1
Fire truck lights dance on the walls of neighbors’ homes. Embers glow beneath the ash, and there’s a crowd surrounding the burned heap that was my home. Smoke still wafts in the air even though the flames are out. Can a fire really destroy an entire house that quickly?
I get out of my car, forgetting to put it in park. It rolls and hits a row of garbage cans before coming to a stop. I don’t even care at this point. My mouth flops open, fists clutching my hair, and I can barely breathe. The air reeks of burned wood and I want to throw up.
“What the hell happened?” I say to one of the firemen coming from the scene. He won’t let me come any closer even though it’s my property.
“Is this your home?” he asks.
I want to scream at him. Can’t he tell by the look on my face that I’m not just a curious bystander? I’m wrecked and it shows.
Instead of snapping at him like I want to, I just say, “Yes.”
“Looks like the origin of the fire came from a toaster oven left plugged into the wall.”
I swallow hard, tasting bile. My stomach twists, on fire, just like my house. It feels like the acid might burn right through the lining.
I nod, unable to speak, as if I were answering a question. Did he ask a question? I can’t remember. I can barely think straight.
My neighbors keep glancing at me as they retreat back to their cozy, still-standing homes. Some offer words of sympathy on their way. Some glare at me because I put their homes in jeopardy with my negligence. I would glare back at them if my face would allow it. Instead, I just stare at the destroyed remains of a dream now gone.
As the last fireman leaves, he says, “Might want to get ahold of your insurance company.”
Again I nod, and I get on the phone. But I don’t call the insurance company. I call my best friend.
“Alba?” I say weakly when she answers.
“What’s wrong?” she says, immediately hearing the shock in my voice. In the background there’s a riot of noise. She has a huge family and they all live in one little house.
“My house burned down.”
She makes a loud gasping sound. There are footsteps on the other end of the line and the sound of a door closing. Suddenly the background noise is just a soft mumble and I know she went into a different room to talk. I tell her everything that happened, about my stupid mistake leaving the toaster oven plugged in.
“Do you have money for a motel?” she asks.
She doesn’t offer to let me stay with her. I wouldn’t expect it anyway. There’s just no room. It’s not her house, so it’s not her place to invite me. Alba always escaped to my house when she needed quiet time. She won’t have that anymore.
I’m sure her parents would let me stay if they knew my situation. I could sleep on her floor. But I’m not about to ask for that favor. It’s stressful enough for everyone already living there. I don’t think I could handle all the noise anyway. I don’t need any more chaos in my life, and chaos is exactly what I’d be in for if I went to Alba’s house tonight.
“Yes,” I lie. I don’t have money for a motel. Not a single penny. I had just enough money for groceries and gas to get me by until I get paid, which isn’t for another week. I’ll have to sleep in my car tonight and figure out what to do about my future tomorrow. I’m sure after I talk to my insurance company they’ll cut me a check and I can get into something temporarily. It will all work out in the end. I have to believe that or I will completely drown in my sorrow.
“Meet me at the diner. I’ll get you a piece of pie and we can talk,” she says.
Her family owns a greasy spoon downtown. It’s a hole in the wall in a sketchy neighborhood, but the food is to die for. Normally, I’d be all over the offer of pie. Especially the peach cobbler. But right now my stomach is too sour to hold anything down, and I know if I start talking, I’ll break down. I don’t want to cry in a diner full of people.
“I’ll take a raincheck on that, okay? I need to get to the motel and check in for the night.”
There’s a long pause on the other end, and I know she wants to protest, but she doesn’t and I’m grateful for it.
“All right. Call me if you need me.”
“I will, Alba. Thank you.”
I hang up and look at my car still parked among a pile of overturned trashcans. I drag myself over to it. I guess still having a car is a small bit of luck. If I had walked to the store like I sometimes do, it might’ve burned up with the house and I would be left with nothing. I guess I should be thankful, but instead I feel like shit.
I drive around all night looking for a place I will feel safe enough to park for the night. At first I try in the mall parking lot, but a security officer kicks me out. Then I go to the park and I’m told to leave by the ranger. I decide to go to work instead. I have a parking pass that will allow me to stay overnight without the risk of being towed away. The kid they hired for the security night shift is a nephew
of the store owner and just sits in the back of the building smoking weed instead of actually patrolling. I just hope none of my co-workers see me in the morning.
Sleeping in my car makes for a lonely, boring, and extremely uncomfortable night. No matter which way I turn in the front seat, I can’t get comfortable. So I decide to try the back. But then the seat belt latch digs into my back. That’s where I stay for the rest of the night despite the poking and prodding. My back windows are tinted and I’m less likely to be discovered by my co-workers in the morning this way.
I’ve just started to doze when the alarm on my phone goes off the next morning. I sigh, exhausted. Time for work. I tell myself everything will be better today. It has to. Since I can’t take a shower or put on makeup, I can use the extra time to sleep in. I turn off the alarm and go back to sleep, thinking I reset it, but I didn’t.
I wake up an hour later in a panic when I hear a bunch of voices outside my window. The parking lot is full. People are going into the building of the clothing store. It’s open! Shit. I’m supposed to be in there twenty minutes before they open to put new inventory on the shelves and fold shirts. The manager likes things folded like origami—even though it leaves unnatural creases—and it takes forever. He’s such a dick. I’m in so much trouble and I know he won’t care about my sob story when I tell him what happened to my home last night.
Shit. Shit. Shit.
Grabbing my phone, I run into the building. I have to pee in the worst way and my clothes are a wrinkled mess. No time to worry about that right now. A couple days ago I left a sweater at my desk. It had belonged to my mother and is now the only thing I have left of her. It will work to hide the wrinkles. That, or there might be something in the lost and found. Co-workers are always leaving sweaters and jackets lying around, never claiming them.
I need to clock in before I’m late enough to be written up. Last thing I need is to lose my job. As I’m running between the racks, trying to avoid the manager on my way to the employee room, I don’t notice the man turning the corner until it’s too late and I run smack into him. The impact knocks me flat on my butt. He doesn’t flinch, doesn’t even teeter in the slightest. It feels like I hit a brick wall. I moan, my already sore muscles now accompanied by a ringing in my ears and a bruise on my ass.
I’m about to scold him for not watching where he’s going when I look up and see that it’s not a customer, but my boss. Not my boss, actually. My boss is the store manager, a spindly little five-foot prick named Leonard with a chip on his shoulder. The man I ran into is the boss. My boss’s boss. Marcus Steere, the owner of the company itself. He’s practically a legend in the men’s fashion industry, and sits among the rest of the fortune-500 heavy hitters.
I’ve seen him a few times but it was always from a distance. He’s much taller up close. Wide, muscular shoulders, sharp jaw, piercing blue eyes and long black lashes. He’s masculine, yet fashionable, and hands down the most gorgeous man I’ve ever seen. It’s hard to look away from him. His sexy good looks are so distracting that, at first, I don’t notice him reaching for my hand to help me up. When I finally do, my face grows hot with embarrassment and I spill out a string of apologies.
Once he hoists me off the floor, I smooth out my wrinkled shirt and try to smooth down my hair while I’m at it. I must look like a mess. That’s okay, though. He doesn’t know who I am. He doesn’t know I’m an employee and I’m not about to tell him.
“You all right?” he asks with a slight smile in the corner of his mouth, seemingly entertained by my lack of grace.
“Um …” I immediately forget what he said. I’m too busy staring at his lips. They look so soft and velvety. I wonder how amazing it would be to kiss a man with lips like those. My last boyfriend had lips like a shedding snake, always dry, always peeling, always kind of gross.
Marcus waits for an answer to the question he asked that I don’t remember. I don’t know what to say, so I say what I feel is a universal answer to many different questions.
“Okay.”
He lets out a muffled laugh and says, “I think you might’ve hit your head.”
“No, I’m fine, I’m just … it’s not a good day.” I start to ramble after that. I always ramble when I’m nervous. I say stupid things like, “My house burned down last night and I didn’t have enough money to get a motel so I slept in my car, and I don’t make enough at my shit job to earn a living wage …” As I’m rambling, I keep glancing over at the door to the employee room. If I don’t clock in soon, I’m definitely going to get fired. I see the clock above the door and I’m a half hour late as it is. “If you’ll excuse me, I need to—” I start to say when I hear my name in the tinny, Lollipop Guild voice of my elfin boss. I cringe at the sound of it.
“You’re late, Ruby, I’m writing you up for this one,” he says, then stammers when he sees Marcus. “Mr. Steere, I didn’t see you there …”
Marcus raises his eyebrows and looks at me. “This is your shit job?” he says. It’s hard to tell what he’s thinking. He looks and sounds almost as if he were amused, but how could he be when I just called the job at his company shit? He should be furious. My boss sure is. He looks like he’s about to blow cartoon smoke out of his ears any minute now.
“You called your job here, shit?” my boss says, rising on his toes as if trying to appear imposing, but his head barely reaches my shoulders. Marcus could sit on the top of his head like a bar stool if he wanted to. Their size difference is almost comical, like they’re different breeds: pug vs. mastiff.
“No, I didn’t mean …” I mutter.
Shit.
I sigh. I did call my job shit. I hadn’t meant to, but the words just sort of slipped out and now they are out in the air and there’s no taking them back.
I’m about to turn in defeat and walk back out to my car when Marcus says, “In my office, Ruby.”
Hearing my name in his voice is the strangest thing. He says it as if he’s familiar with it. As if he’s said it a million times.
“Yes, sir,” I say.
Leonard gives me a smug look and wanders off. I should tell him to go fuck himself since I’m about to be fired anyway. Might as well go out with a bang. But for some reason, even though we’ve only just met and he’s about to kick me to the curb, I don’t want to disappoint Marcus Steere.
I follow him through corridors, up an elevator to the top floor where there’s a massive office suite overlooking the entire city. It’s the kind of office you might see in a magazine. Everything is sleek and metal and different shades of cream leather. It smells heavenly, like the cologne aisle in the store, but not overbearing. There’s a huge salt-water fish tank in the middle of the room with brightly colored fish and elaborate coral formations. No bubbling pots of gold or sunken ships in this masterpiece. It’s so elegant I’m afraid to get near it even though I desperately want to get a closer look.
There are no fingerprint smudges or coffee rings on coffee tables or anything else. The room looks like someone could operate in here. It’s pristine. Just my presence in this place feels as though it’s been tainted. But not Marcus. He looks right in his element, tailor made, as if he were cut from the same expensive cloth. An art piece to be put on display like the fish in their tank.
“Please sit,” he says, motioning to the seat on the opposite side of his desk. I sit when he does.
God, he’s handsome. It makes it difficult to focus. I should be panicking about my job, but instead my mind starts to wander and I picture myself crawling under his big desk and unbuttoning his pants with my teeth. He tells me we shouldn’t, and what if we get caught, but I keep pulling off his clothes piece by piece until he’s naked. Then I do a sexy Cat-Woman crawl up his body and sit on his lap, impaling myself of his stiff cock. The room fills with the smell of sex and the wet sounds of our bodies slapping together. I give him the best fuck of his life and then he begs me for more.
When I finally shake myself of the fantasy, I look down and my nipples
are hard. I quickly cover them with my arms and feel my face growing hot. Luckily, he doesn’t seem to notice.
“So your house burned down and you’re broke,” he says in a single breath. I was kind of hoping he hadn’t been paying attention to all that in his haste to get to wherever he was going. That’s unfortunate. But at least he knows. Maybe he’ll take pity on me and let me keep my job with nothing more than a slap on the wrist. One can hope.
“Yeah, that’s my life at the moment,” I say.
He folds his hands on top of his desk and looks me in the eyes, his expression far more serious now than when I ran into him. This isn’t good.
His eyes are a steely gray with a unique starburst pattern in the iris. It’s like looking into a storm from the comfort of your home. A woman could fall prey to eyes like those. They are distant and mysterious, and yet there’s something about him that makes me think they could be welcoming to the right person. Of course, that person is definitely not me.
He wears his hair in a perfect style that makes him look sexy and important. I catch a glimpse of my image in the reflection of a silver sculpture behind his desk. I do not look sexy or important. I look as if I should be warming my hands at a barrel fire in some dark alley while drinking my sorrows away.