“Miss Miller, is it?”
“That’s correct, yes, you can call me Callie.”
“Oh, no, please, I try and treat everyone with respect.”
The poor guy looked like he was even afraid to shake my hand, let alone call me Callie. Maybe he’d gone through some stuff at home—or maybe I got lucky with the most psychologically affected person by the shooting. Either seemed possible. I just reminded myself I was here to do a job, collect a salary, and try and make it work with my husband.
My husband…don’t you mean your ex-husband?
You never did legally get divorced. But…
“Are you excited for your first day?” Carl asked, shaking me out of my thoughts.
“Oh, yes, quite,” I said with a workplace smile. “Sorry, my mind is just all over the place, thinking about what this job might entail. I’m new in my sales career, you know, and so just excited to get started.”
“Oh, of course, of course,” Carl said with a workplace laugh. “I understand that!”
An awkward silence came as we walked to the elevator and waited for the doors to open. Carl kept looking over his shoulder, like…like he expected someone to come busting in at any second, like he expected another shootout to happen at the snap of a finger. I guess some things were harder to shake than others.
But thankfully, the doors opened, and I could literally hear Carl breathe a sigh of relief. I decided against saying anything, not wanting to aggravate him on my first day of work. As much as I’d moved down here for someone and didn’t quite put as much weight as I probably should have in my job, that didn’t mean I wanted to make it any harder on myself.
The doors opened up, and Carl led me to my desk.
“You’ll be next to Leigh over here; she’s one of our top performers in sales. Right, Leigh?”
The blond-haired woman had her back turned to me, but when she turned around, she looked drop-dead gorgeous.
“I just do the best I can. I’m Leigh.”
“Callie, pleasure to meet you,” I said, shaking her hand.
“Well, you two, uh, have fun and make some sales!” Carl said, swinging his fist through the air as if telling us to buck up and get ready for the wilderness. He finally left us, and when I got in earshot, I looked to Leigh, who was already rolling her eyes. It was going to make life so much easier that I did not have to worry about a suckup to the boss next to me.
“Is he always this…”
“Awkward?” Leigh said with a smile. “A bit. He used to actually be the bad kind of awkward, like creeping on me and trying to flirt. But then the shootout happened and I think he got scared in the crackdown of various measures he’d be caught. So now he’s trying so painfully hard to be the cool boss, and…well, I’ll take it over what was there before.”
“Makes sense,” I said. “Is it as dangerous as they say here?”
Leigh shrugged.
“Depends on how deep you let yourself get into the hornet’s nest, I suppose,” she said. “Me? Well, I know some of the bikers that get a bad rep here. They’re not nearly as bad as the press and those who don’t know them would have you believe.”
She knows some of the bikers?
Does she know Ash?
Or, at least, by second-degree connection perhaps, maybe she knows him?
“That’s good to hear,” I said.
Leigh turned herself back to work, but I knew I had to make sure I had lunch with her. This was actually going even better than I’d expected. I’d just hoped for a workplace that had relatively low stress, such that upon finishing the day, I could try and find Ash.
As it turned out, maybe I had a whole lot more opportunities than I ever would have guessed.
* * *
Getting lunch with Leigh was much easier than expected. I wasn’t even the one to suggest it. She’d offered it for being my first day at the company.
