“Take my offer. You know you want to. Matt can do all the menial stuff,” Sebastian encourages silkily.
He’s so close. I go giddy at the huskiness of his voice. At the way he’s looking at me, as if I’m precious to him. And my mind goes right back there, to the other night, to how gentle he was washing my hair and putting me to bed. His lips brushing over my forehead… I take a deep, steadying breath. I’ve been feeling shaky and off-kilter all morning, and this awareness of Sebastian makes it worse.
“Don’t use your seductive voice.” I attempt to make it sound snappy, but it comes off softer, more uncertain. “I-I know all your tricks. I already gave you my answer,” I say more firmly. “Are you done with denial and into the bargaining phase now? Can we skip anger and depression and go straight through to acceptance?”
“So you’re saying I’m going through the five stages of grief over you quitting?” Sebastian asks, lifting a brow.
“No. I’m not that important. Grief for the loss of your frictionless life,” I explain.
“You are that important,” Sebastian says, utterly serious.
“To your smooth-running work,” I counter.
“Tome. I was an ass, and I didn’t let you know enough how appreciated you are. So, this is me rectifying that. This is my final offer. Quadruple your salary. You can havetwoextra days off for your other… endeavors. So you’ll only have to come in three days a week. And you won’t have to be on call on those other days.”
“You’re crazy,” I say shakily.
“You’re worth it. To me and my frictionless life,” he says, teasing. “Look at Matt over there. He wants you to stay too. He’squaking in his very practical shoes at the thought of being stuck with just me.”
The young assistant finally looks up from his laptop.
“If I convince Emma to stay, can I get quadruple my salary?” Matt asks.
“In your dreams, Chen. In your dreams.”
I shake my head, though not without sadness at the thought of the paycheck I’m leaving behind. I’d be insane not to take the offer. Of course I’m tempted. Would two days a week be enough to run my business? With an incredible salary and more time off to mitigate the risk of entrepreneurship, life would be much safer. Stable.
But something deep within me balks. No, this job would never be part time. It would be more of the same. I want to go after my own goals. And that takes a risk, I remind myself.
“Damn, you play hardball. Fine,” Sebastian says. “You can call yourself whatever you want. Assistant manager. Or life coach. Or master of the spreadsheets.”
I let out a gust of breath. “No.”
“No to assistant manager, yes to master of the spreadsheets?”
“Just no. To it all. No is a complete sentence.”
“Stop using my lines.” It was one of Sebastian’s favorite sayings whenever I scolded him about being too abrupt with people.
“I’ll start a production company. You can be a producer. That’s a kick-ass résumé booster. And the work will be challenging. You can organize things to your heart’s content.”
“You don’t want to have a production company. You said, and I quote, ‘Producers are assholes, and that shit is boring.’ You only want to be an actor.”
“That’s not strictly true,” he hedges. “Plus, I wouldn’t be running the company. You will. Win-win.”
“I can be your producer,” Matt pipes up.
“Stop playing with that closet organizer. I need you to complete the very important project I assigned you,” Sebastian orders.
“It will be completed the day after tomorrow.”
“Good.”
“What project?” I ask Matt.
“It’s a secret,” my boss answers. “He signed an NDA.”
“I did also. So it’s not a secret to me.”
