“Yeah.” She grinned. “Best mistake I ever made.” She crossed her arms over her chest and continued to look at the whiteboard. “I’d been working here for a several years when my husband moved in to the building. I spent a lot of time with him, and of course, I fell hard. Our relationship was private for a while until it was exposed…and I lost my job.”
“Whoa.”
“But he sent a petition around to get me reinstated—and it worked.”
“Aw, that’s sweet.”
“It’s not a fireable offense, but I highly discourage it. When I met my husband, I knew I wanted to marry him. The guy before him…” She shook her head. “That was just stupid. It wasn’t a serious relationship, mostly casual, though it seemed like it might go somewhere. But it wasn’t the instant love that I had with my husband.” She walked closer to the whiteboard then pressed her finger to one of the clients. “Anyway, let’s have you start here. I’ll—”
“Cleo, I fixed everything on Smith’s laptop. I’m not sure what he did, but…he did something.” A man entered the office behind us, wearing a gray tee and dark jeans. He had muscular arms, veins that bulged underneath the skin of his forearms all the way down to his hands, and he had beautiful brown eyes that stood out in his handsome face. He had short, light-brown hair, and his jaw was covered in a five-o’clock shadow even though it was early in the morning.
Cleo turned to face him. “That’s great. And I don’t want to know what he did.” She chuckled then came to my side. “This is Sicily, the newest member of the concierge crew.”
He shifted his gaze to me and gave a handsome smile that showed all of his perfect teeth. His eyes lit up a little brighter when he turned his attention on me, innately charismatic. “I prefer to call us the skeleton crew because we never stop working. Not to scare you off or anything.” Then he extended his hand to shake mine.
I took it, feeling his warm hand envelop mine. “I don’t scare easily.”
“Perfect.” He dropped his hand and slid it into his pocket. “Nice to meet you. I’m Dex.”
I spent the day shadowing different people. Carrie and I accepted the delivery from the florist and then pushed two carts down the hallways and entered different residences to swap out the flowers. There was a clipboard secured to the cart, so we could look at it and figure out which flowers were which. There was a serial number on each bouquet, so we knew which size arrangement went where. The vases inside the residences had the matching serial number, so that was how we knew what flowers to transfer and where. It seemed like a simple task in theory, but since the sizes of the arrangements varied wildly, putting the wrong flowers in the wrong place made a huge difference.
Then I collected the dry cleaning with Kayla, making sure to sort the items on the cart correctly before we took the company van to the dry cleaner to drop everything off. It was a constant hustle, going from one place to another, grabbing the next thing. And we couldn’t just do all the residences at once because the owners had different schedules, and we weren’t supposed to go into their homes while they were there.
It was a lot to keep track of.
By the end of the day, my feet hurt. I hadn’t worn heels at my last office, but I wore them now to look professional, and now I thought I might break all the bones in my toes. Cleo wore heels, and while she ran around all day long, it didn’t seem to bother her.
Maybe I was just a wuss.
When I sat in the chair at my designated desk, I could feel my feet scream in relief. I attempted to slip off my shoes and place my bare feet against the hardwood just to feel them straighten.
“I wish I could tell you it’s just a busy day, but it’s always like this.” Dex walked to the desk next to mine and set down the box he carried. He ripped through the tape with his bare hands and opened the cardboard flaps to grab the laptop inside. He took a seat and opened all the packaging before he powered up the computer and got to work. He sat with a straight back, his knees apart, working on the brand-new computer and setting it up, probably for a client. He turned to me and gave me an encouraging smile that was so perfect, it belonged in a toothpaste campaign. “But it makes the day go by quickly, and before you know it, it’s time to go home. Or out to a bar for a drink, if you’re anything like me.” He chuckled then turned back to the computer, going through the setup to get the computer ready for a client.