Must control urge to move stapler three inches to the left.
“I thought you were, too,” she says with a disappointed sigh. “But you were taking forever. So I had to get myself one.”
I check my watch to calculate my time. The coffee shop she sent me to was a ten-minute walk away. Plus the wait for the coffee itself put my errand at around thirty minutes total. “How did you get there and backbeforeme?”
She may be good at her job but there’s no way she managed to hustle past me in those heels. They’re like red stilts.
Ms. Blunt sighs, pulling the pen from her hair and making a notation in the margin of a mock-up. “I went to the Starbucks on Federal,” she says, sounding bored. “It’s a three-minute walk.”
“Then why did you—” I cut myself off when she looks up at me sharply and the frustration in my tone echoes back at me in this quiet office. I swallow it down, the sour taste of my anger and the unfairness of it all.
“I’m sorry it took so long.”
If there’s a time to apologize for what happened yesterday, it’s now. I stand to my full height, throw my shoulders back, and look her dead in the eye. In this moment, I am thankful for my sister’s Meryl Streep obsession, because it means I can channel Anne Hathaway inThe Devil Wears Pradawhen I say, “Listen, I wanted to apologi—”
“Your phone has been ringing off the hook,” she says abruptly.
Because of you.I glare at her and she glares right back.
“Fine.”
“Take that with you,” she says, pointing to the coffee I brought her.
Swiping it off her desk, I barely keep myself from slamming her office door as I leave. Dropping her absurd coffee in the trash can beside my desk, I count to ten again and I pick up the phone.
Chapter 8: Corrine
At ten o’clock, I slip off my heels and walk the perimeter of my office in my bare feet, letting my toes sink deep into the plush white carpet. When I moved into this office two years ago, I had the old, worn gray carpet pulled up and installed this one out of pocket, so I could do exactly this. I think better, create more creative campaigns, when I can walk, and no one wants to a) walk in high heels or b) walk barefoot on the dank carpet that used to be in here.
We need a new digital marketing strategy for a local chain of car dealerships that’s looking to expand into the Northeast. Their digital marketing before Hill City was nonexistent and they’re highly suspicious of the strategy I proposed. Before I came on board, Hill City had no digital marketing strategy to speak of and relied solely on what Richard called traditional strategies. I called them outdated. Over the last half decade, I’ve brought Hill City into the twenty-first century. And made Richard a lot of money doing it.
According to his references, Mr. Chambers created some well-received digital marketing campaigns when he was in school. I’m almost tempted to run the problem by him, because my pacing hasn’t helped with my creativity at all this time.
But I can’t ask him because I sent him off this afternoon to pick up a bridal shower gift for my ex-boyfriend’s bride.
I had decided I wasn’t going to send a gift, but then I needed to get him out of this office. It’s distracting having him sit out there. Even with my office door closed, the tension radiating off him sneaks under the door in angry waves. He’s pissed, indignant. Not thoroughly subdued like I’d hoped he’d be.
I’m willing to admit that maybe I’m wasting his talents out of spite. AndmaybeEmily was right and there was more to that elevator situation than I know.
My heart flips over at the thought.
But where my schedule used to feel like my security blanket, now it’s this anger that keeps the bruise on my heart safe. If I can’t hold on to this, and it turns out Emily is wrong and Wesley is an asshole, I’ll be hurt all over again.
I finish my last lap of the office and sit down at my desk, trying to ignore the doubt at the back of my mind.
The whisper of the door against the carpet is my only warning when Richard enters my office an hour later. He doesn’t even bother to knock. I lift my head from where it’s cradled between my palms.
“Richard.” I plaster on a smile. “Hi.”
Richard frowns, making a show of searching my office, back out the door, and my stomach drops into my lap.
Oh god.
The panic sets in fast.
Oh crap.
He’ll want to know where Mr. Chambers is and why he’s not here, working. A thousand excuses run through my mind on ticker tape but most of them require at least Mr. Chambers’s corroboration andgreat, now I’m going to have to lie to my boss.
