Fighting For You d-4

by Sydney Landon

  “How’re you doing today, my love?” George asked. George had been with Danvers running the cafeteria for thirty years, hired back in the day Marshall Danvers, Jason’s father, started the company. George always had a smile for everyone and, in truth, a soft spot for Claire.

  “I’m good, George. Thanks for asking.”

  “When are you going to let me take you away from all this?”

  “Now, what in the world would Sara say, George?” Sara was George’s lady friend, as he called her, and the two were just a perfect match.

  “Sara would understand if I had to trade up. We got an understanding.”

  “George, you wouldn’t even know how to get up in the morning without Sara. You better hold on to her with both hands. She’s a keeper.”

  “That’s true, but a guy can dream, right?”

  “You’re hopeless, George. You have a good day.”

  “You too, love. See you tomorrow.”

  * * *

  Claire walked down the hall to the elevator bank. No corners were cut with the decor of Danvers International. Everything here was gleaming: white marble floors, soft off-white walls, and stainless steel elevators with mahogany walls inside. As she stepped into the elevator she once again forced herself to remain calm. Confronting her fear of enclosed spaces was what forced her to take the elevator every day instead of the stairs. While the stairs might be better for her physically, conquering her claustrophobia was far more important.

  Danvers International was a huge glass-and-steel building with twenty-five floors. Jason Danvers’ office was on the twenty-third floor, and his personal space was on the twenty-fourth and twenty-fifth floors. The door to Jason’s large office was closed, as usual. Putting away her purse in the bottom drawer of her desk, she settled into her chair in the reception area.

  Jason liked the office to be very impersonal and she was always careful to have no personal items on her desk. His one concession to some type of informality was to address her by her first name, and he liked to be addressed by his as well.

  She had been working as Jason’s assistant for three years. Her job generally required her to handle all the liaising with clients, suppliers, and other staff. She was Jason’s right hand and ensured that all appointments, meetings, and projects were scheduled and staffed as needed. Her office life was never slow or boring. He was a fair boss and always treated her well. In the time they had worked together they had managed to create a comfortable relationship. It wasn’t exactly a friendship, because they didn’t have personal conversations. It was more of a mutual respect for each other’s abilities.

  She was checking her e-mail when the office door opened and he strolled out. His normally wavy brown hair was rumpled as if he had been running his hands through it, and his mouth was pulled in a tight line.

  “Claire, could I have a word with you in my office?”

  Normally he just relied on the telephone to give orders, so it was somewhat of a surprise to be summoned personally. He waited for her to step out from behind her desk and precede him into his office. Claire was initially surprised at how at odds Jason’s office seemed to be with his personality. Jason was very direct and a person of few words. His clothing favored darker colors with his style usually expensive and conservative. At thirty-five years old, he could easily pass for someone in his twenties. His office, however, had a nautical motif. Jason had several beautiful colorful pictures of the ocean and various beach scenes, and the room was reminiscent of an expensive seaside hotel.

  She had been shocked the first time she’d entered his office at how comfortable and soothing it was compared to the rest of Danvers International. She’d heard from various employees that Jason loved the sea, which was a major reason Danvers International headquarters remained in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, rather than moving to bigger cites that would offer more benefits to a company of its size.

  She’d spent a lot of time in this office imagining rolling around on the floor buck naked with her boss—carpet burns be damned! Just because Suzy was her best friend didn’t mean she had to tell her that her fantasies of Jason were probably better than anything Suzy had dared to imagine. Carefully schooling her face into a neutral expression, she looked at Jason with what she hoped would pass for professionalism and not “do me” desperation.

  “Claire, I need you to work this weekend. I know I usually don’t impose a weekend work schedule; however, the contracts for Mericom are supposed to be finished on Saturday, and I’ll need you to be on hand to handle any last-minute changes that may take place.”

  “That’s not a problem. What time should I be in the office on Saturday?”

  “That’s the problem. Unfortunately I’ll be going out of town this evening to Columbia, and I’ll need you to travel with me. My friend Harold is getting married on Sunday, and I’m expected at his home for the weekend since I’m in the wedding party.”

  Oh, great. I’ve not worked weekends for over a year and rarely travel on business and now I’m being asked to do both!

  “Jason, I have a previous family engagement for the weekend, but I’ll be glad to be in the office during the day on both Saturday and Sunday.”

  “I’m afraid that isn’t going to work. I don’t need to remind you how big this deal with Mericom is to Danvers, do I?”

  He had been working for close to a year on the acquisition of Mericom. Danvers International was the second biggest communications company in the U.S., and with the addition of Mericom, Danvers would move firmly into first place.

  “No, that’s fine. Would it be a problem if you gave me directions so that I could meet you tomorrow morning?”

  “I guess that’s okay. I’ll e-mail the information to you shortly.”

  When Jason’s cell phone rang, she took the opportunity to excuse herself from his office. Crap, crap, crap, what am I going to do about this weekend?!

  Continue reading for a special preview of

  BETTING ON YOU

  Available from InterMix January 2014

  Mia Gentry walked through the glass doors in the lobby of the Danvers International building while singing to the music piping through her earbuds. At twenty-eight, she supposed she should feel like some dirty old lady for listening to Justin Bieber, but she loved his music. She stuck the foot of her hot-pink pump in the door of the elevator to hold it. Suzy and her husband, Gray, were standing just inside the door as she made her way inside. God, she felt like such a frump standing next to her fashion idol and her GQ man. She wondered idly if they were into threesomes. She had never tried that, but she had a bit of a girl-crush on Suzy, and Gray was smoking hot. Yeah, she wouldn’t think twice if they asked her. She smiled and muttered “Morning,” as the doors closed.

  Oh my god, he had his hand on her ass. That was it for Mia. Any man confident enough to feel up his wife in a corporate America elevator was the total shit as far as she was concerned. She knew she had just found some new material for the session with her battery-operated boyfriend tonight. Suzy and Gray stepped out on the fourth floor and as the doors were closing, Suzy flashed her a grin saying, “I love your shoes.” Luckily for Mia, she managed to contain her squeal until the elevator was moving again. Yeah, this day was looking up. Her fortune cookie from last night was right: good things do come to those who wait.

  She stepped off at the sixth floor into the hub of the Installation and Support department for Danvers International. This place was heaven for a geek such as herself. She had worked there for three years now and loved every minute of it. She had started out doing customer support and eventually moved up to site installation. She supervised a crew of ten people, and depending upon the job, some or all of them traveled to each site. Although, when she had moved into management, she had given up a lot of the travel that once had been required. She now went onsite for only a few days for the larger jobs or to fill in as necessary.

  She grabbed a cup of coffee from the break room on her way to her corner office. Her space w
as small, but she treasured the window with the view of downtown Myrtle Beach. It was a big upgrade from her starter cubicle in the cube-farm down the hall. Just as she was running through the emails that had accumulated since yesterday, her boss, Hank, walked in and sank down in the chair in front of her desk.

  “How’s it going, kid?”

  She smiled at his standard greeting. Hank was in his forties and saw everyone around him as his kids. He had a thick mane of gray hair and if she squinted just right, he reminded her of Richard Gere. He had more than a few admirers in the office, both male and female, so apparently everyone else agreed with her assessment of his looks. “It’s going, no problems to speak of.”

  Hank shook his head, giving her a rueful smile before saying, “Well, I’m about to mess that up for you. I know you’ve got half of your crew in Alabama this week, and Nikki is out with her . . . um . . . lady problem, but I’ve got a local install that just came through and it’s VIP.”

  Mia rolled her eyes. “First of all, Nikki just had a baby; how is that a ‘lady problem?’ And secondly, who’s the local VIP? Unless we’re talking about something for the city, it should only require a couple of technicians, tops.”

  “You know the Oceanix Resort?” Mia nodded even though it wasn’t really a question. Most locals could never afford to stay there but everyone still knew of the Oceanix Resort. It was high-end luxury. She would never voluntarily admit that she had been there to her coworkers, but she suspected that Hank knew she might be familiar with the resort. “They’re replacing their entire system with ours and the Myrtle Beach location is to be the first install. If things go well, the other nine locations will be next. The catch is they want to start on Monday, which means that the preliminary work needs to be laid out this week. Since you’d normally send Nikki on a local job, that leaves you, kid. This needs to go off without a hitch so we can’t send some wet-behind-the-ears newbie and besides, those are your people, aren’t they?”

  Indeed they had been at one time. You didn’t grow up as the only child of Jefferson and Madeline Gentry without rubbing elbows with some of the privileged elite. Her parents were what you would call “old money.” If there had ever been a poor Gentry in the family tree, it was too far back to be found. She had bowed to parental pressure and attended an Ivy League college, which was probably why Hank suspected that she was from money. After she graduated, she had started to pull away from the crowd she had grown up with. The pressure to fit in had long ago gotten old and she had been eager to experience life without a constant safety net under her.

  Of course, her parents had been less than thrilled with her choices. She would have thought her computer science degree would have tipped them off, but apparently they just assumed she had spent four years in college to study a hobby. When she moved out of her gated childhood home in a posh oceanfront section of Garden City Beach, they had been quite vocal in their disapproval. She had struck a compromise with them and had moved into a condominium that her father owned in nearby Surfside Beach. She wanted to hate it, but truthfully she loved her two-bedroom home right on the ocean. It was a small twelve-unit building and even though she was well paid at Danvers, it would have been out of her price range.

  She rarely saw any of her childhood friends anymore. Most of them just didn’t understand her these days. As was often the case, they had all moved on. She had new friends now, such as her good friend and coworker, Nikki, who was currently on maternity leave and had named Mia the godmother of her first child. Indeed, life was different, but much better now. Her parents might never understand her, but she hoped in some tiny way they respected her need to make it on her own.

  Hank snapping his fingers jerked her from her trip down memory lane and back to the present. Damn, what was his question again? Oh yeah, her people, hmmm, how to answer that? “I don’t know about that. I’m not familiar with the owner or owners.”

  He grinned, obviously amused with her efforts to sidestep his question. “Have you ever been inside the Oceanix Resort?”

  Well shit, he had her there and he knew it. “Er . . . a few times. They have a good Sunday brunch.”

  “Whew, I can only imagine how much a meal in that place would set you back.” Without waiting for an answer, he continued on. “So, at least you’re familiar with it. Bullshit aside, Merimon asked that we send you.”

  Mia’s heart stuttered. Oh my God, Gray Merimon knew she existed? Maybe that threesome idea wasn’t all in her head. “Wow, okay. If Gray asked for me.” Before she could start mentally picking out lingerie, Hank busted her bubble.

  “Gray? No, the other one, Nick. He handled the contract and requested the team leader. He even mentioned you by name.”

  Talk about having the rug pulled out from under you. It wasn’t that she didn’t find Nick attractive; he was delish. His fiancée, Beth, was hot as well, but she was pregnant. It seemed wrong to have a fantasy about someone knocked up. Oh well, it was probably for the best. She would just continue to admire her idol from afar. “Yeah, I’ll head on over there this morning and get everything started. Who do I need to ask for?”

  Hank pulled some paperwork from his shirt pocket and handed it over to her. “Seth Jackson is your contact. He also indicated that you can speak with someone named Margie if he isn’t in.” Then Hank’s name was paged for a call and he left her office with a curse.

  Mia spent the next hour answering emails and returning calls. She packed a bag with her iPad and a notebook to jot down some quick notes. She stopped off at the restroom to survey her reflection before she left. She had dressed a bit casually for a customer visit, but it would have to suffice. She was wearing black skinny pants, with her high-heeled pink pumps and a matching pink-and-white striped top. Her wavy brown hair was styled in the usual intentionally messy look, and her makeup consisted of pink blusher and a sheer lipstick. Yeah, it would have to do. She seldom spent a lot of time with management in the preliminary stages anyway.

  Sydney Landon is the New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of the Danvers series. She lives in South Carolina with her husband and two children, who keep life interesting and borderline insane, but never boring. When she isn’t writing, Sydney enjoys reading, swimming and being a mini-van driving soccer mom. Local bookstore: Books a Million, Greenville and B&N, Greenville.

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