You’ve got to protect yourself, Andy.
“Yes?” he said, his tone flat.
“Sorry, please, go ahead,” I said hoarsely, as if I were standing in line at a supermarket and not sitting in the glass-walled office of the infamous and imaginary von Roth dick-swinging I’d so enthusiastically described.
“There is nothing toapologizefor, as far as I’m concerned.”His tone was ice water in cut glass. He might as well have had his entire face Botoxed, for all the expression on it.
He adjusted his cuffs twice before looking at me again.
Do it by the book, Andy. Say sorry. Cover yourarse.
“I’m sorry, I disagree,” I said. Tension crept up my neck and into my hairline.
He looked at my phone again sharply, then back at me.
“You disagree?” He leaned back in his chair like he was appraising me. How had I ever thought this guy was a gym instructor? I wondered for a split second if he had a twin brother. I simply could not reconcile the image of the guy who’d bought me sherry and talked about comic books with this von Roth cyborg in front of me.
“I—” My mouth was chalkboard dry. I’d completely forgotten what I wanted to say.
I’m sorry I called you a pale, stale male and painted a description of you spinning your genitals around in this very room, like a pervy hula dancer. Hope you don’t mind. Are wedone?
“What happened—” I stopped. “In the lift, and then… after—” My face was getting red, I knew it was. I kept my eyes on his, like that might somehow gaslight him into not noticing.
His Adam’s apple dipped slightly, and his eyes darted to my phone again. Why did he keep doing that? Was he expecting it to ring? Or—no, that was crazy. It wasn’t even his phone.
Just apologize, Andy.
“I mean—when we, when I—”
“It was a misunderstanding.” He said it firmly, like there was nothing else to be said. The ghost of an expression crossed his face. It reminded me of how he looked when he’d caught my eye at the rooftop bar. Like he wanted to say something and decided against it.
He smiled, lips twisting to the side. Of course, his crooked smile. The imperfection that made him perfect. Women probably wrote poetry about him.
“We should move on from the other day.” His fingers tapped, then stopped. “It was… an unexpected situation.”
“But Mr. von Roth”—I leaned forward. I had to get this apology out, or James would kill me—“the company meeting, before you were about to be introduced. I didn’t—”
“Best left forgotten, Ms. Jones,” he replied. “No harm done. I’m sure you agree.”
“Okay,” I replied slowly. “I… if you think…”
“I do. That’s what I think.” He stopped, his face neutral. “And everything else is otherwise all right? You’ve filed your incident with HR, I assume?”
“My incident—oh, yes. It’s in progress.”
“And your role here, nothing of concern?”
Nothing ofconcern?
Just that I’d fucked the CEO, who seemed to have had a total personality transplant, and now we were both pretending it hadn’t happened?
Yeah. That was a little concerning.
Well, fine. If he wanted to play that game.
“Oh no, nothing of concern, of course not.” I wasn’t a salesperson for nothing—I could pretend everything was hunky-dory just as well as he could. “Novexia is at the forefront of thepharmavationindustry, as I’m sure you know, Mr. von Roth. It’s a great place to work.”
Boom. Straight out of the company playbook. James would be proud of me. I wasleaning into the new regime.Growth mindseton lock.
