“On my way,” Ace said.He made his own pause.“Uh, say, this isn’t a thinly-veiled excuse to get me to your office so you can fire me for picking the wrong secretary, is it?”
The wrong secretary?Ace was that unsure about his own choice?
Well.There was a chance this could go either way.Keaton might be the best secretary in the world by pure happy accident.Somehow I had the feeling that it was more likely to head in the other direction.
Not just because I doubted his competency levels.Or because of what had happened the first time we met.
Because he was cute.And cute men standing around in my office were not entirely welcome.Not when I had important deals to focus on.
Not even if I seemed to very much enjoy looking at his face.
“No,” I said and hung up.Let Ace Park panic if he wanted to.That would teach him to talk to me like a friend instead of a boss.
He was lucky he was one of my best agents.
And one of the only people in the world to know my secret.A member of a group I could count on one hand.The inner circle.
I shot a glance at the door.
That secret was in jeopardy with cute Keaton so close by.
Maybe I should fire Ace – because I had a feeling he’d picked Keaton for that very reason.
And if that was the case… they were both going to be out of the door first thing tomorrow.
Keaton
I walked to my desk in a bit of a daze, my thoughts racing.
It was only when I sat down, behind what seemed like the relative safety of the desk, that I let myself process it fully.
Oliver Harvey.
I had pulled it off – I was finally working with him.And now I would get the chance to film him secretly and get the scoop that every media outlet in the country would kill to get their hands on.
Oliver Harvey acting like the asshole Iknew first-handhe was.
About six months or so ago, I’d been to a job fair.It was one more stepping stone in my constant job search, which – through no fault of my own – seemed to dominate my entire life.It wasn’t that I was incapable of holding down a job.It was just that the filmmaking business was so off and on.I’d get a job, get an offer to work on a project, quit the job, and then the project would fall through or it would only pay enough to sustain me for a couple of months.More than once, I’d done camerawork on TV pilots that went nowhere and taken the lead on documentaries that never got picked up by networks.I’d even filmed a pilot show for my sister, Clara, once, to help her push her first screenwriting project – and even that had been a flop.No one wanted to take it on.
She still owed me $500, now I thought of it.
Anyway, that job fair had been where I’d met him for the first time.Oliver Harvey – though I didn’t know that was his name.I’d stepped up to him, leaning against the entrance to one of the halls, and asked him if he knew where the free resume evaluations were happening. He’d told me to fuck off right to my face, practically snarled it at me – for a minute I’d thought he was going to hit me.
“Fuck off, yourself!”I’d snapped back before walking away as fast as I could, just in case my momentary spark of courage did actually earn me a black eye.
And now here I was, working for the man I’d had that “conversation” with.
I rubbed a hand over my face, trying to wake myself up.From my position here at the far end of the office, right in front of Harvey’s door, I was mostly alone.But I could sense that at any minute, any of the other doors or the elevator on the other side of the room might open and disgorge someone who wanted to come right up to me and ask to see my boss.I couldn’t sit here stunned, thinking about what had happened and letting it sit all over my face.
I looked over my desk instead, trying to get a handle on everything I had at my disposal now.
Ace had given me a very brief tour when we got there – as in, “Here’s your desk, and that’s where your new boss works” – but it was up to me to really familiarize myself.I started opening and closing the desk drawers – mostly empty, except for some office essentials such as a stapler and a ruler and, weirdly, a cell phone stand – and turned in my chair to look behind my spot.
It was all clean and new as if no one had ever worked there before.But from the way Ace was talking and how eager Fernando was to hand the coffee off to me, I gathered that wasn’t the case.Actually, I gathered that Oliver Harvey had a penchant for firing his assistants, and everyone probably thought I was going to last about two seconds.He had a reputation that was clearly well-known within his own firm, but until now, that reputation hadn’t left the walls of this building.
I could see why Fernando had told me to apply for the job.He had gotten plenty of points with my sister, but he probably thought he wouldn’t have to actually work with me for long.
I was determined to prove him wrong – at least until I could get everyone comfortable enough around me to give me some really juicy footage to leak.
