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The end of the day was rapidly approaching and I was going to need to eat. I tried bouncing a few ideas through my mind, and every one only led to a thought about Julia. How I wanted to take her out and show her life in luxury. How I would wine and dine her. How I could make her so happy by treating her like a queen.
She was my assistant. I needed to start thinking about her like one.
My pocket vibrated and I pulled out my phone. It was Leo. He sent me a picture of himself in Italy, a business trip he went on fairly regularly. I relaxed. There was no better boner killer than Leo’s wide-smiling face as he took the most ridiculous touristy pictures just to crack a laugh out of myself and Sean.
I zipped myself back up and patted my face with the towel before opening the door and heading back to the office. I sent a laughing emoji back to Leo and waited while Sean typed out a crude message before I put the phone back in my pocket. As I sat down, Julia was on her way back to me. She had the paper in her hand and a second sheet on top of it.
“I took the liberty of making a draft for you as well as making corrections on the paper,” she said. “Feel free to discard it.”
Without saying a word, I balled up her version and tossed it in the trash behind me.
“I need another coffee,” I said.
“Yes, sir,” she said, though I could tell it was through a smile full of gritted teeth.
As soon as she was gone, I breathed a sigh of relief again. Curious, I grabbed the paper out of the trash and gave it a look.
Dammit.
It was better than mine.
Better than just the corrections, too. She had worded things in a way that made it more persuasive.
Smoothing it out on the desk, I pulled up a new Word document and typed up her version before sending it off. With it gone, all that was left was what had been on the screen when I had hastily hit the minimizing button. A restaurant’s website, The Gurudo, was up. I had two reservations clicked and set for that night at nine.
I closed the window.
I couldn’t be that weak.
ChapterEleven
Julia
Another long day was rapidly stretching into a late night.
I knew if I mentioned the time, he would tell me to go home, but frankly, I didn’t want to mention it. I didn’t want to show that weakness. I was tired and frustrated, but I wasn’t going to break. Either he was going to send me home, or I was going to wait until he fell asleep at his desk and I’d curl up on the couch in my tiny office and take a nap myself.
Speaking of my tiny office, I had barely made use of it all day. Hunter had me going everywhere, without a break, pretty much the entire time. The only times I had been in my office, it had been to work on yet another draft of a press release. I’d written the entire thing twice, completely differently, and done two extra drafts of the second version. Each one to his specifications based on possible changes he might make before the release.
Each of these had been between going to pick up his dry cleaning, having a face-to-face with his cleaning lady to make sure she understood that he needed an entirely separate crew for a party he was going to throw in a few weeks, picking up tapas from a place that was so far west that I thought I wasn’t in Boston anymore, sending a package that I wasn’t aware of the contents of to a person in Springfield, and trying to work in lunch somewhere in the middle.
I was starving now. It was almost nine, and my lunch had amounted to a handful of peanuts and part of a side-salad, the rest of which was sitting in the tiny refrigerator in my office, alongside a can of diet soda and a cupcake from the bakery down the road. It had been my treat to myself for the day and I hadn’t even gotten a chance to enjoy any of it. I was determined to eat it before tomorrow.
I just had to get Hunter to let me go without making it seem like I wanted to be let go.
Nine. Nine. I was still at work at nine. It was ridiculous. Especially with the rash of muggings that had sprung up along my route home recently. It wasn’t like I wasn’t a target. A blonde woman with a big bag, running alone? I was practically a giant walking target. I was going to have to slip through the city smarter the longer I was here. It would be later and later by the time I got home, and I didn’t want to bother anyone to come get me. Still, if I was here any longer than another twenty minutes or so, I was going to have to find someone.
I didn’t want to be walking along Athens Street after ten. That was asking for it.
I finished the most recent of the edits and walked back into the office, handing them over to Hunter and waiting patiently. Surely, this would be when he said to head home. He even looked like he had packed up for the night and was finishing something up on his tablet.
He took the paper from my hand, seemed to glance over it for a moment, and then frowned before handing it back.
“Do it again,” he said.
I was stunned. “No.”
The word came out of my mouth before I even had a chance to stop it.
