Falling for the Boss (4 page)

“So what do you say?”
Margie watched the lovely woman expectantly. 

Victoria
bit her lip.  She could feel the excitement already bubbling inside her.  A chance to travel all over the world, a great salary and experience that she never thought she’d ever have a shot at?  What was she waiting for?  “Of course,”
Victoria
said, nodding her head for emphasis.

Margie was visibly relieved. 
“Great.  Then you’ve got the job.  When can you start?”

Victoria
’s
face lit up at the offer.  “Um….I don’t know.  I think I need to give two weeks notice.”

Margie frowned. 
“Mr. Attracelli leaves for
Seattle
in one week.  If there is any way your current employer can let you go prior to that, please let me know.  But having just
resolved
a staffing problem,” Margie smiled and relaxed her shoulders, “I understand if you will have to work the full two weeks,” she said.  Margie stood and extended her hand.  “Welcome aboard.  Once you give me your start date, we’ll make arrangements for you to stop by and get some orientation information and get your security badge and a few other things out of the way.”

Victoria
stood and shook the offered hand, feeling light-headed.  “Thank you!” she said, eager to leave the office so she could let her excitement bubble over.  Tamping down her excitement until she got out of the office,
Victoria
left and
considered walking
quickly back to her old job. 
Instead, s
he splurged on a cab ride and arrived back at her small office with only minutes to spare before her lunch break was over. 
 

“Long lunch?” Jim
Vendmore asked
sneeringly
, peering into her office with a frown
.
 

Victoria
looked at
her boss’s
polyester blend shirt and clip on tie that was slightly askew on his neck.  He was almost completely bald but persisted in combing over his pointed
, shiny
head what few strands of hair were left
,
which only created a greasy
,
stringy mess. 

“No,” she said, ignoring his protruding stomach that pushed her pencil box
farther
on
to
her desk.  “I’m back just in time,” she replied and moved her computer screen so he wasn’t leaning against it as well. 
He’d done that before and had completely disconnected the plugs one day.  She didn’t want to risk that again. 

He grunted in response but didn’t pursue the issue. 
“Do you have the Jamison figures?” he asked, referring to the project audit that was due that afternoon. 

“I put t
hem on your desk this morning.
”
 
Victoria
replied, maintaining a serene expression.  She
noted that Jim was in the mood for an argument and was searching out an issue
on which to chide her
.  He was the type of man that had to find things wrong with his staff in order to feel better about himself. 

Jim
took out a handkerchief
from his pocket
and blew his nose, then crumpled it up and stuffed it back into the pocket of his polyester pants.  “Good, good,” was all he said but continued to stand in her office. 

Ignoring
her revulsion at the dirty
handkerchief
that was now residing in his pants,
Victoria
looked back at her computer screen, eager to write her resignation letter.  But when he didn’t move
out of her office
, she glanced back up at him.  “Was there something else?”

Jim shuffled his feet slightly, giving
Victoria
warning that she wasn’t going to like whatever he was
preparing
to ask next. 
“Well, I was just wondering how things are going with your boyfriend,”
Jim
said, wiping his nose with his
bare
hand. 

Victoria
kept the
disgust
out of her voice
and nodded her head.  “Fine.  T
hank you for asking.”
  She wasn’t about to give him any details about her personal life. 

Jim
grimaced.  “Are you always so polite?”
he grumbled, exasperated by her non-answers or evasive replies. 

“I try,” was all
Victoria
could say
, unsure why he was criticizing her manners
. 

“Well, it’s
a little weird,” he muttered with a
scowl
. 

“Being polite is weird?”
she clarified, confused but not really caring about his eccentricities. 

His bushy eyebrows dropped lower over his shifty eyes. 
“No,
not that.  Just that you’re so timid.
  I’m never sure what to make of you.
”

Victoria
had no response to that so she simply folded her hands in her lap and continued to watch him, a
calm
expression on her face as she waited for him to get to the point.

“Well, I guess it can wait until later,”
Jim
said
gruffly
and turned quickly to exit her office.  “Make sure the audit of Landew is done before tomorrow’s
ten am
meeting,” he said, already out the door and walking down the hallway.
  “And I’m going to need a summary of your findings so I can brief the controller.”

Victoria
sighed deeply.  The Landew audit was a small subsidiary of Global Corp that she’d been assigned to quickly review and summarize for a meeting with the head of her division.  She didn’t think it would take very long and she had other priorities to clean up so she turned back to her computer, wrote a
simple
resignation
letter
, then dove into her stacked in-box in an attempt to clean things up
before
her two weeks were over
. 

She worked hard all afternoon and was relieved when
five o’clock
came around.  She looked around her office and packed up all her personal items.  There wasn’t much, only two pictures, one of her younger sister
, Laci,
at her college graduation and another of her parents who lived in
Florida
now.  There was also a coffee cup that she’d brought from her apartment and a space heater since her office usually didn’t get very good circulation from the heating system.  She glanced around and decided to take the Landew files home so she could
finish
work
ing
on them
on her personal computer
instead of cramped up in her small
, windowless
office. 

Turning off the light to her small, cramped office
, she took her letter of resignation down the hallway and was grateful that
Jim
was
already gone for the evening
. 
She knew that he usually left the building right at
five o’clock
but hurried just in case today was an exception to his usual departure time
and he’d only stepped out of his office for a moment
. 
She placed
the letter
in the center of his desk
so he wouldn’t miss it in the morning
and quickly left the building
herself
. 

Chapter 3

The relief she felt once she was outside was uplifting.  She wanted to skip and dance, but she settled for a secret smile as she walked through the parking lot, passing by her co-workers as they all made their way home for the evening. 
She felt silly with her smile since not many other workers had similar expressions.  But for the life of her, she couldn’t tamp down her excitement. 
An image of the incredibly handsome Thomas Attracelli passed through her mind but she quickly dismissed that as the reason for her euphoria.  It was only the start of a new job and a new path, she told herself. 

As soon as she entered her apartment, she dropped her purse and called her sister, hoping that
Laci
was home so she could tell her the good news.  “Laci?”

“Hi, Vic!  What are you up to?”
Laci
answered
on the first ring. 

Victoria
didn’t cringe at the hated nickname because she was too eager to relay her news.  “Guess what?”

“You got the job!”
her sister bubbled over the phone. 
Victoria
imagined her sister jumping up and
dancing
around her small apartment, just as
Victoria
had wanted to do an hour ago.  The difference was that Laci followed through on her impulses whereas
Victoria
suppressed them underneath layers of inhibitions
and manners
.

“Yep.”
 
Victoria
fell onto her sofa, letting the tension from the day ease out of her body. 
She kicked off her navy blue, high heeled shoes and unbuttoned her conservative, navy blue jacket. 

After another small giggle of excitement, Laci proclaimed,
“I’m on my way over to celebrate.  I’ll be there in twenty minutes.”
  Without another word, not even a goodbye, she hung up the phone. 

Victoria
looked at the now dead phone and laughed.  She hung up the receiver and put it back onto the side table, not caring that her sister had just hung up on her.  She was too eager to celebrate herself. 

Her younger sister
,
Laci,
was the complete opposite of
Victoria
.  Where
Victoria
was reserved and polite, Laci dove into life with both hands in the air, daring the world to stop her. 
Victoria
was tentative and safe. 
She like
d
order. 
She liked the predictable. 
Victoria
had her future mapped out for herself and was happy, if mildly
and unexplainably
dissatisfied, with her life so far. 

She knew that, i
nstead of her current life where she envisioned herself working day after day in a small office or cubicle, crunching out numbers for a faceless corporation, Victoria wanted to chart new waters and find
a
new life, break out of her dreary, hum drum existence. 

Victoria
’s new
path was to travel the world, experience life and learn as much as she could. Then she and Barry would settle down, have two lovely children, Victoria would stay at home and see that they were raised with love and compassion an
d Barry would be the wonderful
daddy
who arrived home just in time for dinner and bath time
. 
Victoria
wanted a garden with vegetables and herbs and lots of flowers around her house. 

What she currently had was a small, stale apartment with sensible furniture and potted plants
sitting out on her tiny balcony
that somehow survived in the pollution clogged air surrounding
Washington
,
D.C.

If
Victoria
had
her life
planned
out for the next twenty five years,
Laci was the exact opposite. 
Laci was chaos personified. 
Even their hair reflected their
individual personalities
.  Laci had curly
,
dark, brown
hair that fell down to her waist.  It bounced in every direction when she moved. 
Victoria
, on the other hand,
trimmed her
golden
hair at shoulder length
so it curled softly around her face
.  It was still wavy, but much less dramatic than her younger sister
’
s. 
During the week,
Victoria
always wore her hair neatly pinned at the nape of her neck, not wanting it to get in the way while she worked but not sure what to do with it otherwise.