Total pages in book: 107
Estimated words: 95311 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 477(@200wpm)___ 381(@250wpm)___ 318(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 95311 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 477(@200wpm)___ 381(@250wpm)___ 318(@300wpm)
HANNAH CLARY left her comfortable life in her small hometown to chase the corporate ladder. After three years, a string of odd jobs and a long stint on unemployment, she gets the opportunity to work at one of the city’s largest companies led by the mysterious and demanding ELLIOTT MICHAELS.
She spends long hours catering to every need of her rude, condescending, and distant new boss finding that, despite her better judgment, she feels a growing attraction to him. Just as she is contemplating all the possible reasons an affair with him would be a terrible idea, mysterious letters start showing up threatening her to stay away from him.
As the threats start permeating every aspect of her life, Hannah is thrown into a dangerous situation and is faced with a difficult decision: run back to her hometown and into the arms of her high school sweetheart Sam Flynn, or stay with the smoldering Elliott Michaels despite the mysterious tormentor getting ever closer.
*************FULL BOOK START HERE*************
CHAPTER ONE
The sun shone in brightly through the window, making the contents of the coffee pot resemble murky, muddy, toxic waste. She poured her fourth cup of the morning. Her last cup. She had a rule about coffee and if she went over her morning amount, her teeth would chatter and her hands would shake and she would look like one of those yippy dogs do when their owners get home.
Hannah sat down on a chair that had been put out for trash by one of her neighbors, in decent shape except for the one short leg which wobbled ominously when she sat down. She placed the morning paper down on the surface of a television dinner stand she used as a kitchen table. If she ever had company over, she would be embarrassed by how shabby her apartment was. The landlord had strict rules about not painting the walls and what little decor she had was all the result of garage sales and hand-me-downs from family members who could never understand why she had left the cozy comfort of her small hometown and moved to a city where she could hardly afford her rent, let alone basic necessities.
The newspaper always reminded her those days of failure. Dozens of boxes circled in red then crossed out with black marker after yet another waste-of-time job interview. There were too many people out of work and not enough job openings. Or, at least, that's what the never upbeat people of unemployment informed her with scrunched up eyes and pursed lips that always implied that she was an inconvenient nuisance to them and that it was certainly not part of their job description to help the people who were unemployed to try to attain gainful employment.
But pretty soon the unemployment checks would cease to arrive and then, well, she didn't know what she would do with herself. Move back in with her parents? Sure, they would be all too happy to have her. She received worried calls from her mother at least twice a week and her father was always quick to remind her that her old high school room was there just as she had left it. And no matter how much she loved her parents, moving back in her mid-twenties felt like admitting defeat.
She needed a job. As soon as possible. Her resume must have been in the hands of hundreds of employers in the past few months. She applied to everything. There wasn't anything she couldn't do if she put some effort into it. Baby-sit, retail, office work. Brain surgery? Sure. Just hand her the sharp pointy thing and tell her where to cut. Fly a plane? Just give her a few motion sickness pills and point her in a direction.
Hannah had been no stranger to odd jobs and the kind of work that left your body aching and too tired to do anything but fall into bed at the end of the day. And she had a degree in business administration she had gotten when she was just shy of twenty-four. It had been two years since then and she still had yet to get a job in that field. No, instead she had served complicated coffee drinks to over-caffeinated teenagers. She had slaved at the only all night restaurant in the area, serving greasy hash browns and endless coffee pots to drunks and cops and taxi drivers. She and cleaned apartments and sold cheap jewelry at the mall.
Her most recent job had been washing dogs at the groomer down the street. She had been there three months and was finally getting used to being covered in hair and constantly smelling like wet dog- even after a shower. Then one morning she arrived to find it still locked and a sign on the window thanking the patrons for their loyalty and informing them that they, regrettably, had to close their doors.
With a labored sigh, she turned her attention back to the classifieds.
Personal asst. F/T. Exp. req'd. Fax resume to...
So, technically, she did not have experience as a personal assistant. But, really, who needed experience to know how to make a phone call, pick up dry cleaning, and brew coffee? It no longer mattered to her if experience was required or that even a doctorate was required, she applied to anything that was hiring that didn't require her to strap on clear platform heels, take off her clothes, and slide down a pole.
With a handful of resumes, she grabbed her keys and went to the local office supply store to fax them out. The employees knew her by sight. It had become embarrassing. She debated even going to another store in the same chain so it didn't feel like she had a giant "UNEMPLOYED" scribbled in permanent marker across her forehead. But she always went back to the same place, figuring it was the closest and she really had no business wasting gas money to give her pride a little boost.