Which meant that what I said went. When I made a decision, I expected my employees to follow it, no matter what their personal opinions on the subject were.
Which was why it surprised me, so when Sarah strode back into my office, not ten minutes after, I’d given her the marching orders and slammed the binder back down on my desk.
“Do you really think it’s okay to just walk out the door after ordering me to do something like that?” She demanded, glaring down at me with bold blue eyes.
“Uh, yes?” I replied, a little confused. “I’m the boss, after all. Isn’t that how it works?”
“Oh my God, you’re one of those!” She gasped, spinning around angrily. She came full circle before she made eye contact with me again, and I was left a little confused as to why she’d just spun around in the first place. But then again, I supposed I should be used to the often strange things she did by now.
“One of what?” I responded curiously.
“One of those bosses who acts like his word is the Bible or something,” she spat, pointing an accusatory finger at me. “I don’t want to go pay off your ex-girlfriend and make her stop spewing gossip about you in the press, alright?”
I could see this was her breaking point, so I decided now would be a good time to appease her. I didn’t want her to decide to quit right then and there over something like this.
“Okay, fine, you don’t have to do it,” I said quietly.
“I— wait, I don’t?” Clearly, that was not what she had been expecting me to say.
“Nope,” I shook my head. “Now, would you mind going to find your desk and getting to work? You’ve got a lot of reading to get through today.”
I glanced away from her and back to my computer, where I had about a thousand emails from the construction company sitting. I knew my mood had shifted- I could feel it- and I knew that Sarah was thrown off by it, but I didn’t have the energy to try and explain it all to her.
The very thought of Nicki just pissed me off. I couldn’t believe she’d had the gall to do what she was doing right now.
Sarah stared at me for another long second before she finally backpedaled and made her way out of the office, shaking her head and muttering under her breath as she went.
The moment she was gone, I clicked out of my email and back to the YouTube clip I’d been watching.
It was another lovely broadcast from TMZ all about my supposed baby mama drama. I could not wait until they found out the truth.
A few hours later, Sarah was finished with her reading, and I was forcing Francesca to show her around and teach her the ropes. Truth be told, I hadn’t even come up with an official position for her just yet, since she couldn’t be a full-time accountant here without drawing far too many questions. So instead, I decided that she was going to be the all-around office assistant, which meant she would not only be dealing with me but the rest of the office as well.
All that talk of Nicki had completely thrown off my day. I was even more infuriated because I’d thought I was going to spend time with Sarah during all of this and make an attempt to get to know her and see where the two of us might lie together.
But that wasn’t working out the way I’d hoped. Instead, I was stuck trying to write a check to Nicki without feeling like I was going to throw up every time I added another zero on the end of it.
So far, it had three zeroes. And I knew Nicki.
She wouldn’t take anything less than five.
“And after you’ve brewed a fresh pot of coffee, you need to come over here to check all of the waste bins,” Francesca’s slightly nasally voice floated by as she continued to give Sarah the grand tour.
I’d hired the woman to be the face of my office back when I was still very much a playboy. And despite the fact that I could still appreciate the perfections of a woman’s body, I no longer saw the need to have the world’s most beautiful woman sitting in the front of my office for every new client.
Especially since many of them in San Francisco were single women, and I doubted Francesca presented quite the same level of appeal to them.
“I’m sorry, but shouldn’t that be the janitor’s job?” The hint of annoyance in Sarah’s voice had me choking back a laugh. I hardly knew her, but I could already imagine that she was scrunching up her thin, high nose and tilting her head in a way that was meant to be innocently curious but could often come off as annoyed and calculated.
I didn’t think she ever meant it like that, though. She was nothing like the Botoxed, gold-digging women I used to run around with. She wasn’t quite so underhanded.
“We don’t have a janitor for during the day,” Francesca replied. “It used to be my job, but since you’re the new girl around here, I figure I should probably pass you the torch.”
“Gee, thanks.”
I don’t know what it was about that moment. Maybe the sound of Sarah’s voice floating in through my partially open office door, or the view of those three little zeros sitting on my check, waiting for company, or maybe even the combination of both of them happening at once.
All I knew was that I needed to get out of there. What I would have liked to do, get on my private jet and fly off somewhere fabulous, like Bora Bora or Hawaii, I couldn’t exactly do right then. I had too many clients to speak with and too many contractors to holler at.
But there was one thing I could do, and that was get the hell out of that office.
I sprang from my seat and grabbed the pressed, navy blue jacket from the back of my seat, marching out into the main part of the office, where Sarah was now bent over a waste bin wrestling with the little plastic trash bag while Francesca sat on her phone, her fake pink nails tapping away as she typed out a rather rapid text.
Every single agent looked up, staring at me over the tip of their fancy Macbooks, eyes wide.
I hardly ever got up from my office in the middle of the day like this.
Sarah was the only person who didn’t seem to notice, in fact. That ticked me off just a little bit, but not because I was the sort of man who felt the need to be noticed at all times.
It was because I wanted to be noticed by Sarah.
I cleared my throat, glancing around as she looked up, making sure it didn’t appear as if I was actually waiting for her.
“Yeah?” She asked, slightly breathless from her little tiff with the plastic garbage bag.
“I need you to come with me.”
The words were out of my mouth before I could recognize how harsh they sounded, and I instantly inwardly kicked myself as her blue eyes narrowed and her face went hard. Here I was, trying to make her feel included, and I was doing nothing but pissing her off.
“Can I finish this?” She asked, trying as hard as she possibly could to inject a little bit of kindness into her voice.
It didn’t work.
“Francesca can do it,” I replied. “Follow me.”
God, I had to be the most emotionally awkward man on the planet. Before I knew it, I was off, racing across the room and toward the elevator like my life depended on it.
Sarah’s footsteps came after me, and I pretended like I didn’t hear the annoyance in them.
“Where are we going?” She asked, coming to a stop in front of the elevator, arms crossed.
“To one of my developments,” I replied. “You need to learn some things.”