“End of the month report?” He looked up as if he just realized I was there.
“Hm? Oh, yes.”
“Anything bad?” He squinted and then handed it to me.
“I’m not sure. Looks like things are back to normal. As I said, I didn’t want to mention anything unless I had a reason to. No sense stirring up trouble unnecessarily. Have you noticed anything?”
“Just a few spikes here and there, but nothing that couldn’t be explained. It seems to fluctuate a lot, especially when we have a new launch. If you hadn’t pointed it out, I doubt I would have taken notice.”
“Ah, well. I’m sure I’m just being paranoid. Like daughter like father. Anything else you wanted to talk about?” I had to be careful sometimes with what I said to him, because he was the president after all. That was something I’d learned very early on, that things I said to Dad weren’t always confidential when it came to the welfare of the company. It was also why I had pretty much zero friends at the office. Lucah was about the only person who sought me out to talk to me, and even then I made him leave so people didn’t get suspicious.
One day I envisioned a time when the two of us could have lunch together and bitch about office politics, but that day wasn’t today, and probably not tomorrow either. I might have to wait a while for it.
“No, everything else is going well, so I’m expecting a disaster any moment.”
“That’s my girl.”
He was busy, so I left and headed back to my desk and gave Lucah a quick smile before settling back down.
Mrs. Andrews knocked on my door a few minutes later.
“Sorry to disturb you dear, but this got put in your father’s inbox by mistake, so I thought I would drop it off.”
“Oh, thank you.” I took the folder from her, and breathed a sigh of relief.
“I thought I’d lost this and I was about to go down to the file room and spend the rest of the day searching. Thank you so much. Now I don’t have to look for it.” This would save me a hell of a lot of time I didn’t have to spare anyway.
“What an adorable paperweight,” she said, pointing to my red shoe. “It reminds me of Dorothy’s ruby slippers. Are you a fan of The Wizard of Oz?”
“Oh, yes. I love that movie.” The truth was that I did like the movie, but not enough to buy a paperweight. But if she wanted to think it was in homage, then she could go ahead and think that.
“How sweet. Well, I’ll see you later, dear.” I said good-bye and went over the file, which had all the information I needed, but hadn’t been able to find on the computer. We were still in the process of taking all our old files and scanning them to our database. You’d think this wouldn’t be a problem at a technology company, but such is life.
Lucah got up from his desk and came in, and I loved the way he walked and breathed and the way he picked up my coffee mug and told me I needed a refill and he was going to take care of it.
I loved the way he came back and our hands brushed as he handed me the mug and I loved the way he winked those stormy eyes.
If anyone else had told me this stuff, I would have wanted to slap them. Or at least roll my eyes and avoid them. If it wasn’t me, I’d say I was insufferable.
Stupid love. Love made you want to punch yourself in the face.
It also made you so distracted that you didn’t get as much done at your job as you should because you were too busy fantasizing about your stupid guy and his magical penis.
It made you spend meetings trying not to draw little hearts, or see what his last name would look like with your first name.
Love made you into a fucking twelve-year-old girl.
I couldn’t ask Lucah if he was suffering from the same thing because it was just too ridiculous a thing to say out loud.
But then in the afternoon he picked up the phone, said, “I want to fuck you on your desk right now and it kills me that I can’t,” and then hung up. Well, he could, but it would definitely get us both fired. Although desk sex might be worth it . . .
Love made you consider losing your job for a little desk sex. Love made you a fucking idiot.
Twenty-Four
“So you seem to be getting along very well with your assistant, your father tells me,” my mother said that Sunday night at dinner. I choked on my wine and spewed it all over the white tablecloth. I coughed and grabbed my glass of water to clear out my throat.
“Are you okay, Rory?” Both my parents looked at me in concern as my eyes watered and I tried to breathe normally.