“So if that solves the immediate issues with your career, what about everything else?”
I gave her an unfriendly look then. Candy had dealt with all the issues I’d raised as a means to bring me back to the ones she thought I should deal with.
“I need to order some clothes and underwear if I’m to front up to work tomorrow. None of my old stuff is going to fit.”
She let out a sigh, then shook her head.
“Drinking away your sorrows and doing a makeover. Usually, these are my tried-and-true means of getting over someone. Well, aside from getting under someone else. I can’t interest you in Tinder?”
“Tinder’s full of sociopaths and fuck boys,” I grumbled, grabbing out my phone and navigating over to a website where I bought a lot of my work clothes from.
“Yeah, but if they have a rough tongue and can breathe out their ears, who fucking cares? Now gimme. You have literally no idea how to dress for your new figure, and it has been a personal mission of mine to get you out of theschool marm with a stick rammed up her arsebullshit you used to wear.”
“Oh please, introduce me to the ways of corporate thot-wear,” I replied, but I handed over my phone. The bitch turned into an angry child if her grabby hands didn’t get what they wanted.
“Thot? Bitch, please. You need to do a lot more than get blasted in the face a few times by blue veined junket pumpers to become a thot. You need to earn that shit. Now, this is what you should be wearing.”
She turned my phone around, revealing a woman in a pinstripe suit. Nipped in at the waist and single breasted, it could totally work. The plunging neckline of the satin blouse she had under it was not quite what I was thinking, but…
The next morning,I stared into the mirror of Candy’s bathroom, patting a little more concealer over the massive bags under my eyes until I began to look more human. It didn’t really work, but it was the thought that counted, right? My head throbbed, my eyes ached, I’d popped enough Midol to make my gut roil uneasily, and my heart beat erratically inside my chest, but the combination of drugs and wine had eased the pain enough that I got a few hours’ sleep. I looked at myself in Candy’s bathroom mirror, dressed in the clothes she had picked up just before closing, then swiped on some mascara and lip gloss.
I was as ready as I was ever going to be.
“You don’t have to do this, you know,” my friend said to me, looking at me blearily over the top of her cup of super milky coffee. “Windsor still thinks you’re out conducting the study. You could take a few days, lie around and watch some movies—”
“Did that,” I said with a tight smile. “Didn’t help me then and it won’t now. I need a distraction, and nothing is a better distraction than work. Plus, I want to see those analyses before Evan gets his hands on them.”
“Yeah, fuck, C-3PO, you might have a point there.” Candy’s eyes narrowed. “That little fuck is getting squirrelly due to being ‘demoted’ to doing our work. It’s been a while since he’s tried to steal someone else’s research, and god knows this is the perfect project for him to poach.”
I finally got her on board. She got ready in a scramble then, the two of us going in her car and arriving just in time.
“I’m taking over the girls’work, so all correspondence should come through me,” Evan insisted, but Janet looked over his shoulder, her face brightening as she saw us. She had the mail clasped to her chest like one would an injured puppy, not giving an inch as Suck Up Evan tried to physically wrench it from her grip.
“No need for that,” Candy drawled as we entered the reception area. “I wouldn’t want you to be exposed to all my plentiful fan mail, as well as my monthly subscription toStud Muffins of Science. I’ll take our mail, thanks, Janet.” She propped her elbow on the high desk counter and looked Evan over slowly. “You get caught opening something not addressed to you, I will follow up with HR. And you remember how that went last time? Don’t go trying to bully Janet either. She has Felicity on speed dial.”
Felicity was our HR rep, a total spitfire, and one who had Gideon’s full support, especially when dealing with his son. Saved him from doing it, I guessed.
I moved closer, wanting to see Evans’ foul expression more than I wanted my next breath, and sure enough, there it was—bottom lip pushed out, his claw like hands scraping his lank hair back from his face as he scowled impotently at us. I was sure he qualified for both meanings ofimpotent.
“What’re you doing here?” he snapped at me, the fuck’s eyes dropping down to my chest within seconds.
“Eyes up here, motherfucker,” I replied. “There’s a lull on things at the moment, and I wanted to come in and look over the analysis and any preliminary reports that have come back from pathology.”
“Those are here,” Janet said, passing them over. “They came via special courier.”
“And where’s the other samples you should have been taking?” he asked with a sneer. “Or have you just been too busy rolling around like a bitch in heat, hit by all those alpha pheromones they’re producing for their omega, to bother to take any?”
I had been doing exactly that actually, though I’d collected plenty of samples. Not grabbing them when I ran out of the pack’s house was a rookie mistake. Unfortunately, Eloise breaking my fucking heart had created a lapse in professional judgement. Before I could answer his shitty question, the door opened and exactly the man I didn’t want to see stepped in.
Colt looked like shit. Eyes too wide, skin too pale, and the dark pouches under his eyes rivalled mine and Candy’s, because like the Louis Vuitton website, he had bags for days. He also had a plastic bag in his hand.
“You left some stuff at the house,” he said with the voice of the undead. “There’s some personal stuff, but I figured you’d need the samples.”
“Man, you look wrecked!” Evan said with some grotesque approximation of bro dude bonhomie. I winced as he raised a hand, waiting for Colt to fist bump him or something. “The little lady keeping you busy? Omegas, amirite?”
So this was like watching a very slow, very horrific car crash happen right before our eyes. Colt’s eyes went bright silver in a flash, his lips peeling back from his teeth to reveal sharp fangs, an almost inaudible growl making Evan snatch back his hand and take a step away. I almost smiled as the weaselly beta withdrew, shooting the three of us heated glares, but after we watched him beat a hasty retreat back to his office, no doubt to do nothing other than play endless games of spider solitaire, I was left to face down Colt.
Janet made herself busy. Candy deserted me with a slap to my shoulder, taking possession of the mail and pathology reports.