Seeing the hunger in his eyes, the depth of it sending chills down throughout my limbs as I sat down behind the desk, didn’t have me wondering what he’d been thinking this time.
He’d been thinking we were about thirty seconds away from pulling each other’s clothes off, and ruining all my hard organizational work by swiping the credenza clear and laying me on it.
And I’d be so okay with replacing every last scrap of paper in its rightful place…after.
With a sigh, and a look of regret—and promise—he turned from me, grabbed his coat from the floor, and returned to the door, opening it just as I started typing into my laptop, pretending whoever was at the door was none of my business.
And it wasn’t, but whoever it was, they were now firmly at the top of my shit list.
“IthoughtI saw you coming in the building from my office, Billy,” came a female voice. I didn’t even look up, just kept on typing. I would have been more proud of myself for not being nosy, except that I could tell from her voice that our mood killer was a much older woman. Like, grandma old.
“Hello, Corrine, how were your holidays?” he said, stepping away from the door and allowing in my enemy number one.
Except she couldn’t be my enemy number one because, well, she was just adorable. I realized this as she came completely into the office, Montrose shutting the door behind her, still holding his coat firmly in place in front of what I knew to be a pretty impressive hard-on.
Corrine was like a ball of cotton: white, fluffy hair, and nearly as round as she was tall, which was not very.
Totally a nurturer, Corrine, you could tell at first glance.
I briefly thought of my own grandmother. My earliest memory of her was hearing her tell my mother, “Don’t bring that spic bastard around here anymore. She don’t look like no grandkid of mine.” This was the closest I ever came to knowing the ethnicity of my father (the spic slur), and I wasn’t even sure that she knew for certain.
I would see her again only when she’d come to visit my redheaded, oh, so Irish, little brothers.
She never acknowledged me, even though it was obvious that I was the one taking care of her beloved little Irish potatoes.
I’d bet my whole paycheck from Montrose that Corrine hugged and kissed every one of her grandkids with the same amount of love and enthusiasm.
“Oh, they were wonderful, Billy, thank you for asking. I went to Chicago and visited my daughter and her family. So wonderful to see those grandchildren, you know they’re the only ones that don’t live in Maryland anymore.”
Montrose was nodding, like he did indeed know where each and every one of Corrine’s grandchildren resided. He leaned against the credenza, his fine ass resting just between two different stacks of his notes.
“And then this past week we saw all the ones around here. Which we do quite often, of course, but you know me…I just can’t get enough of them.”
Yep, Corrine had probably not rung in the new year by calling one of her grandkids “spic bastard.” I kept my head down and typed.
“That’s great,” Montrose said.
“And how about you, Billy? Your family all doing well?”
Out of the corner of my eye I could see the picture on Montrose’s desk of his family as he gave Corrine a brief summary of his break.
“And New Year’s Eve? Did you go to Times Square?” she asked.
My fingers stilled and I looked up then to find him staring at me. “Uh, no. I spent it in. Just a quiet evening with…someone special.”
“Oh, that’s wonderful. I suppose to a native New Yorker that gets kind of old.”
He just nodded his agreement. Corrine then turned her attention to me. “Oh, I’m sorry,” he said. “Corrine, this is my new literary assistant, Sydney O’Brien. Syd, Corrine Patterson. She pretty much runs the department.”
She swatted at Montrose in an “Oh, Billy,” delightfully exasperated kind of way, as she made her way to me. I stood, and offered my hand to her. “It’s nice to meet you, Mrs. Patterson.”
“Oh, Corrine is fine, please.” Her hand was soft and warm, but the handshake firm.
“Syd,” I said, returning her smile.
“It’s a pleasure to meet you,” she said, and I nodded my agreement. She waved me back to the chair I had just vacated. “Please, dear, don’t let me disturb you from your work.”
“You didn’t,” I said, but sat back down anyway, though I continued to keep my attention on Corrine. And Montrose. Always on Montrose.
