Total pages in book: 93
Estimated words: 91058 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 455(@200wpm)___ 364(@250wpm)___ 304(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 91058 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 455(@200wpm)___ 364(@250wpm)___ 304(@300wpm)
It’s early morning. Scarlett’s the first associate in the office, and she looks like she’s been here a while. Her coffee cup is bone-dry and there are already a few items crossed off the neat to-do list she keeps by her mouse pad. Every day she outlines tasks with precise strokes. I find that random fact sexy as hell.
“What?”
Her confusion makes it clear that she heard me but doesn’t trust her ears.
“If not that, we sign him up for annoying spam emails. I looked into a few different options. My personal favorite is one with singing and dancing cats. We can have them sent to him daily, or even twice a day if you think it’s necessary.”
Realization dawns about who I’m referring to, and a second after, her face flushes with color and she drops her head into her hands. “I thought we weren’t going to talk about it!” she groans.
I drape my shoulder casually against the doorframe and lean against it as I take my first sip of my coffee. “Frankly, it’s all I can think about.”
Her head jerks up and her dark eyes widen. “Hudson!”
Her hair is long and straight today, a perfect frame for her pretty face.
“So how do you propose we punish him?”
“We don’t,” she stresses. “We leave him alone and we move on with our lives.”
“That’s no fun.” I pause mid-sip. “Good thing I already signed him up for those cat emails.”
“HUDSON!”
“Relax. He’ll never know they were from me. I listed your email address.”
“HUDSON!”
I can’t help but laugh. She couldn’t be cuter than when she’s exasperated with me like this. There’s something so sexy about her feisty temper.
Jasper is now enemy number one on my shit list. Scarlett won’t convince me otherwise. He should be glad he doesn’t work here; I can think of a million ways to make an associate’s life a living hell. Like, y’know, all the things I promised I would do to Scarlett when she first started here but never did.
She’s made me soft, for her.
I don’t think she realizes. She still treats me like she’s wary of my every move, like at any minute I’ll morph into the person she’s been warned about. Little does she know, I’m her greatest ally and she’s my biggest weakness.
“Is it still bothering you?”
“His comment?” She shakes her head vehemently, acting as if she’s trying to get to work, tapping her pen on her to-do list. “No. It’s getting better. I only thought about it fifty times yesterday…” She looks up at me with a teasing smile before adding, “It’s fine.”
I push off the doorframe. “Well, murder is still on the table,” I say mildly. “But if you’re morally opposed, you let me know how else I can help.”
“Will do. Now please leave me alone because I’m a very busy attorney and I don’t have time for idle chitchat.”
That day, I spend an hour of my precious time looking into Jasper Beringer like my job depends on it. He’s squeaky clean (boring) and his parents are well-off (expected), so in some ways, he’s untouchable. I’m offended that Scarlett dated him in the first place. If anyone seems like they’d be boring in bed, it’s my boy Jasper.
Could I let his comment go? I could, and I should.
Will I continue to fixate on it like it was said directly to me? There’s no other way.
Scarlett is…okay, she’s not like a kitten in need of coddling. She’s more like a lioness that could slice your head off with a single sharp claw, but even still, she doesn’t deserve to have a lame dude fuck with her psyche like that.
I want to help—a rare feeling considering helping is not something I do unless it’s accompanied by a hefty fee. I like minding my own business. Going home to my nice, clean house. Spending my hard-earned money on useless shit at Williams Sonoma in an attempt to seem like a well-rounded human that cooks and knows the difference between a strainer and a colander.
This stuff with Scarlett…what do you call them again? Oh right, feelings—they’re screwing me up, distracting me from the simple cut-and-dry life I’ve always known.
I laughed at a senior associate’s joke yesterday. Senior associates aren’t funny. No one in this building is. We trade in our sense of humor for the honor of putting “esquire” at the end of our names. On top of that, lately I’m too distracted to screw with Lucy properly. Her power is going unchecked. Today, she took a two-hour lunch break to run down to a sale at Tuesday Morning and I just plum let her.
She did bring back a needle-stitched throw pillow for my office that says If you don’t have something nice to say, come sit by me, so whatever, I forgave her.
We’re inching closer to Christmas and the office has gotten, sigh, cheery. There are a variety of peppermint creamers in the break room refrigerator, and some cutesy office manager stuck a bucket of candy canes on my desk that I promptly swiped off into my trash can. Yesterday, “Santa” and a few “elves” strolled around our office for a morale boost, and, for some reason, we all just went with it? “Ha ha, Santa! You better have me on the nice list this year!” was said out loud by an adult with a fully formed frontal lobe. Also, I don’t know if we didn’t have much in the budget this year or if all the good Santas in Chicago were already booked, but this man was a geriatric bootleg Saint Nick at best. I could see the white elastic band holding up his beard, and when I sat on his lap and told him what I want for Christmas, he acted weird about it.