“Oh shit!” I froze where I was, the adrenaline pumping through my veins pausing for a moment. “I didn’t tell you.”
“What didn’t you tell me?” Nikki’s voice took on a familiar long-suffering tone.
“That guy, the alpha—”
“Mister I Would Do Anything to Taste Your Pussy? Yeah, I remember him. Best. Stories. Ever. You’re a stronger woman than me, ghosting a fine piece of arse like that.”
“Yeah, well, he’s my new boss.”
“No fucking way!”
“After an excruciating interview with this bitch from hell, she offers me the job, but they haven’t told the former executive PA about this.”
“What? You’re not serious. You can’t be.”
I spilled the beans in a rapid blur of words, Nikki forcing me to slow down and parse out the bits she deemed important, until finally, she was up to date.
“Why can I hear you two carrying on like pork chops while I’m on the toilet?” a grumpy Brian asked off screen.
Brian was Nik’s long-suffering husband, and right now, he was obviously really suffering. When Nik turned to face him, I saw his hair was standing all up on end, his T-shirt rumpled from sleep.
“So much gossip!” Nikki started to say before I interjected.
“Nik, focus. Lucien’s picking me up to take me to the airport in…” I looked down at my watch. “Fuck, in an hour! I’m going to be there for a few days, and I don’t know what to take with me!”
“So where are you going while in Sydney?”
“I don’t know. Probably the convention centre in the middle of town, maybe some meetings.”
“Lunch meetings? Meetings at a bar? Night or morning? With service providers or peers?”
“I don’t know.” I began to pace the floor. “I don’t know!”
“That’s the problem. Have you been given an itinerary?”
I opened up the work laptop I’d been given and clicked through to my emails again, just in case it had come through this morning.
“Nope.”
“Sooo…can you ring your ‘boss’ and ask him?”
“Nope.” I shook my head for emphasis, something that had Nikki snorting.
“You’re gonna try and do this?” She fixed me with a steely look. “Try to pretend the two of you weren’t having crazy monkey sex a couple of weeks ago? Try to just intuit what he wants from you as an employee psychically, without asking any questions, for fear you start dropping to your knees and begging for his massive wang again?”
My friend, she had a way with words.
“Who’s having crazy monkey sex?” Brian asked.
“Not us. Go away and think about why for a moment,” Nik shot back before turning to me. “If you’re going to work with this man, you’re going to need to communicate with him.” Then her mouth curved into a catlike smile. “That bloody bastard.”
“What bloody bastard?” I asked, my voice sounding way too shrill. “Is Brian pissing in the garden again?”
“No, Lucien.”
“Lucien’s pissing in your garden?”
“No, dickhead, Lucien’s got you right where he wants you. He wanted to continue things afterwards. He didn’t like you ghosting him. Now he’s got a legitimate means to force you to talk to him, to be around him, to sit beside him in first class, sipping complimentary champagne as you flit halfway across the country.”