“I wouldn’t bother, personally,” she said, looking me up and down. “I have a feeling that you’re not going to be around long enough for it to matter. Parker has a type—and it’s not some girl whose boobs are too big for her biscuit-and-gravy-stained shirt.”
“Thanks,” I muttered when she pointed to the ladies’ restroom. I ran in and locked myself in a stall and texted my friends.
Sadie:What am I going to do?
Jasmine:How’s the first day on the job.
Sadie:It sucks. Parker is my new boss. Someone kill me. He’s going to fire me.
Erika:Maybe Ida will hire you at the general store.
Erika:She also started a sex toy business. I hear she needs part-timers.
Sadie:Virgins shouldn’t sell sex toys.
Jasmine:IDK I think a lot of guys would buy from you just on that.
I wiped off my shirt (you could barely see the food stains!),hid a little longer, and then wandered around until I found Parker’s office.
“You’ve been gone for forty minutes. Is this normal working behavior for you?” he asked, perturbed when he saw me.
You mean not doing any work because my boss is a meanie?
“I got lost,” I said, gritting my teeth. I couldn’t believe I had ever wanted to go out with Parker! What a completely awful man. That alpha-male personality that had been so attractive in the chats was now on full display. Cocky asshole wasn’t as sexy in person when he was sneering at me and telling me that I was a terrible employee without even giving me a chance to prove myself.
“If you have work for me to do, I’m happy to help,” I said.Be professional. See, you can be professional.
He looked me up and down. “I read your LinkedIn page. A women’s college, degrees in history and literature, unpaid internships at small local nonprofits. Frankly, it’s unimpressive.”
“Oh yeah?” I said hotly. “Well, I’ve seen pictures of you with hardly any clothes on, and let me tell you,thatwas unimpressive!”
7
Parker
Iwas in a terrible mood the rest of the afternoon. Sadie had sat in my office on the couch, glaring at me, for the rest of the day except for lunch, when she took a biscuit out of her purse and ate it, sprinkling crumbs all over the floor. Every move she made had grated on me. My shoulders were tense and my jaw tight by the end of the day.
The smart thing would have been to have her sit in the office adjoining mine. It was designed for the CTO’s assistant, and therefore there was a shared door between the two offices. However, I refused to keep Sadie as an assistant, especially after her rude comment. Seriously? She didn’t findmeimpressive? A lot of women thought I looked amazing; I practically had to fend them off with a chair.
Who had Sadie been with to make her think I wasn’t impressive? I was a billionaire. I had two PhDs. There were several patents under my name. My conference presentations always drew a full house. Hell, I might even win a Nobel Prize one of these days for my work.
But Sadie didn’t care. She left promptly at five thirty with barely a mumbled goodbye.
I sat in my office another thirty minutes after she left. Normally my office smelled like a lab—astringent cleaner and metal. But with Sadie in there, it had smelled like freshly baked pie with a hint of sugar and butter. I opened a window and inhaled the cold winter air, trying to center myself. I knew my brothers were going to be all over me as soon as I arrived home.
* * *
You could just golive in your condo, I told myself as I walked up the steps to the tall front door. The estate was huge—hundreds of acres with a large mansion and several outbuildings. We needed the space to accommodate all my brothers.
You have a very nice condo in town. You could live there and come visit on the weekends.
But I didn’t want to leave my little brothers. I knew what it was like when your older brothers decided they had better things to do than to look out for you. I had sworn when Remy rescued me from the cult all those years ago that I would never abandon my family. But sometimes I just needed a break.
“Parker! Parker!” my little brothers shouted when I opened the door. They had a horrible habit of mobbing the foyer whenever someone was at the front door. It was a residual from living in the compound, where someone’s arrival was a rare and exciting event. Here, of course, we came and went all the time. Still, the novelty hadn’t worn off—especially for the younger ones.
“Can you help with my science experiment?” Arlo begged.
“No, I need help with my chemistry homework,” Isaac, one of my teenage brothers, said, shoving Arlo out of the way. “He’s in middle school; he’s just making a baking soda volcano.”
