Soon they were near the end of the long hall on the east side of the house, and Mary opened a door. The room wasn’t too terribly big, but it had a few book shelves and a huge desk by the window. There was a laptop on top and a printer to the side, on top of a two-drawer filing cabinet, but what caught her attention was the daunting pile of what she guessed was mail in the center of the desk, just in front of the computer on the side where the chair was.
Unopened mail.
Dear heavens. Did he get this much fan mail in a day? A week? A month? She was surprised people still resorted to paper mail nowadays when it was easy enough to write on your fave rock star’s Facebook page or to send him a tweet. She would have thought cyberspace would make snail mail contact of one’s favorite rock star crush obsolete.
Well, that was okay. She considered herself quite organized, and sorting through that kind of mail daily or weekly wouldn’t be bad. She hoped her initial shock hadn’t shown on her face. She knew if they looked at her now, she would appear calm and composed. No big deal, she wanted her face to say.
Mary said, “Think of this as just another interview question. I’d like to see you go through this mail and organize it. There is no time limit. and if you decide it’s too much, that’s fine, but I’d just like to see how you go through it.”
Emily took a deep breath. Okay. That made sense. She glanced over at Jet and he looked almost horrified. Emily bit her bottom lip to stifle a grin. What the hell did girls write him that he seemed freaked out having her glance through the pile? Well, he’d have to get used to it if they hired her. She planned to be cool and composed, and she would try not to read anything.
She walked over to the other side of the desk and sat in the swivel chair. She noticed a piece junk mail on top. “Do you have a wastebasket?” Mary nodded and grabbed one from beside one of the bookshelves and started to bring it to the desk. Emily had another thought, though. This too was a test. Jet was a famous guy and probably everything with his personal info that left his house should be unrecognizable. “On second thought—do you have a shredder?”
Jet tilted his head to consider her and Mary said, “There’s one in the garage.”
Emily nodded. First stack: Crap that needed to be shredded. She might not need the trashcan after all. To the left side, she started that pile with the piece of mail that was in her hand—a thick envelope with a credit card offer inside. She somehow doubted Jet was shopping for a credit card. He probably had all the credit he needed, and if he wanted more, she imagined he’d go to his bank and hobnob with the president of the joint.
The next envelope she picked up was a bill, from the looks of it—a sewer bill. So she started another stack next to the junk mail, one for bills. So much for being all love notes. Mary said, “You mind if we pull up a chair? Will that make you nervous?”
Actually, a little, but no way was she going to indicate that. “No, not at all.”
Jet asked, “You want a drink?”
Another test? She was going to be professional. “No, thank you.” She couldn’t imagine she’d be doing this long enough to grow thirsty. Now that she knew she wasn’t going to be just reading through teenage girls’ letters with offers of losing their virginity to the man across from her, she was feeling a little better about going through the pile. If it was just junk mail and bills and things of that nature, she could handle it. She started pulling out one piece of mail at a time and finding a place for it. There were a couple of questionable things that were not junk mail or bills, but she didn’t want to open them up to find out. She wasn’t an employee yet and hadn’t signed that nondisclosure agreement the ad had mentioned yet, so she wouldn’t feel comfortable encountering any secrets. As his real PA, she would have to get used to any weird stuff she came across, but as an applicant, she really didn’t want to know. Bad enough she was learning a few things just picking through the mail. For example, how and when did this guy ever pay his bills? She’d already picked up four gas bills—or five. She couldn’t remember. What a mess.
But she suspected they were having her do this task for a couple of reasons—one was to see how quickly she could sort the pile into tasks that could be accomplished. The second was to see what kind of tasks she decided upon using her own good judgment. Even though they had said the opposite, she suspected they didn’t want her to take hours to do it. Fortunately, seeing messes like that one drove Emily crazy. It was easy for her to want to organize it.
“I’m gonna get something to drink. Sure you don’t want anything? Glass of iced tea? Monster Energy drink?”
She smirked at him. “I think I’ve got this.”
“C’mon, Mary. Let’s give her a little time to herself.”
Emily was still looking up, and she saw a concerned look cross Mary’s face. Did the woman not trust her? Did she think Emily would walk off with something? Well, she could understand that. These two didn’t really know her. They didn’t know she was honest. She’d have to earn their trust. She said, “That’s okay. I really don’t mind if one of you has to be here.”
“That’s all right,” Mary said, standing up from the chair she’d been sitting in. “We’ll be back in a bit.”
Once they were in the hall, Emily breathed a sigh of relief. Her job just got easier. She didn’t have to pretend to peruse anymore. Now she could fly through that damned stack. She knew she could have it done now before they got back, especially considering she was halfway through. And if they were worried about her taking anything, she could take her jacket off and let them look. They’d be able to see she had nothing. If they were super paranoid, they could—she supposed—request that she show them her phone to ensure she hadn’t snapped any photographs.
She shook her head. She was damned either way. This interview was turning out to be a pain in the ass…no matter how much she was starting to like the guy who could become her potential boss.
Chapter Five
CLAY DIDN’T PLAN to be gone too long, but he was seriously questioning Mary’s interviewing techniques. Once they were out of earshot—in spite of Mary’s reluctance to follow him—he asked, “What the fuck, Mary? What’s that gonna prove?”
Mary gave him a look he was quite familiar with. It was the one that said she wanted to slap him upside the head. In deference, however, she’d never done it, and the words coming out of her mouth were calm and respectful. “There is only one way we’ll know if she can handle the job, and that is through a real-life situation. I know you already want to hire her, and we still have several people to interview. So I set up your office as a real-life test.”
Clay frowned. “What do you mean you set it up?”
A small grin curled her lips upward. “It’s mostly all the stuff that was there before, but…with a little surprise.”
Oh, what the fuck was this woman up to? “What, Mary? What—”
He couldn’t finish because he heard Emily’s voice shouting, “What the hell?” His mouth turned in a scowl, and he darted off toward the office. Jesus. If Mary stuck pictures in there of some of the shit he’d done with groupies or something else…he’d have to seriously reconsider her employ with him.
Oh, who was he kidding? He’d have to reprimand her, but he couldn’t get rid of her. She was too good, and he knew she really cared. It showed in what she did. This would probably turn out to be another one of those situations, but right now he was a little worried about what he’d discover once he got back to the office. Mary was right behind him, but she knew. She had planted something, something she’d called a “surprise.”
They both got to the office, and he walked through the door, followed by Mary. It took him a minute to figure out what he was looking at. There were three neat stacks on the desk, and they somehow looked less intimidating that the huge pile all that mail had started out to be. He wondered if Emily knew that was real stuff. But then, in the middle of the desk, sat a paper plate with a desiccated-looking slice of pizza. It had once been pepperoni, by the looks of
it, but it was petrified. The plate had dried orange grease near the end of the slice where one bite was missing.
Clay? Gone. Jet was in the room. It was probably for the best. If this woman was going to consider working for him, she’d have to see and hear it sometime. “What the fuck?”
Mary was calm and walked past Clay to the desk. “Well, is that what you’d do with something like that when you found it?”
Emily blinked a couple of times and started to speak once but stopped. Then she seemed to find her voice. “Well, no, of course not. I’d throw it away. But I—”
“There’s the trashcan I brought over for you.”
The younger woman took a deep breath and nodded, then grabbed an edge of the plate and tossed it in the trash. She didn’t have to worry about the pizza falling off the plate; it had since molded itself to paper. It was like they were two parts of one whole. Inside, Clay was still wondering what the fuck, but this was Mary’s deal. Emily said, “This has to be one of the most unusual interviews I’ve ever had to participate in.”
Mary shrugged. “You’ve never worked for a rock star before. That is just the beginning of the things you might find doing your regular duties. As Mr. Smith’s right hand woman,”—wow; he kind of liked the sound of that because, even though Mary was his housekeeper, she truthfully was so much more—“that is one of the tamest things you might find while executing your duties. I am hopeful that you will simply be a personal assistant and help him balance his checking account and make sure he gets to an interview on time, but you might sit on a half-eaten TV dinner tray or walk in on him having sex with a groupie.” Clay raised his eyebrows, but inside Jet shrugged, knowing she was right. Emily’s face was stone. He wondered what she was thinking. Mary continued. “If you want this job, you need to know what you’ll be facing. Money isn’t everything, and if you’re going to wind up resenting my boss or tearing him down publicly because you can’t take his eccentricity, then you should go apply somewhere else.”
Wow. Why couldn’t Mary do and be everything for him? Oh, but he actually knew. He drove her crazy and about all she could tolerate was cleaning up after him. He paid her well for it.
Emily nodded and didn’t miss a beat. She pointed to each of the piles in order, from right to left. “This is junk mail and needs to be shredded so Mr. Smith’s personal information isn’t easily readable. These are bills, organized by postage date, with the oldest on the bottom. And this stack is a few things I wasn’t sure about. They might be important or not, but because I’m not actually working for you yet, I didn’t feel comfortable opening them. If I were your PA, I would have already opened them and decided if I could deal with them or if I needed your input to handle them.”
Clay smiled, considering the tall raven-haired woman standing behind the desk. God, she was confident and striking, with dark brown eyes and pale complexion. She was thin but not skinny, and she had perfectly sized breasts that would fit just right in Jet’s hands. Pushing that thought aside in his mind, he walked over to the desk beside her. At the moment, he was more impressed with her capabilities than he was her looks. He opened the small drawer on the right-hand side and pulled out a letter opener. He looked at Mary pointedly before addressing Emily. “You’re hired.”
* * *
Well, Emily didn’t know if she should be impressed by Mary’s foresight or horrified by the fact that, if she took the job, she could potentially find something as disgusting as a month-old slice of pizza under a stack of bills…or worse. The shine was already off the apple. This guitar god was hot, but she could see already that she was repulsed by the pizza and still feeling creeped out about it.
That said, she knew it could be a great job. The pay was insane for her first real occupation out of grad school. She could possibly afford her own place by herself, and she thought it would be good for her to live on her own before moving in with Bryce. She might even be able to replace her clunker car.
Could she work for someone who didn’t care about the messes he made? Would it bother her if she walked in on him engaging in some nasty sex with a skanky chick?
Why should it? He would be paying her enough to not give a shit. Still, she didn’t know if she’d regret it if she accepted it right away, so after Jet had offered her the job, she asked, “Can I think about it?”
She could tell from the look on both of their faces that they hadn’t expected her to say that. They had probably expected her to jump up and down, giggling and screaming. They’d forgotten that she had an MBA, though, and that meant that any interview enthusiasm she would have once shown no longer existed. She’d practiced every facet of interviewing until she had become an expert in it, and one of the first rules of successful negotiation—including landing the perfect job—was showing no emotion. She knew she had her poker face on, and it was clear to her that both Mary and Jet were not used to that kind of reaction. She liked that. It gave her a definite edge and she felt powerful. It was a shame she was seriously considering turning the job down; otherwise, she’d have a great position from which to bargain.
Jet nodded, though, and seemed thoughtful. “Of course. How much time do you need?”
She didn’t think she would need long. She just needed some time to herself to think it through. “Can I let you know tomorrow morning? Would that be soon enough?”
“Yeah.” He looked over at Mary. “Would you mind showing her out?”
Mary smiled. “Yes, and I need to give you a contact phone number. Just follow me.”
Emily knew she couldn’t blow it now. She held out her hand to Jet for a last handshake. “Thank you for the opportunity. I appreciate it.”
He took her hand in his. Still warm. Still electric. So maybe the shine hadn’t completely disappeared. Another reason to consider walking away from the job. He smiled and his trademark dimples appeared in his cheeks. “My pleasure. Talk with you tomorrow.” He didn’t try to persuade her. Maybe he too knew it was a bad idea. Maybe he’d looked at her credentials and thought she’d have better opportunities elsewhere.
As she followed Mary down the hall, she questioned why she’d applied for the job in the first place, but she knew why. It wasn’t a big secret, even if she was trying to hide it from herself. She knew why. She had wanted, just one time, to have something that was just her own, and it would be perfect if it happened before Bryce came back. Because she knew, as soon as he got back from Europe, that either she’d be working for his dad or she’d have a job the two of them had arranged for her.
She had a big decision to make.
* * *
Clay stayed back in the office and sighed once the women left the room. He sat in the swivel chair where Emily had just been and propped his chin in his hand, his elbow resting on the desk. He knew why Mary had done it, but they hadn’t discussed it beforehand. In fact, she hadn’t had the old lady or the nerdy guy they’d interviewed earlier do that.
Clay smiled. He knew why. It was because Mary knew Clay wasn’t seriously considering the other two. It hadn’t taken her long to realize, though, that Clay was satisfied with Emily and thought she’d be perfect.
He wasn’t going to say anything. He understood where she was coming from. All he knew was he wasn’t really going to be into the next several interviews today—not by a long shot.
Chapter Six
EMILY SPENT THE rest of her day packing up her belongings. She’d been in the same apartment with the same roommate for two years, an eternity when it came to the nomadic life of a student. Part of her felt melancholy that this part of her life was over. The sensible part of herself was ready for something new and exciting, though.
And the rational part inside kept refusing to look upon the job offer as just that—something new and exciting.
No, instead, her goal was to not think about the job offer until the next morning. A good night’s sleep always made her perception wiser, and there was no way she was making that decision today. It would be an emotional decision, rather tha
n one based on the facts or even intuition. She didn’t want to be driven by her emotions, and so it would have to wait.
Her roomie had moved out two days before, so the place already felt hollow. Bryce had flown out yesterday too, so she knew her emotions were already crazy as it was. She had to proceed cautiously for the moment. So she played lots of music, albums by Devour the Day, Adelitas Way, 10 Years, Newsted, and Papa Roach, and just drowned out her emotions while placing her life in boxes and cleaning from the corners of each room to the center so she could leave when she needed to.
The next morning, though, she found that she was still emotional, so she fired up her laptop and opened up Word. She made her document with two columns—one pro, one con—and started typing out all the reasons why she should and shouldn’t take the job. By the time she was done, the two top reasons for not taking the job were that it wasn’t exactly something that would boost her business resume and also that she found Mr. Smith quite tantalizing, in spite of the nasty pizza.
There were lots of reasons on the pro side, some lame (it’s a job!) and some solid (it pays well, especially for someone with little experience), and so she made her decision but only with a caveat—that she wouldn’t stay more than a year. At first, she had thought she would leave by the end of summer, but that wouldn’t be fair to her employer and she also knew that any experience less than six months should be left off her resumé.
Enough already. Deep down inside, she knew she’d already made up her mind. She wanted this. It seemed like it would be a fun job. She knew too that it wouldn’t be easy either, but she wanted to work hard.
So she picked up her phone and dialed the number Mary had given her the day before. She didn’t know why, but she had expected Mary to answer. She was surprised when it wasn’t. It was a male’s voice who answered hello, but she couldn’t be sure it was Jet’s, so she asked, “Is Mr. Smith available?”
Feverish (Bullet #3) Page 5
