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“Douglas Conway?”
“I think that was his name, yeah.”
“He had multiple convictions for drug smuggling across the Mexican border.”
I blinked through the confusion as his words bounced around in my head. “Oh.”
“Needless to say, I didn’t trust him around my finances. Or my schedule. Heaven forbid I need to go to Mexico for a weekend and bring him with me. He’s not even allowed a passport,” he droned, the words slipping out of him so easily. How did he not have a knot in his throat like I did? “Wait, you do have a passport, correct?”
I swallowed through the knot. “I do.”
“Perfect. When can you start, then?”
Nearly choking on my own saliva, I coughed away the knot as best as I could. “Uh,” I stammered, glancing back into the room to make sure Mom hadn’t woken up. “I… I’ll need to find a new caregiver for my mom before I can start. So next week would probably be best, say Wednesday.”
“That’s perfect. I’m sure Holly can cope until then.”
“There’s one thing, though.” I stared at Mom as her chest rose and fell. Even through the occasional wheeze, you’d have no idea how gone she really was most days. “I live in Boulder. It’s about an hour's drive out to the resort, so if something comes up?—”
“Not a problem. I spend most of my time in my Boulder office. You can work there, and if something comes up, we’ll work something out.”
My breath caught. He can’t be serious. There’s no way he’s okay with it to this degree. “Are you serious?”
“Of course I’m serious,” he grunted, a hint of what was either pain or irritation in his voice. “I’m willing to figure things out for the right candidate and, lucky for me, that’s you. So yes, Ray. We’ll work something out if you need to run or if an emergency pops up.”
Relief, pure and unbridled, poured over me like a bucket of ice-cold water. I could breathe. I could make it work. The brute, the dickhead that antagonized me and got angry at me when I couldn’t control where my stupid skis were pointing, would make it work.
“I’ll see you Wednesday, Ray.”
He hung up on me before I could even respond. I slid down the wall, my ass landing on the slightly damp floor. Everything felt far too dreamlike, too far off to touch. I could do this. I could afford Mom’s bills. I could afford a caregiver. I could try to get a little slice of my life back as hers, sadly slowly slipped away.
But I’d be going up against my newfound enemy to do it.
Chapter 6
Wade
Holly had coped beautifully through the remaining days needed before Ray was ready to start. She’d helped me set up Ray’s new office, taking down the old decorations from my previous assistant who had failed to clean it out before she left. I’d been out of commission for two entire days because of my leg, and she kept the ship running at full speed, ensuring everything that needed to be done was taken care of while I stayed in my bed in the dark, trying not to scream as the pain kept me awake for thirty-six hours straight.
Luckily, the flare-up passed in time for Ray’s arrival.
Holly also agreed to work in the Boulder office part-time while we got Ray up to speed on everything that needed doing. She could run HR from there or the resort, and although she preferred to spend her time out there where she could get a massage at a moment's notice for free, the monetary incentive I’d given her was too good to pass up.
She chatted away about one of the guys in HR who apparently had the hots for her as she sipped her morning coffee, droning on and on, filling the silence while she leaned back on the reception area’s couch. As much as I wanted to entertain her conversation, I couldn’t stop staring at the door to the office, watching and waiting with bated breath for Blunder Bunny to show her face.
Was she even coming? Sure, it was twenty minutes before she was due to arrive, but my desperation to not have to search for another executive assistant was gnawing at me to call her, to check in, to make sure she was still coming in today.
Holly continued on about the guy from HR. Matt? Michael? Definitely an M name. “…So I told him I wasn’t interested even though I was. I didn’t want to come off too excited, you know? But then he?—”
The door swung open, a disheveled and exhausted-looking Raylene taking up the room within a second. Her deep brown hair was swept back into a ponytail, the curls falling around her face. She was wearing the same outfit she’d worn for her interview, a tight black pencil skirt with a white blouse tucked in, stockings, and heels. In her arms, she carried three different bags—a purse, a larger bag that I could only guess contained items she was going to place in her office, and a third that looked suspiciously like a makeup bag. Made sense considering she wasn’t wearing a single bit of it on her lightly-freckled face.
“Please tell me I’m not late,” she breathed, pushing against the door and fighting with the bags to get her entire being inside the room. She clutched a tumbler in her hand, black with a purple ribbon crossed over itself, and I quickly searched my mind for what it was a reference to. I’d definitely seen it before.
“You’re not,” I grinned. “Twenty minutes early, in fact.”
Ray let out a sigh of relief. “Thank God. I got lost in the maze of hallways downstairs. You could’ve warned me it’s like a labyrinth down there.”
Holly snorted and looked across the couch at me. “You didn’t give her instructions on how to get up here?”
