…Eleven…Twelve…

  The elevator came to a sudden halt.

  I looked over and realized he’d hit the stop button.

  “Your reason for not going out with me doesn’t make any sense.” He turned around to face me. “Tell me the truth.”

  “Please do yourself a favor and move on with your life, Mr. Statham. I’m sure you have far more important things to do than harass a mid-level employee. I told you that I’m not attracted to you.”

  “And I think you’re lying.” He stepped closer. “You are attracted to me.”

  I’m well aware…

  “Are you normally this cocky? Surely you can accept the fact that I’m just not attracted to boys.”

  “Boys?” His eyes hardened.

  “Yes…” My breath hitched. “That would make me a pedophile.”

  “Going out with me would make you a pedophile?”

  “Going out with you would make my life a little more complicated than I need it to be. You clearly can’t handle rejection, probably lack emotional maturity, and are definitely more compatible with some vapid twenty year old who still doesn’t know the difference between emotions and—”

  He pushed me against the wall and kissed me—forcing my lips apart, trying to control my tongue with his.

  I tried to push him away, tried to shut my lips back together and act like this wasn’t turning me on, but once I felt his arms slipping around my waist, I slowly gave in and kissed him back.

  I pressed myself back against him, stifling a moan as he bit my bottom lip, as he pinned me against the wall with his hips.

  “Wait…Stop…” I pulled away from him. “I should get back to work.”

  “Tell me the truth.” He stepped back. “Tell me that you do want to go out with me.”

  “Maybe I do, but…”

  “Pick the place.”

  “I’m not sure if that would be very appropri—”

  He pulled me back into his arms and kissed me harder
than before, leaving me utterly breathless. “Pick. The. Place.”

  “I…” I sucked in a breath. “I can’t go on Friday…What about Saturday?”

  “Why can’t you go out on Friday?” He tightened his arms around me.

  “It’s my birthday…My friends have a table reserved for me at Havana.”

  “Interesting. Can I come?”

  What? Why?

  “If you want to…Sure…”

  “Okay.” He released me and hit the start button. “I’ll see you Friday. We can discuss our date for Saturday then.” He kept his eyes on me as he moved to the other side of the elevator.

  I leaned against the wall and inhaled several times to bring my breathing back to normal. “I know you don’t work in HR or anything, but I was the only director who wasn’t invited to the mock-up meeting this afternoon. You said no one was losing their job but…Am I being let go? Are you trying to soften the blow by being nice to me during my last week here?”

  “What? Why would you even think—Of course not.” He laughed. “How else was I supposed to get you alone?”

  The doors opened on twenty four and he stepped off.

  “Oh, and Miss Gracen?” He turned around and held the doors open. “Before I forget…When you were thirty and expanding your marketing career, I was nineteen, but I wasn’t picking out my major. I was dropping out and starting my own software company, the very company you hate working for today.” He moved his hands from the doors and they closed on his seductive smile.

  I went back down to my office and changed my panties in the bathroom for the second time this week. I knew my stash of emergency panties would come in handy at some point, but I was thinking more along the lines of wasting coffee on my pants, not getting aroused as soon as I looked at Jonathan Statham.

  This is not good…This is not good…

  Chapter 4

  Jonathan

  I walked into human resources and pulled Claire’s file. Her resume was impeccable. She had a Business degree from the University of Pittsburgh, a master’s in marketing from Carnegie Mellon, and she’d worked on several high profile ad campaigns—Ralph Lauren, Versace, Microsoft, Google. Before coming to work for me, she’d spent four years directing projects at Cole and Hillman Associates in Pittsburgh, the largest advertising firm on the East Coast.

  Why would she ever leave there to come here? Her position here is a major downgrade from that…She’s probably only being paid half of what she used to make…

  I took the elevator to my floor and sighed. Even though her birthdate was clearly marked on all her files, I couldn’t believe she was about to turn forty. She didn’t look forty. At all.

  Not that I gave a damn; I actually found it quite funny that she thought her age would be a problem.

  “Mr. Statham?” My secretary looked up as soon as I walked by her desk. “I have something for you.” She handed me a card:

  Jonathan,

  I’m sure you noticed that I wasn’t at the board meeting today and I’m sorry I didn’t tell you sooner. I’m going to Paris for a while to do some serious wedding planning with my best friend, Joanna—remember her? She’s the one who said you and I would make a cute couple at last year’s charity ball :-) Anyway, I was doing some thinking, and if I need to vacate my seat on the board for you to give us a chance, I will definitely consider it.

  I’ll be thinking about you while I’m away.

  Hope you’ll be thinking of me,

  Vanessa.

  I hadn’t noticed she was absent from the meeting and I was pretty sure I never alluded to the possibility of she and I having a chance to be together. I’d lost count of how many times I told her that I only saw her as a friend, nothing more.

  I unlocked the door to my office and hit the lights. Tossing my jacket on the couch, I lay down and prepared to take a nap, but I saw my ex-girlfriend sitting at my desk.

  “Audrey?” I sat up. “What are you doing? How did you get in here?”

  I thought I had you banned for life…

  “I wanted to talk to you.”

  “About?”

  “Us…”

  “There is no us. There hasn’t been an ‘us’ in over a year.”

  “Just hear me out please.” She motioned for me to sit in front of my desk.

  I sighed. I pushed a panel in my wall and took out a bottle of bourbon. I poured myself a tall glass and offered her a bottle of water before sitting down.

  “Go ahead.” I tried not to sound annoyed. “I’m listening.”

  “Well, I was doing some thinking the other day. Do you remember how we talked about marriage a few times?”

  “We broke up a year ago. I don’t keep a listed file about every conversation we had.”

  She leaned forward in the chair and bit her lip. “It was going to work out perfectly because our careers were set, neither of us wanted children, and we wanted to travel the world every year once we tied the knot…” She started unbuttoning her jacket. “You don’t remember any of that?”

  “No.”

  “Well, I do. You and I were pretty serious at one point and then we just fell apart…”

  “Was this before or after you called all my ex-girlfriends? Before or after you lied about being pregnant and dragged me to a fake doctor?”

  She slid her jacket off, revealing that she was wearing nothing underneath it but a lacy pink bra. Before I could stand up, she’d walked around the desk, showing off the matching panties.

  “Audrey…” I felt no attraction whatsoever. “Please get dressed. I don’t have time for this.”

  “You know you don’t want me to put on any clothes, Jonathan…Make love to me. Right here. Right now. We never did get the chance to have sex in your office.”

  A year ago, I would’ve gladly given in and fucked her in front of my floor to ceiling windows, but I was over her and her silly little games. She’d been the source of way too much drama in my life and I didn’t want that anymore.

  “Put your clothes on or I’ll have security come and take you away in what you’re wearing right now.”

  She slid her panties off. “But you told me to show up here wearing this! You said you wanted to talk about us getting back together!”

  “What? What are you talking about?” And what is that red dot blinking on my bookshelf? Is she RECORDING this?

  “I know you want me back, Jonathan, but you have to change.” She suddenly sounded hurt. “Just admit to your mistakes, apologize, and we can get back together…I’ve finally forgiven you for hitting me on Christmas Day and giving me a black eye…and bruising my ribs…And I know you didn’t want me to go to the press about it so if you’d rather pay for me to— “

  “Okay.” I walked over to the red blinking thing—a miniature pen recorder, and tossed it out the window. “I don’t know what the hell you’re trying to pull, but you know damn well I never hit you. Ever. Whatever we had was fun while it lasted, but that’s pretty much all it was before you turned into a psycho. Please get out of my office.”

  She started crying. “I said I was sorry! I thought you were cheating on me when I set your Aston Martin on fire!”

  I can’t believe I almost forgot about that…

  I walked behind my desk and moved her crumpled clothes off my chair.

  “And I apologized for calling all your exes! I needed to know if you were still talking to them! I needed to know that you were really mine!”

  I handed her the clothes and sat down. “You’ve got one minute, Audrey. Get dressed before I call security.”

  “I still think you and I could work out! I know you still want me!”

  I picked up my phone. “Greg, I need security to come and escort someone out of my office as soon as possible.”

  “The sex was incredible! Remember? We could go on for hours and hours!” She slid into her jeans and put on her jacket. “You can’t say you don’t miss that! Why don’t you want me back?”

  There was a knock at my door.
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  “Come in!” I called.

  Two security guards walked in and looked at me, then at Audrey.

  She immediately stopped crying, like she always did whenever there was an unexpected audience.

  “I don’t need any assistance walking down the steps!” She laughed. “Thanks for calling for back up though. My knees are fine, Jonathan!”

  “You really should pursue acting Audrey.” I shook my head. “You would be great at it. Could you two please escort Miss Greene out to the parking lot and make sure to take her name off the approved visitors list?”

  “Yes sir.” They motioned for her to leave the room first.

  Audrey looked back at me and scowled. “I don’t want you back anyway, you sucked in bed! You couldn’t keep your dick up for more than a minute!”

  Jesus…

  The door slammed shut and I leaned back in my chair.

  Maybe I need to date someone older…Someone more mature…

  On Thursday, I stayed late working on the marketing department’s reconstruction plan. I wasn’t sure why Claire hated her job so much, but if the ideas her department submitted for the sPhone blue were any indication, I would probably hate working here too.

  Their submissions were awful, god awful: “The new sPhone blue: Just blue it,” “The new sPhone blue. Yeah, it’s blue,” and “The new sPhone blue: Buy it. Ask questions later.”

  There is no way “adults” came up with this nonsense…

  I shut the folder and decided to call it a day. We were definitely going to have to hire new talent. Soon.

  I took the elevator down to the executive lot and slid into my Bugatti. Shifting gears, I prepared to speed all the way home, but I saw Claire arguing with a tow truck driver on the other side of the lot.

  Just as I pulled over, he drove off with what I assumed was her SUV.

  “Claire?” I stepped out of my car, eyeing the way her black skirt hugged her hips, the way her emerald green blouse exposed just the right amount of cleavage.

  She looked at me and shook her head. “This is a perfect example of why I hate working here. Is it really necessary to tow your own employees’ cars if they stay over late? Is that really the best way to discourage over-time? How about just shutting off the damn time clock at the end of the day?”