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  He shot his hand out and smiled wider.

  “I’m Peter, the person you’ll be staring at for the foreseeable future.” His tone was playful and I found myself smiling for the first time since walking into the office that morning.

  Sitting next to Peter, diagonal from my desk, was a rail thin man with a terrible comb over—most of his balding head was visible through his stringy black hair. His mustard yellow shirt assaulted my eyes and he didn’t even bother glancing up from his work.

  “That’s Mark,” Peter filled in with an apologetic smile.

  I nodded and turned my gaze to the final man, and then I paled. It was the rude man from other morning, the one who’d bumped into me on the sidewalk and then kept right on walking as I crawled around to pick up my spilled papers. What were the odds?

  When he turned to look up at me, I expected some sign of recognition, but instead I was on the receiving end of a bored glance.

  “I’m Alan, the senior associate assigned to you. I supervise you, Peter, and Mark. I don’t exactly have time to train you, but you have an education, so I expect you to keep up. We’re finishing up the final stages of a residential project and then we’ll begin designs for a competition the firm will be entering in a few weeks.”

  After saying his name, he’d turned back to flip through papers on his desk, licking his thumb and using it to pry the papers away from one another.

  “What’d you say your name was?” he asked, opening a drawer on his desk and pulling out a straight edge.

  “Cammie,” I answered, glancing over to Peter to see what he thought of Alan. He shrugged and gave me a half frown.

  “Candy, I need you to stop hovering over my desk. Either take your seat or move somewhere else,” Alan snapped at me.

  I didn’t even think. I turned back and corrected him. “My name is Cammie. Not Candy.”

  Without a word, he picked up his phone and dialed out, continuing to flip through papers.

  How could someone be so rude?

  “Cammie, how about I show you where the coffeemaker is?” Peter asked, smoothing a hand over his red beard.

  He tilted his head toward the kitchen and stood and I followed after him. It’s not like I had a choice. I could have either gone with Peter to the kitchen or stared at Mark’s comb over while Alan shot me death glares.

  In the kitchen, Peter turned on the company’s industrial-sized coffeemaker and then he held up two different flavor pouches. “Do you prefer ‘French Vanilla’ or ‘My New Boss Is a Giant Asshole’?”

  His joke caught me so off guard that I couldn’t contain my laughter. Peter smiled and held up the two flavors. “Just kidding, French Vanilla is really your only choice. I took the last of the ‘Donut Shop’ flavor earlier this week.”

  “Thanks. French Vanilla is fine.”

  He nodded and dropped the pouch in before pressing start.

  In that moment I decided Peter was someone I could trust. Also, I just really wanted to tell someone about my incident with Alan.

  “I’ve actually kind of met Alan before. The other day, before my interview, Alan bumped into me down on the sidewalk and I fell and ripped my tights. I had to crawl around to pick up all of my stuff, all while he yelled at me for being in the way. But I don’t even think he recognized me this morning.”

  Peter didn’t seem surprised by my confession.

  “When I started here last year, Mark wouldn’t talk to me and Alan made me nearly cry every day.” He paused and lowered his voice for the next part. “A lot of us think he killed a temp once.”

  “What?! Are you serious?” I asked.

  “Well, not exactly. I think the guy just found permanent work elsewhere. He sent me a LinkedIn request last week. The point is, at the time it seemed equally plausible that Alan could have offed him.

  “So did it get better?” I asked, just as the machine finished sputtering out the last of my coffee.

  “I hate to say it, but not really,” Peter said with a sad smile. “The work is great, but Mark still rarely speaks. I’m pretty sure he has some kind of social anxiety disorder or something. And Alan is, well… it’s no mistake that his name is so close to “anal”. He’s meticulous and rude, so I just keep my head down and do my work.”

  I nodded. “Well, now I’m here, so you don’t have to keep your head down,” I said with a smile. Peter wasn’t the type of person I usually found myself around. His beard was awesome, but probably warned most people away from him. He was tall and had the build of a rugby player, but as I followed him back to our desks, I found myself relieved to have him at my desk cluster on my first day.

  However, as soon as we arrived back at our seats, my optimism was squashed.

  “First rule, Candy,” Alan began, “when you get up and make yourself a cup of coffee, you bring me back a cup as well.”

  Peter coughed under his breath and I tried to fight back the urge to dump my coffee out onto Alan’s hideous green shirt.

  Dump it on him. Do it. Do it.

  I sighed and shoved down my inner devil. There’d be plenty of time to dump coffee on Alan.

  “Right. Okay. I’ll get right on that.”

  And I did. I made him a cup of coffee with grounds I found in the trash, spit in it, and then gave it back to him with the sweetest smile I could muster. I might have to endure him for the next few months, but I would not take his bullshit lying down.

  …

  Alan kept me busy with mundane tasks until lunchtime arrived, at which point he shoved back from his desk and announced he’d be back in twenty minutes. We were expected to be back at our desks when he returned.

  “I guess that rules out going somewhere for lunch,” I said, glancing toward Peter.

  He frowned. “Ah, yeah. I’ve learned to just bring my lunch. I guess you’ll know for tomorrow. Do you want to share mine?”

  I smiled and shook my head. “Nah, you go eat. I’m going to try and find my friend.”

  I tried to find Hannah to see if she needed something to eat as well, but she’d headed out with the rest of her table-mates. Apparently, their senior associate liked to get to know his new team members by treating everyone to lunch on the first day. How was that for fair?

  Cursing my luck, I ran down to the bottom floor of the building, trying to recall whether or not there was a cafe. When I arrived, I found a room full of vending machines. Awesome. I unzipped my coin purse and retrieved enough change to purchase a bag of Cheez-Its and a Nature Valley bar. That’d keep me full for all of… thirty minutes.

  By the time I made it back up to the office, my lunch break was already half way over. I was prepared to just eat at my desk, but then I noticed that for the first time all day, Grayson’s door was open.

  I paused a few feet from my desk and leaned back to peer through the slim opening. Grayson was standing in front of his desk talking to a woman. I narrowed my eyes, studying the back of her slender frame, which she’d stuffed into a barely-there bandage dress. She wasn’t someone I recognized from our tour through the office, but I couldn’t see her face so there was no way to be sure.

  “Are you okay?” Peter asked from his desk, clearly confused about my snooping.

  I shook my head clear of jealous thoughts and turned to my desk to eat.

  “Oh, yeah, I’m fine, just finding my way around,” I said, dropping my vending machine snacks onto my desk. I wasn’t sure if Peter was the type to question my interest in Grayson, so I tried to seem uninterested in my new discovery as I tore through my Cheez-Its.

  Who the hell is that woman?

  I lasted all of two seconds eating at my desk before my curiosity won out. I had to know who the mystery woman was and I knew exactly how I could find out: Beatrice. She was flipping through a magazine at her desk, quietly taking bites of a salad. Beatrice was the answer. She’d know who the woman in his office was, and she’d know to keep quiet about my snooping. It was girl code 101.

  I dropped my snacks and stood so I could casua
lly stroll over to her desk.

  “Hi Beatrice, how’s your day going?” I asked with a wide smile.

  She glanced up at me with a touch of curiosity.

  “Pretty good. What about you?” she asked, flipping past another page of her magazine, this time landing on the “Look at celebrities… they’re just like us” section. I caught a glimpse of Brooklyn and Jason taking up nearly half of the page with a picture of them walking on a hike and bike trail. He was pulling a leaf out of her hair, which was apparently newsworthy.

  Who was I kidding? I needed to cut to the chase.

  “Is Grayson in a meeting right now? I was going to ask him something.”

  “No, actually,” Beatrice replied. “He’s with a lunch date.”

  My hand instinctively tightened on the edge of her desk. A date? During a workday? Who does that? As if on cue, I heard a giggle from the inside of Grayson’s office. I glanced over to see his shadow loom in the doorway and then his figure cut into view. His mouth tipped into a frown when he saw me standing there but he made no attempt to talk to me. Our eyes met as he reached for the door handle and it wasn’t until he slammed it in my face that I forced myself to look away.

  “Does he do that often?” I asked, trying to get the image of how incredibly hot he’d just looked out of my head. Newsflash: he’s not looking hot for you. He’s on a DATE!

  Beatrice tapped her finger on the magazine as she thought over my question. “Maybe once every few months. Not really that often. And to be honest, the girl he has in there now is a total bitch. Every time she calls to talk to him, she speaks to me like I’m the help until I connect her through.”

  “Why doesn’t he just give her his direct line?” I asked.

  Beatrice laughed. “He never gives anyone his direct line.”

  I nodded. Good. Maybe my plan wasn’t completely spoiled after all. The girl couldn’t mean that much to him if he didn’t even give her his extension. I decided she was merely a distraction, but then I heard another one of her giggles and my thin layer of resolve began to crack.

  Oh, gross. Who even giggles these days?

  I whipped around, grabbed the processed snacks from my desk, and headed to the employee kitchen. There’s no way I’d be able to finish my lunch with the sound of their annoying lunch date.

  I had two choices: I could give up my little crush on Grayson, just move on, and forget about the idea of being with him, OR I could make sure that I was dressed to kill during our dinner on Friday and put up a real fight.

  I liked option two far more. After all, I wasn’t a quitter.

  Still, I couldn’t get over what I’d just seen. It was so smug of him to rub his lunch date right in my face. I decided to give Brooklyn a call so I could vent, but I got her voicemail instead, so I left a heated message, jumping right to the point.

  “Why does Grayson have to be so infuriating? He’s so smug, like he knows he’s torturing me—”

  “Sweetie, you do realize you’re speaking out loud, right?”

  My hand flew to my mouth when I heard someone speak behind me. I hadn’t seen anyone when I first walked in, but sure enough, when I turned around slowly, there was a tall blonde woman standing near the back counter. I tried to think if I’d said anything incriminating in the last thirty seconds. Yes. Everything you’d said was incriminating, you idiot.

  When the woman’s light blue eyes met mine, she smiled and continued on with the task she’d been doing while I was leaving Brooklyn a message. She was taking the contents from a box of snacks and stuffing them into a basket inside one of the kitchen’s cabinets. There were more grocery bags littering the floor near her feet, and I assumed there was more food inside of those as well.

  I narrowed my eyes, trying to figure out who she was. She wasn’t dressed in business attire. Instead, she had on a pale pink tracksuit, the kind that J-Lo used to wear a few years back.

  “You don’t have to stop venting on my account. I’m a pretty good listener and I’d probably agree with you,” she said, offering me a warm smile.

  “Oh,” I said, peering down at my phone and wondering if I should take her up on her offer. Leaving Brooklyn a message hadn’t cured my annoyance, so I shrugged and decided to give it go.

  “I just really hate my boss… and my boss’ boss,” I said. Maybe she was a narc, but she’d already heard me shit talking. What did it matter now?

  I tore back into my Cheez-Its while she mulled over my outburst.

  “I’ll tell you what, Grayson can be a real handful. He was a tough kid to raise and I know he’s hard on you employees,” she said as she kept right on emptying chips bags into the basket.

  I squinted as I worked out her statement. A tough kid to raise?

  “His dad was in the army. Does he tell you guys that?” she asked, spinning around to look at me. “I suppose not. He’s pretty private.”

  “I’m sorry but, who are you?” I asked with a timid smile.

  She threw her head back and laughed before stepping over toward me with her hand stretched out. “I’m Emma Cole, Grayson’s mom.”

  Motherfucktitsfuckass. I am officially a royal idiot.

  …

  Grayson’s mom ended up being a chatterbox. Even though she should have hated me for what I’d said about her son, we sat in the break room for the rest of my lunch break as she told me bits and pieces of Grayson’s childhood.

  Apparently, his father was a military man and he was very strict on Grayson and his brother while they were growing up. Grayson was constantly reminded that his actions reflected on his father, so he was expected to stay in line. It was the little things that let Grayson know his father was in charge. Every night at 7:00 pm, dinner was on the table. His father sat at the head of the table, Grayson sat to his right, his brother, Jackson, sat to his left, and his mother sat at the opposite end, across from his father. For eighteen years, save for holidays or a random trip to a restaurant, they ate dinner this way.

  Curfew was at 10:00 pm throughout high school, and the one time Grayson pulled in at 10:05, his father had been standing inside the door, ready and waiting to pass down a punishment he saw fit. While no one could argue that he was a stern man, Grayson saw how well he ran his family and how well he operated as an engineer in the army. It was those principles that his father had instilled in him that allowed Grayson to start and run a company the way he had at such a young age.

  “Like father, like son,” I quipped as I stood to toss my empty bags into the trashcan in the corner of the break room.

  “Exactly,” his mom agreed.

  “Do you come to the office often?” I asked.

  She smiled. “Every now and then. Grayson hates that I come here, but if I don’t stock these cabinets, no one will.”

  “Well, I appreciate it,” I said. “It looks like I’ll be eating my lunch in here from now on.”

  She smiled and I turned toward the door knowing I was in danger of going over my allotted lunchtime, but before I could leave the kitchen, Mrs. Cole spoke up again.

  “Cammie, could I ask you to do a favor for me?”

  I paused and turned to look back at her.

  “Could you keep an eye on Grayson? Make sure he’s taking care of himself, not working until all hours of the night, you know?”

  “Mrs. Cole, I don’t think Grayson would like me keeping tabs on him. He seems like a pretty independent guy.”

  She held my gaze as her mouth hitched into a knowing smile. “He does seem that way, but I assure you, Grayson is no different than any man. He needs someone to watch out for him and I’m afraid the women he keeps around don’t do a good enough job.”

  I contemplated her request. I’d be keeping tabs on Grayson whether or not she asked me to. Was there any harm in reporting back to her if he was staying late? I didn’t think so.

  “I promise that I’ll watch out for your son as much as he lets me.”

  She smiled. “Good.”

  Chapter Six

 
Later that afternoon Grayson announced a company-wide meeting. With mild groans, everyone stopped their work and filtered toward the conference room. By the time I walked through the door, there was standing room only. I pressed against the far wall, with Hannah wedged in front of me. Her hair smelled like garlic from her lunch and my stomach grumbled with the reminder that Cheez-Its were not enough to tide me over until dinner.

  “Listen up,” Grayson’s voice boomed from the front of the conference room. Everyone paused their conversations and the noise level slowly trickled down to nothing. I shifted in between Hannah and the person beside her so that I could get a clear view of Grayson. Yup, hot as ever.

  When all eyes were on him, he continued, “We’re here to announce the mentor-mentee assignments that will be in effect for the next month or two. Each senior team leader will take on an associate architect. New staff will shadow the team leader, follow them to job sites, and learn how we run our business here at Cole Designs.”

  The groans from the front of the room indicated that the senior designers were less than enthused about taking on a bunch of newbies. I just crossed my fingers that I didn’t end up with Alan. I highly doubted he’d be willing to teach me the lay of the land. In fact, he’d probably leave me at the job site and call it a “learning experience”.

  Grayson stepped to the side so that Beatrice could have the floor. I watched him as Beatrice started calling out names, pairing up the mentors with mentees. He kept his eyes on Beatrice, never wavering even though I practically begged him to glance in my direction. His hair was still perfect, and his suit looked just as pristine as it had that morning. So maybe his lunch date hadn’t included a happy ending?

  When Beatrice called Alan’s name, I held my breath and crossed my fingers behind my back. Please don’t be me. Please don’t be me.

  “Hannah Montgomery,” Beatrice said. I cringed for her. I wouldn’t wish Alan on my worst enemy, least of all my new roommate.