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Idiot.
I’m happy to note that I get my breath back a good twenty-four seconds sooner than he does.
The product launch tonight will be immense. The new phone will transform the way people communicate and interact. It’s a total game-changer in technology.
That doesn’t matter to me. What’s important to me is the way the launch will bring the eyes of the whole world’s business, finance, and technology media together in a whole new way.
No product has ever been launched like this before. Multiple platforms worldwide. A global thunder-strike.
Chapter Two
Ella
After a day serving coffee and cramming study in my breaks, I’m weary and my arms and legs are like sacks of sand. I tell myself again that I’m lucky to have gotten this last-minute cleaning shift.
I feel anything but lucky, but every pick-up gig helps me pay off my tuition or my rent.
The sight of the towering black office block made me ache all over. But I put my head down and pulled the thin coat closer as it flapped around me in the chilly evening wind. I had to wait while a long, sleek limousine whooshed past me and swept around the wide semicircular driveway.
I read the passcode number from my phone and punched it into the keypad by the flat metal side door. The uniformed limo driver stood and twisted a cap on his head before he stepped at a smart, unhurried pace to open the rear door.
Whoever that is, I thought, even their flunkies look important.
The door buzzed at the same time as a text flashed on my phone. My manager at the contract cleaning company messaged to say:
You’re due at The Main Event right now, Ms. Farrow. Do not be late. First impressions.
Thanks. Nice welcome.
The door buzzes again, and I push. As I step into the cold cement corridor, I catch a glimpse of the occupant of the limo.
He has the commanding presence that makes people look famous. The thing that makes you think you recognize someone, even when you don’t.
He’s too old to be that hot, and too obviously rich to be that rugged. But way too hot to be that old. And I’m too late and too economically vulnerable to be rooted to the spot when my shift is starting.
He must be nearly twice my age. The beams of his sapphire eyes shoot and fix on me.
I froze inside, clenching for even thinking about his age. But especially for thinking about it in the way that I did. I never thought I’d get those feelings about an older man but something about him makes me indecently squirmy.
An upside of late night office cleaning is that it doesn’t take too much of my concentration. Usually, nobody is around to interrupt my thoughts. That leaves me free to write in my head. I can imagine situations, characters, plots and twists for stories, then in my breaks, I jot them into my phone.
I’m excited because my shift tonight is the last before my writing workshop.
Come on, Ella, I tell myself. One office cleaning shift, then home to look after Amelia until Suzi comes home, then to bed. Most of the time, Suzi can’t get a babysitter to stay later than midnight. Her shifts at the bar don’t end until two a.m., so I have to get back to cover.
That gives me another couple of hours to write, and to read and study. And two hours with little Amelia, so I’m not complaining about any of that.
Three days dedicated to writing at a lovely, isolated spot with a houseful of other writing students. For one of us, there’s even a full-ride scholarship to the creative writing program at the end. I don’t expect to win, but I will try with everything I’ve got.
My manager texts again.
Start in the open plan office on the tenth floor. A sign says ‘Creative Hub.’ You may be there the whole shift. Do whatever it takes. People in there are working on an important project.
I don’t like having to clean around people. I’m in their way and they’re in mine.
In the center of the Creative Hub are two men. They make more mess than a whole floor of my usual cleaning jobs. The room is stacked with top of the line computers, but every surface is covered in balled-up paper and string and all kinds of colored materials, all shredded.
When I walk in and see the two men, I offer, “I can clean up in here. You could come back in twenty minutes, I’d be done and out of your hair.”
