It seemed silly, but I kept that to myself. I imagined Derek or Enzo doing this job and bit back a smile. They wouldn’t know how to take this seriously and would likely be fired pretty fast for all the jokes they would be throwing around. I had more restraint than that. Like at least eighteen percent more…
“Fortieth.”
My brows jump and he gives me a look that confirms what I’m thinking.
The fortieth floor held members of the board, some sort of project managers, assistants to other people, and… the CEO.
“Dang,” I reply and grip the cart.
“Start there, work your way down. We want the CEO to get her mail first,” he tells me and sends me off with a mock salute. Or, maybe it’s not mocking. Greg is a bit of an odd duck, but I appreciated a good odd duck every once in a while.
I make my way out of the mail room and to the elevator, stepping on, I press the button for floor forty and take a deep breath. I chuckle at myself. How ridiculous.
I think over my current work in progress that sits in my bag stuffed in the locker I was given.
It was giving me hell.
Truth be told, I was something of a poet. A struggling one at that, but what artist wasn’t.
However, I had aspirations to do something bigger. Write my books that always swirled around in my head, draw what I loved to draw, paint, sculpt… all of it. I would spend every second of every day doing those things if I could.
And if inspiration would give me a huge kick in the ass, that would be pretty freaking awesome.
Several times the elevator stops, letting people on and off. I give friendly smiles and receive some more flirty ones in return. There’s no shortage of available interns in this building—male and female—that was for sure. The only problem was that I wasn’t looking for something short term or temporary, I was over that.
If I ever decided to settle down, it would be with someone who cared about me, someone I could care about and take care of in return.
However, given my current tax bracket, I wasn’t quite ready to take on having a spouse or a family.
Not yet.
Finally, after what feels like an hour of the elevator starting and stopping and me trying to just get to the damn floor I was supposed to—working on the lower levels already had some advantages—I make it to the top and get to work.
I start the rotation, reading name plates and passing out bundles of mail. Some people smile and thank me, some ignore me altogether. I pass out rolls containing some sort of larger parchments and the people snap them out of my hands like I’m moving too slow, they act like the world is going to end if they don’t get it within two seconds of spotting me.
Finally, I make my way to the office at the end of the hall and pause at the assistant’s desk, one that is now empty of anyone. I spy the nameplate on the door and hum.
Jane Leads, CEO.
Well, hell.
There she was. The CEO everyone talked about. And the one person I was supposed to deliver to first. Shit.
I’d never seen her in person, but her name was basically a household one around here, given that she was the youngest CEO this company—and most companies—had ever had.
I pause. I could set all of the mail on the assistant’s desk, but what if there was something she needed right now? I wasn’t about to get scolded for not doing a good job on my first day up here.
Fuck it.
I grab the bundle of mail and step up to the wooden door, staring at the little plate for a moment, the letters are carved into the plate in a pretty script.
I grip the handle, then pause, thinking better of it, and knock lightly on the door.
A lyrical voice calls for me to enter and my heart knocks. Odd, that’s never happened before.
Twisting the handle, I push in and when I see the woman sitting behind the desk, my feet stutter to a stop.
Dressed in a white suit, the woman with the shining brown hair gives me a quick glance with her chocolate eyes and her lips tip into a smile. “You can just set it on my desk. If you don’t mind,” she added, polite words propel my legs forward and I stride the fifteen or so feet from the door to her desk, my shoe catches on the rug and I catch myself, feeling a burn at the back of my neck in embarrassment.