Page 69 of Saved By the CEO

The Westbrook meeting is in the smaller conference room, which means everyone has to sit closer together than they want to. Andrew takes the head of the table. I sit to his right with my laptop open, notes organized, action items formatted, because I am a professional woman and, despite recent gossip, not a blow-up sex doll.

Jessica arrives two minutes late and gives me the kind of smile people wear when they’ve been talking about you and hope you can’t smell it on them.

Look at this snout, motherfucker. You know I can.

We get through the first few points without incident. Then Jessica looks down at her agenda and frowns. “I just want to make sure this is the current call schedule,” she says, turning toward Andrew.

“Why?”

“There was some confusion earlier. I just wanted to confirm.”

“Miss Michaels sent the schedule,” Andrew says. “Did you receive it?”

“Yes, but?—”

“Then it was confirmed.”

Her smile falters. “Right. Of course.”

A tiny, vicious part of me wants to applaud.

When the meeting ends, everyone gathers their things a little too quickly. Andrew waits until the room is empty before turning to me. “That was inefficient.”

I close my laptop. “Most meetings are.”

“That’s not what I meant.”

I know.

I slide my laptop into the crook of my arm and stand. “I’ll send out the notes within the hour.”

“Carly.”

My grip tightens around the laptop. “Yes, Mr. Bennett?”

His mouth opens, then closes. Whatever he was about to say disappears, and I know why. Because I am standing in front of him, doing everything in my power to make sure the only thing he sees right now is his assistant. Not Carly. Not the woman from New York. Just Miss Michaels, with a laptop against her chest and meeting notes to send.

I give him a polite smile.

“Right,” he says in a cool tone, because Andrew Bennett is nothing if not good at reading a room. “Send me the notes when they’re ready, Miss Michaels.”

“Of course.”

By lunchtime,I have fixed two calendar issues, corrected one outdated attachment, redirected three people back to my inbox,and resisted the urge to walk into IT and staple Josh Stanton’s mouth shut.

So, a productive morning.

I’m sitting at my desk with my second cup of coffee, which is doing absolutely nothing except giving my anxiety a fun little drum solo, when I check my personal email for the fifth time in twenty minutes.

Still nothing from Atlas Development.

No missed call. No email. No polite little message saying:Hi Carly, we would love to rescue you from your current workplace hellscape and offer you a shiny new job where nobody thinks your primary skill set involves sexually servicing the CEO.

A ping from my inbox interrupts the fantasy.

This time, it’s from Communications, asking whether I have the latest Westbrook materials before they send the press package for approval. There are already three attachments in the thread, all labeled some variation of FINAL, because apparently no one in the history of office work has ever understood what that word means.

I open them side by side and immediately feel my soul leave my body.