I walked into my office, taking off my coat and hanging it over my chair as I loosened my tie. Movement caught my eye, and I looked up to find Ms. Pearson standing in front of my desk.
“What?” I didn’t hide my annoyance.
She sucked in a breath as if she were trying to shore up her confidence. I suppose I was an asshole to be so gruff with her. But I wasn’t in the mood or the business of making my assistant feel comfortable.
“Well, I’m your new assistant, so I thought it would be important to meet you. To get to know you. To learn the best way to help you.”
I scowled as I sat in my chair. “If you don’t know how to do your job, then maybe Mrs. Curtis needs to find someone else.”
She swallowed and stared at me. I got the feeling that she was now sizing me up and possibly deciding that I was going to be an asshole boss. She didn’t look scared or that she might cry. I had to give her credit for that.
“Now, if you’ll leave me, I have work to do. When Mrs. Curtis returns, send her in.”
The friendly and eager attitude she’d sported disappeared. In its place was a mask of professionalism. “Of course, Mr. Dunsmore.” She turned, walking toward my door. My traitorous libido fired up as her hips outlined in a pencil skirt swayed on her way out.
When Mrs. Curtis came in with the messages, I immediately told her that Ms. Pearson wouldn’t do.
“She’s more than qualified. She’s worked as a paralegal, and she has two and half years of law school—”
“So she’s a law school dropout?”
My gruff attitude didn’t bother Mrs. Curtis. I suppose it was because she understood it. It came from pressure and feeling disrespected by my board.
“It’s not my place to tell her story. But I worked here longer than you have, and I’ve worked for you directly for five years, and so you know me and how I work. She was the best candidate for the job.” She arched a brow that made me feel like a child being reprimanded by a teacher. “She’s highly qualified, unless there is some other reason she’s not suitable.”
Fuck. I couldn’t tell her that in the first two seconds of meeting Ms. Pearson, my dick came back from the dead. Or how I imagined holding onto her hips and fucking her from behind as she left my office. But of course, that was exactly the reason she couldn’t work for me. I couldn’t be distracted from what I was trying to accomplish. And Ms. Pearson was definitely a distraction.
CHAPTERTWO
Reyna
My boss was a dick. The question was, was he a dick just to me or was he like that toward everybody? Maybe he didn't like that I didn't know who he was when he came into the office. But how could I know somebody I had never met before? The manual from HR hadn't included pictures of the CEO. If he was upset that I didn't know him, then he wasn't just a dick, he was also a conceited jerk. Then again, wasn’t self-importance and entitlement a part of being the head of a company? I know my father acted that way a lot. And Dean, even though he wasn't in charge of his family's company, often came across like he was the center of the world.
I shook my head because whenever I thought of Dean, the picture of him and Caryn fucking flashed in my brain. He had no business taking up space there. He was out of my life. I'd blocked him after a flood of texts and messages had come through in the days following my calling off the engagement.
I hadn't blocked my mother yet, but I was getting close. Each time she texted or left a voice message, I had a glimmer of hope that she would see things my way. That she wouldn't ask me to sacrifice my dignity and my happiness just so my dad could salvage a business deal. But every text and message doused that bit of hope. My last message back to her was reminding her that she'd given me a choice—I could come home and hand my life over to my dad's business, or I could never come home and lead my own life. I had chosen the latter. Not that I hadn't had moments in the last couple of weeks wondering whether I was making the right choice. I clung to the good fortune of having been hired to be Mr. Dunsmore's assistant. The pay was enough that if I continued to live on ramen, I could rent a small studio apartment. Of course, that wouldn’t happen if I got fired, which I suspected was a possibility based on the way Mr. Dunsmore was treating me.
I did what he asked, leaving him alone and letting Mrs. Curtis know he wanted to see her and get the messages when she returned. When I told her that, she pursed her lips and looked at me in a way that I couldn't decide whether she felt like I wasn't being forceful enough with my new grumpy boss or if she was annoyed at him for not being more adaptable to working with me.
She went into his office, closing the door behind her. I wanted to tiptoe over and put my ear to the door so I could hear what they were talking about. But I was hanging onto my independence and my confidence by a thread. I didn't need to hear that he didn't think I would make a good assistant. He didn't even know me. How could he know whether I was going to be good or bad?
I hadn't missed the way his gaze had scanned my body, and for a moment, I worried I was going to work for one of those clichéd bosses whose boundaries of work and personal life were blurred. But while he may have looked, he didn't make any comments, nor did he give any indication that he planned to act on what he saw. In fact, I think he was annoyed by what he saw. The flash of heat in his eyes had told me he liked my appearance, but I don't think he wanted to like it.
In my mind, that was a good thing. He was sexy AF, but he was my boss, so that meant he was off limits. Not that I was interested in him because I wasn't. I was still smarting from what Dean and Caryn had done, and I wasn't going to jump into the deep end of a relationship again anytime soon. There was a petty part of me that would've liked to have made Dean eat his heart out by hooking up with somebody to prove that I didn't need him. But I wasn't a hooking up type of girl. I hadn't been a virgin when I met Dean, but neither had I been around the block, so to speak. I’d had two boyfriends previously, and I’d slept with only one of them. My experience was so minuscule that Dean actually believed I was a virgin when he and I first slept together. I didn't contradict that statement, mostly because it seemed to excite him.
When Mrs. Curtis exited Mr. Dunsmore’s office, she asked me to go to the break room with her to get coffee. Her tone told me she wasn't being nice and wanted a break to chat with me. No, she had something important to tell me and she wanted to say it away from Mr. Dunsmore. I wondered if I should grab my purse and be ready to head out the door.
"You don't need to bring any notes or anything." Mrs. Curtis said no more, instead heading out of the office and into the hall. Clearly, she expected me to follow, so I did.
Once in the break room, she went to the fancy coffee machine, putting in a pod and setting a cup underneath the spout to catch her coffee. When her coffee finished brewing, she took her cup and brought it over to a table and sat down. I sat down across from her, trying not to fidget as my nerves rattled.
"Do you want some coffee too?" she asked.
I shook my head. "No, thank you." The last thing I needed was more caffeine in my body.
"I suspect that Mr. Dunsmore was less than welcoming to you."
"I didn't know who he was. I don’t think he liked that."