The Little Black Dress (Love in Las Vegas)

12. Irreconcilable Differences

Jared

“Nope.”

That’s all I say when I hear Scotty’s hurried footsteps following behind me as I walk to my desk. I don’t know how the woman from the auction ended up here, but she needs to go. Now.

“What was that?” Scotty asks, his voice low and impatient.

“That woman,” I say, pointing toward the door as I slide into my chair, “is not my new assistant.”

“She’s the best choice,” he replies, halting in front of the desk and crossing his arms over his chest. “She has the experience and skills needed to do this job right. We’re running out of time here, Jared.”

“There has to be someone else,” I bark, losing what little control I have over my irritation.

Ignoring the ferocity of my outburst, Scotty says, “There isn’t. All the other applicants were exactly like April.”

I snap my mouth shut, swallowing whatever retort I planned to launch his way. April was the last assistant I had before finding Scotty. She’d seemed good at first, working diligently and proficiently. Everything was fine for the first week, then things started to change.

She started dressing sexier, wearing tight skirts almost too short to be considered professional and blouses that revealed a lot of cleavage. I ignored it. She wasn’t showing off an indecent amount of flesh, and I’m all for a woman’s right to dress however she wants. As long as she did her job well, I didn’t give a shit what she wore.

Apparently, my disinterest pushed her to greater extremes, and she started finding excuses to be alone with me—in my office, the conference room, the employee lounge...anywhere the opportunity struck, she pounced on it. She started casually touching my chest when we spoke. Tracing her fingertips across her own chest to try to draw my gaze. Brushing her body against mine any chance she got.

I talked to her several times about her impropriety, but she refused to stop. The final straw was the morning I walked into my office to find her sitting on my desk, her legs spread wide to reveal her bare pussy beneath her skirt as she shot me a “come fuck me” stare.

I filed a sexual harassment suit along with her termination papers.

I pull myself from the memory and look back up at Scotty. “Damn it. There’s got to be someone else. We can keep looking.”

“I’ve already hired her, Jared. She filled out the paperwork yesterday. You told me to handle it, so I did.”

“Then fire her,” I say, my voice deepening with my frustration.

“On what grounds?”

“Irreconcilable differences,” I throw out.

Scotty rolls his eyes. “This isn’t a divorce. It’s you being stubborn without telling me why. What happened? How do you know her?”

I slump back into my chair with a sigh. “We had a couple of run-ins over the weekend, but it all started Friday night. She tried to outbid me for the Pollock.”

Scotty’s eyes widen at my words. I study him, watching the wheels turn in his head as his mouth falls open into a round “o.”

“What is it?” I ask.

“Stephen Hatfield wanted the Pollock?”

My head rears back, my eyebrows shooting upward. “What does he have to do with it?”

Stephen Hatfield is well-known in my social circles. He owns several strip clubs in Las Vegas, ranging from high-end establishments that cater to Sin City’s elite all the way down to the seediest, drabbest dives where the beer is warm, but cheap, and the atmosphere reeks of loneliness and despair.

There are whispered rumors Hatfield uses those clubs to wash his less-than-legal earnings, but it’s all hearsay and no proof has been found. Either way, the old man is an asshole and, well, kind of creepy.

“He was Sophie’s last employer,” Scotty says, yanking me out of my musings.

“What?”

I shudder at the sudden onslaught of protective anger drowning me in its intensity. But it doesn’t have anything to do with Sophie, specifically. I’d feel this way about any woman working for that scum. Just being alone with him for a few moments would be a risk.