“How goes it?” he asks. He doesn’t care how it’s going.
“Oh, great,” I lie, nodding. “Just settling in, ya know?”
His eyes drop to the smiley-faced coffee cup, which I still haven’t delivered because I’m too afraid to knock on Dominic’s office door. It must be cold by now. “Is that for the boss?”
“Yep.”
“He’s been in there since seven. Hasn’t eaten. Hasn’t come out.” Marcus picks up the cup and examines the smiley face like it’s evidence in a court case. “You…drew on it.”
Oh, God. This is a nightmare.
“Yeah…it’s just a smiley face.”
He sets the cup back down. “Why haven’t you brought it to him? He buzzed you twenty minutes ago.”
My stomach plummets. “He did? I didn’t hear anything—”
“It’s a light.” He points to a small LED on the edge of my desk that is, in fact, glowing red. “And if I were you, I wouldn’t make him wait again.”
He walks away without another word.
My heart is ready to burst as I grab the coffee, smooth my Goodwill blouse, and walk over to the tinted glass door. My reflection stares back at me—a girl in her friend’s borrowed heels, holding a cup with a smiley face on it, about to step into the office of a man whose net worth is more than the town I grew up in.
The door clicks automatically as I take hold of the handle.
Inside, Dominic Blackwood stands behind his desk, flanked by a wall of windows. The city sprawls behind him like he owns it. And knowing just how much he’s worth, he actually might.
“Close the door.”
I do as I’m told. My heart is hammering. The room smells of leather and designer cologne…and something else underneath. Something warm and alluring that might just behim.
“Sit.”
My body moves on reflex. I plonk down on the chair across from his desk and set the coffee in front of him. He looks at the smiley face, and something in his expression shifts, like a crack in concrete. But it’s gone in an instant.
“I apologize,” I blurt out. “I made some…mistakes this morning, and I know you’re going to fire me, but I just wanted to thank you for the opportunity.”
He stares at me.
“And I’m sorry for drawing on your coffee cup.”
Without breaking eye contact, he lifts the cup and drinks from it. It can’t be hot anymore. I wait for his eyes to narrow. For him to kill me.
But to my surprise, he doesn’t. He sets the cup down andalmostsmiles. “I’m not going to fire you, Hazel.”
Relief floods through me so fast my eyes start to water. “You’re not? Oh, thank God. Thank you, thank you.”
“But I do need to show you something.” He twists his monitor toward me and taps the screen. A document fills thedisplay. Countless lines of legal language with my name at the bottom.
My signature.
The desperate, quickly-scrawled e-signature of a girl who didn’t read a word of what she was signing.
“You know what this is?” he asks.
“My contract?”
He looks briefly impressed. “Have you read it?”
