Telling herself that she’d be fine in the morning, she headed for her bureau and grabbed a tee shirt and a pair of panties. It took a few minutes, and a lot of squirming, but she finally managed to get dressed. Deciding that sleep was the answer, she glanced at her closed bedroom door before she managed to fall face-first on her bed. It took a few wiggles, groans, and hysterical sobs, but she finally succeeded in pulling the covers up.
With that done, she closed her eyes with a sigh only to snap them open again out of habit to make sure that the lights were still on and that there was no one standing by the side of her bed. Once she assured herself that everything was as it should be, she pulled her blankets up to her chin and reluctantly closed her eyes, doing her best not to think about all those things that she’d really rather not think about.
Chapter 10
“Good morning, Mr. O’Mallery,” the woman who he couldn’t figure out said with one of those forced smiles that he really fucking hated as she slowly, ever so fucking slowly, walked into the room and headed for the second treadmill.
As he watched Kylie try to climb onto the treadmill, he couldn’t help but think about everything that he’d learned about her last night after he’d taken a quick look into her background. At least now he knew why she’d taken this job. She was beyond fucking desperate. He also knew that she was twenty-seven, had been divorced for five years, separated for a year before that, had great references, had a decent bank account, and didn’t have a single emergency contact on file. It was more than he knew about any of his employees and should have been enough to satisfy his curiosity. But, as he stood there watching her while she struggled to raise her foot so that she could climb onto the treadmill, he realized something important.
He was beyond fucking intrigued.
“What are you doing?” Hunter asked when she gave up trying to raise her right foot, shifted awkwardly, closed her eyes and bit her lip with a wince, and he was guessing a silent prayer, as she tried to raise the left one.
“Nothing,” Kylie said weakly, as she opened her eyes and gave him another forced smile as she threw the treadmill a nervous look that clearly said it all.
“What did you eat after we worked out yesterday?” Hunter asked, already heading to the small refrigerator in the corner.
“Advil,” Kylie said, making his lips twitch as he grabbed a protein shake from the fridge and handed it to her.
“You need protein after a workout if you want to be able to move the next day,” Hunter explained only to sigh heavily and take the bottle back from her when it became obvious that she wasn’t going to be able to open it.
“Thank you,” she said with a shy smile as he handed it back to her.
“Go lay down before you pass out,” he reluctantly said, as he shifted his attention to his own treadmill, wondering how he was going to manage to get through another day of this bullshit sentence when movement from his right drew his attention.
“What the hell are you doing?” he couldn’t help but ask as he watched the woman who should be making her escape grab onto the treadmill and tried to pull herself onto it.
“Working,” Kylie said with that determined look in her eye that he was becoming familiar with as she dragged herself up and-
“How about we just have you going back to taking notes during the morning meeting?” Hunter suggested, wondering if he should pick her up only to shrug it off when she managed to roll off the treadmill with a pained groan and a mumbled, “Okay.”
*-*-*-*
April
Maybe she should see if he wanted something for lunch?
“Do your fucking job!”
Maybe not, Kylie decided with a sympathetic wince for whoever was on the other end of that phone call. Doing her best to ignore the large angry man pacing in front of her desk, she shifted her attention back to the email that she was supposed to be reading and resisted the urge to sigh as she deleted it since it was no longer relevant because that’s what she did.
Busy work.
That’s all she did, all day, every day, which was probably the reason why she was bored out of her mind. Every day was the same. She got up, told herself that today would be different, got dressed, grabbed her iPad, forced a smile on her face, and reminded herself that things could be worse as she wrote down all the tasks that he gave her to keep her busy and out of his way before she did it all over again the next day. Whenever she made the mistake of offering to do more, he leveled a glare in her direction and sent her out for more honey glazed soy nuts by a company that didn’t exist.
So, instead of doing the job that she’d been hired for, she was going through old emails and running the occasional errand when she should be helping him, making phone calls, and doing anything and everything that he needed help with to ensure that his business was running smoothly. Instead, Kylie was sitting here, looking through old emails and doing her best to pretend that she didn’t see the large stack of files on the coffee table that had her boss reducing another unfortunate soul to tears over.
“You didn’t send the file!” Hunter snapped, barely sparing a glance at the stack of files that she would love to get her hands on, but unfortunately for her, it just wasn’t meant to be. With that depressing thought in mind, she deleted the next email and decided to grab something for lunch before she moved onto the next batch of sexually explicit emails meant to entice her boss into becoming someone’s sugar daddy.
“You didn’t send the fucking Rerum Corp file over!” Hunter snapped angrily as he stormed back her way right around the time that she decided to take the scenic route back around the desk, through the sitting area and past that stack of files where she came to a stop.
“Find the fucking file or find a new job!”
Deciding that she’d rather spend the next four hours hitting grocery stores looking for phantom nuts instead of listening to him yell, Kylie knelt down by the coffee table, and quickly searched through the stack of files until she found the file that he was looking for. Once she pulled it out, she quickly headed towards the nearest exit, pressing the file into Hunter’s hand as she made her escape and quickly made her way to the kitchen. When he didn’t yell for her to come back, Kylie decided that she had time for a quick bite. After she whipped herself up a sandwich, she grabbed a bowl of grapes, and after a slight hesitation, she grabbed another plate and made him a sandwich, because even though he was an asshole, he actually wasn’t that bad.
In the past five years, she’d had six different bosses who’d treated her like crap, talked down to her, snapped at her, and went out of their way to make her life a living hell simply because they could. They’d never succeeded, but not for a lack of trying. They simply didn’t have what it took. Hunter O’Mallery on the other hand…
Could very easily make her life a living hell thanks to that contract that she couldn’t figure a way out of, but so far, the only horrible thing that he’d done to her was make her get up before the crack of dawn, exercise, and fill her day with boring, repetitive busywork to keep her out of his hair. This probably wouldn’t end up being her favorite memory, but it sure as hell wouldn’t be her worst. Realizing where her thoughts were heading, she forced herself to focus on making lunch.