DEFENSE (26 page)

My computer gave a tiny ping, and I studied the screen. I’d received a message back from Roland, and my stomach did a funny little flip flop in response. Why was he at work so late? I glanced at the clock. It was already approaching nine o’clock. The movers had done my bidding and left, and I was all alone in my new home.

I realized in a flash that the office kind of was Roland’s home. He lived in the same building, after all, so I guessed that he didn’t much mind attending to business matters whenever he pleased, even if they occurred after hours.

A quick stab of guilt hit me. Was I making him attend to office matters after hours? I opened the email.

Your pay won’t be docked. All employees receive reimbursement for moving expenses. I expect you in the office at 8 a.m. sharp tomorrow with hot coffee and a newspaper you haven’t stolen.

I expelled my breath—which I hadn’t realized I’d been holding—in an exasperated laugh. What an asshole. He didn’t even acknowledge my gratitude, and I seriously doubted that Shepard Shipments bought everyone their apartment and filled it up with furniture, new clothes, and electronics.

Why did he have to be so gruff all the time? The receptionist up on the floor where I worked had called him a beast. He seemed to have a reputation for acting beastly, and it didn’t help that his scar was so terrible to look upon.

How had he gotten such a scar? It looked fully healed, as far as I could tell in the darkened office, but still somewhat new. I would’ve thought that someone with as much money as the president of a major corporation had could pay to get that kind of thing at the very least reduced, if not completely removed.

And wasn’t there some kind of twisted adage somewhere that advised if you weren’t particularly handsome, you had better at least be kind? Roland was neither of those things, which probably explained why he secluded himself in a darkened office and never set foot near his employees—except for his assistants.

Well, soon to be assistant, only one. Me. The thought was terrifying but empowering. I was somehow entrusted to be the face Roland couldn’t show to the rest of his employees. And maybe, once he got to know me at little better—or once I figured his quirks out myself—he wouldn’t have to be such a jerk.

I sighed and closed my laptop before standing up. There were still groceries to purchase, dinner to be made, and an outfit to be picked out before work tomorrow. I’d have to ponder the mystery of Roland Shepard and his company some other time. I apparently had a life to get back to.

“Oh, no. Not you. I know you. You get away from here.”

I was slowly approaching the newspaper vendor I’d stolen from yesterday, my hands palms up, arms outstretched, trying to prove that I wasn’t a threat, that I could be trusted.

“Sir, I told you yesterday that I would pay you back today,” I said. “Yesterday was a terrible mistake, and as I work in that building behind me now, I’m going to have to frequent your kiosk every day to buy the Times.”

“You’re just going to have to frequent somewhere else,” he said, shaking his head. “No way, no how, newspaper stealer. Your business isn’t wanted here.”

“Here,” I said, holding out a crisp twenty-dollar bill, a remnant from my grocery-buying binge from the previous night. “I’d like a copy of the Times, please, and to cover any pain and suffering I caused yesterday by taking the newspaper without paying. It was my first day, and I was really nervous.”

He narrowed his eyes at my bribe attempt before taking the bill and shoving a paper at me. “I heard you all have some kind of monster living up there, making your lives hell.”

Was he talking about Roland? “I don’t know about that,” I lied. “Like I said, I just started yesterday. I wouldn’t know about that kind of thing.”

I was about to walk into the building when I heard the street vendor whistle sharply.

“Yesterday, that old woman who’s assistant to the monster came down and gave me a hundred bucks for you stealing!” he said, waving my paltry twenty-dollar bill in the air. “I’m gonna get rich off of you. I know it!”

I snorted and walked into the building, waving defiantly at the security guards and receptionist who had almost thrown me out bodily just the morning prior. I wanted to shout at them about all the things I’d bought that I’d never owned before, such as a gallon of milk, but I didn’t want to sound pathetic.

When I arrived at my floor, the Times newspaper intact and paid for in my arms, ready to set my shoulders and get on with any awkwardness with my coworkers after I fled from this place yesterday, I was instead surprised by the receptionist giving me a big hug the moment I stepped out of the elevator.

“We call what you did yesterday the actual moment you start working for Shepard Shipments,” she confided, giving me a pat on the back. “Everyone who has to deal with that beast does it, eventually. You might hold the record for how quickly it happened, but you’re going to be his assistant, after all.”

I was forced to laugh. “I just wasn’t sure what I was getting myself into yesterday,” I admitted. “It’s kind of my first office job.”

“If you’re back today, then you’re doing just fine,” she assured me. “Most people don’t come back after they have an encounter like that. His office door isn’t soundproof, you know. We could hear him yelling at you—not the words, of course, but the volume. What did you do to piss him off?”

I was an idiot, I wanted to say. It didn’t make me feel good to badmouth a man who’d just ended my status as homeless and poverty stricken with a simple plastic card and license to spend whatever I needed to. However, I wanted desperately to fit in with my coworkers, to have some bright spot in my day if I knew Roland was going to be yelling at me later.

“I was a smartass to him,” I confided.

“No!” she gasped, scandalized. “What’d you say? You have to tell me!”

“I’d spilled most of his coffee on his newspaper, and he said he didn’t ask for a coffee that was half empty,” I said, unable to stop myself from smirking at the memory. “I told him that some people would say it was half full.”

The receptionist shrieked with laughter, and I tried to shrink inside myself as people craned their necks to see just what was so funny.

“You are going to get so fired!” she whispered, her shoulders still shaking with laughter. “How you are back here today?”

“Believe me, I’m asking myself the same question,” I muttered. The receptionist had confirmed one of my suspicions. Why had my sass been tolerated yesterday—not only tolerated, but rewarded with a veritable limitless shopping spree? Add that item to the official “Shit Here Does Not Make Any Sense Whatsoever” list.

“Well, I’m glad you’re sticking around,” she said. “You’re spunky. I’m Sam, by the way.”

“Beauty,” I said, shaking her hand.

“Oh, honey,” Sam laughed. “Everyone knows your name after yesterday.”

I cringed. That felt more like a bad thing than a good thing.

“Well, I better go focus on not spilling Roland’s coffee on his newspaper,” I joked.

“Don’t let anyone hear you call him by his first name” she hissed, surprising me. “They’ll think you actually like him.”

“Like him?” I frowned and shook my head. “I don’t like him. And he definitely doesn’t like me.”

“He doesn’t like anyone,” Sam confirmed. “Well, good luck in there, soldier.”

“Thanks,” I said, laughing and feeling uncomfortable at the same time. I felt almost traitorous talking about Roland behind his back. He’d helped me probably more than he’d helped anyone in this building. So why did all of these people work here if they all hated him so much?

I stopped by the break room, filled a mug full of freshly brewed coffee, and took small, slow steps to ensure all of the hot liquid stayed firmly in the cup. I was going to do this right today. I wasn’t even going to give him a reason to shout at me.

There was something almost comforting, though, in the knowledge that if he did shout at me, it was just another part of my self-enforced punishment. I’d take the licks and keep on going for as long as I was employed here. Having a clear plan—no matter how messed up it might have been—was strangely nice.

Myra’s purse was on our desk, but she was off to parts unknown again. Was I going to be that busy once I took over for her? The thought lingered in my mind as I leaned against Roland’s office door, knocked with the hand securing the paper, and entered.

“I have your coffee and paper here, Mr. Shepard, just as you asked,” I announced as cheerily as possible for so early in the morning.

“No, not as I asked.” He was seated at the desk, like yesterday, but the chair was turned around. He was hunched over the keyboard to his computer, his phone display alight, working hard. The office was just as dark today as it was yesterday, the only source of light coming from his devices and that single lamp on the desk.

“Not as you asked?” I repeated. “I promise that I paid for the paper, and the coffee is hot, and I haven’t spilled any of it…yet.”

“Would you care to tell me what time it is?”

My eyes darted around the room for a clock, but the light was just too dim. I jammed the paper under my arm and fished around in my purse until I came up with my cellphone, keeping my eyes on the coffee mug, willing the beverage to stay put with all of my strength.

I mashed the button to engage the display.

“It’s eight o’clock,” I said, confident.

“Wrong.” He pointed at his own phone. “It’s 8:03.”

“I rounded down,” I admitted. “If it was 8:05, I would’ve gone up to 8:10.”

“When I say that your day begins at eight o’clock sharp, that’s what I mean. It’s not three minutes after, not five minutes after, not ten minutes after. Not thirty seconds after. Eight in the morning. Precisely. If you find you need to get here a little earlier to ensure you’re on time, do what you need to do.”

His words were harsh, but his tone was mild. I absorbed this information without so much as a noise of protest.

“I understand, Mr. Shepard, and I’m sorry,” I said. “It won’t happen again.”

“Don’t waste my time with apologizes,” he said, taking the paper from me first and then the coffee, his fingers brushing mine and making me shudder inexplicably. “Just get it right the next time.”

“Yes, of course,” I babbled. I could still feel his fingers on mine but had no idea why they’d made such a strong impression. It had been an accident, our hands touching. Was it because of that terrible scar? Did it repulse me?

“Anything else?” Roland asked pointedly. I realized that he was staring at me, staring at him, and I quickly lowered my gaze.

“No, sir,” I said, “oh, except this.” I located my wallet and extracted his credit card. “Thank you, again, for everything. This may sound kind of stupid to someone…well, someone like you, but it’s really fun to be able to get a huge tub of ice cream and not have to eat all of it at one time. I’ve never had my own freezer before!”

He gave me an odd look that I couldn’t quite define before taking the card from me.

“You also got a cellphone, I see,” he said, not acknowledging my gratitude again, or somewhat thankfully, my awkward admission about the ice cream.

“Yes,” I said. “It seems like there’s kind of a steep learning curve, but I’m pretty confident I’ll get the hang of it.”

“Email me your number,” he said shortly, looking back down at his keyboard before launching into a storm of typing. “You need to be available at all times as my assistant. I need to be able to count on you if I reach out and need something done.”

“Of course,” I said, bowing like an idiot before spinning around to hide my burning blush. Why was I so stupid and awkward around this man? “I’ll email you right now—as soon as I get back to the desk. No problem. Just let me know—or Myra, she’s still here, obviously—if you need anything. When you need anything, I mean. I know you’re really busy and you need lots of things.”

“Beauty?”

“Yes?” I turned around eagerly. “What can I do for you?”

“Shut up and leave.” He’d never stopped typing.

I all but ran to the door, more to escape my embarrassment than to escape the man still seated at that desk, running a company in the dark.

“There you are!” Myra exclaimed, as I popped back into the main office. This place was so much friendlier than Roland’s cave. Maybe it was just the lighting, but it even felt easier to breath out here.

“Sorry I ran off yesterday,” I said, sheepish, but Myra waved my apology away.

“Well, you already know the worst of your new job, which is to say that your boss can be a little difficult.” She smiled. “But since that little bit of unpleasantness has passed, we can continue your training.”

Myra said it like Roland’s temper was nothing, just something to endure now that I’d seen it myself.

“Does it ever get better?” I asked, taking the day’s box of documents to be digitized from her and opening the lid.

“Better?” She blinked at me.

“I mean, does he ever stop yelling and stuff?”

“You have to understand, Beauty,” she began, “just how much stress that poor man in there is under. He’s running this big company through a computer and a phone and his brother. If his temper’s short, it’s only because he doesn’t have very much time to waste on anything else.”

“So he was easier to get along with before the company was really successful?” I asked, cocking my head to the side.

“Well, sure, he was really easy to get along with before…” Myra trailed off and frowned.

“Before what?” I prompted. Whether she liked it or not, this training was going to include all the company gossip. I felt like I needed to know if I was going to be the man’s assistant.

“Did I show you where the company cafeteria was yesterday?” she asked, completely shifting tack. “You ran out so soon. I had a list of things I was going to teach you yesterday, and another one for today. Now we have to get through both of them today—and that blasted box of documents.”

I hid a small smile behind my hand. If Myra was going to stonewall me, fine. And if she was going to make me feel guilty for leaving her here all alone yesterday morning, fine again. I had other sources now. I was sure I could get my new friend, Sam, the receptionist, to divulge some secrets.

“You didn’t show me the cafeteria,” I told Myra, “but that can always wait until lunch, right? What else should we be doing?”

Myra rarely stayed at her desk, receiving an agenda of items to attend to on Roland’s behalf via email at the start of each workday. I shadowed her on her jaunts across the office and to other companies on floors below, observing the surprisingly high energy in a woman about to retire. If I’d put in as many years as she had in the workforce, I would’ve been taking it easy during my final week.

And when she did go back to her desk to check the agenda or if there was some free time to work on digitizing between tasks, the phone would often blare, scaring us both. The only person ever on the other end of that line was Roland.

“I’m surprised you don’t have many missed calls from him,” I said, as Myra prepared to forward him some information he’d asked for.

“What do you mean?” she asked absently, clicking away at the computer.

“I mean, if you’re rarely here, at the desk, always running errands around the building, then don’t you think he’d call? He seems to be really needy.”

“There’s no need for him to call when I’m not here,” she answered, sending the email with a small sound of triumph and bringing the agenda back up on the screen. “He can see if I’m here or not for himself.”

She pointed toward the ceiling to a small, black lens.

“A camera?” I nearly shouted, causing several people to swivel around in their desk chairs to try and see what was wrong with me. “Sorry. But a camera? Really?”