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"What about it? I asked you to handle that."
Asked? He hadn't asked for anything. Hannah took a deep breath and refused to let herself get any more frustrated. "Yes, Mr. Michaels," she began in a voice that sounded much like her mother's when she was a child and kept asking things of her when she was obviously otherwise occupied- patient, yet irritated. "But you did not specify how often said housekeeper was to be employed, how much you will offer as a salary, and if you wanted me to do the interviews or line them up for you to do yourself."
"Indeed? Have I been so negligent?" he asked, taking his eyes off his paperwork and looking directly at her. She fought the urge to squirm under the discomfort of his striking blue eyes. "I need a housekeeper three days a week for as long as it takes her to clean the house. The salary will be two-hundred dollars a day, flat rate regardless of how long it takes to make the house immaculate," he paused, seeming to debate something in his head. "You will line them up and interview them and, ultimately, will have the job of terminating them if they do not live up to my standards. Am I clear?"
"Abundantly," she said, her voice dry as chalk.
He liked that quality of hers; how she could make one agreeable word sound like a battle cry of mutiny. Somehow he knew she would do the job and do it well just so she could shove it in his face that she knew what she was doing and did not need to be talked down to. He wouldn't be surprised if this new housekeeper was the most qualified, fastidious, and diligent housekeeper he, or anyone else, had ever had.
"Is there anything else?" she asked when he was silent for a moment.
"My schedule..."
"Will be ready at a quarter to five," she interrupted, backing toward the door.
He made his usual grunting noise and she quickly left the room.
She would work out nicely.
--
She dropped down onto the edge of Tad's desk, closing her eyes and rubbing the lids with more pressure than was comfortable. She could feel a headache forming.
"Hang in there, kid," Tad said, hanging up the phone and starting to tidy his desk. "The first day is always the worst. Between me and you, on my lunch break my first day, I snuck into the bathroom stall and cried for twenty minutes straight. Then, when I got home, I cried myself to sleep." He smiled, revealing one overly pointed eye tooth. "I know that doesn't sound promising, but you really do start to like it here after a while."
"I don't see how," she mumbled, annoyed at herself that her voice sounded whiny.
"He pushes you," Tad said, smiling at their boss's closed door. "He makes you realize how much you really are capable of doing." He patted her leg, a little too high up on the thigh and, if it had been any other man, it would have been vastly inappropriate. "You will surprise yourself. Besides," he grinned, a absurd glint in his eyes, "he is really yummy to look at."
"Oh, please," Hannah scoffed, rolling her eyes childishly.
"Now be honest," Tad laughed, "you can't tell me you haven't noticed! That's not even possible."
"He's old," Hannah came back, not wanting to admit he was good-looking, but not wanting to lie either.
"He'solder," Tad corrected. "Age recommends a man. They have been around the block a time or two."
Hannah rose from the desk, picking up the part of the schedule Tad had compiled for her, then leaning down over Tad's shoulder and saying, "Now you tell me. Which would you rather buy... a shiny new car or one with a hundred-thousand miles on it?"
Tad's laugh followed her all the way to the copy machine. "Don't you worry, Hannah-Banana, you might just make it after all!"
Hannah leaned out of the copy room, lifted an invisible hat off her head and threw it in the air.
She had barely been able to get all the schedules from the secretaries as they scrambled to get everything squared away before the end of the workday. The entire staff practically ran out the door at five, leaving the floor hauntingly empty.
Hannah sat there alone, the lights dimmed to ease the headache that was now banging behind her eyes. She was at Tad's long-abandoned desk, balancing Mr. Michaels' checkbook. He had sprung the task on her last minute just when she was about to breathe a sigh of relief at the thought of being able to go home.
Who even balanced their checkbooks anymore?
The only good thing was she hadn't seen him in over an hour. He had been sitting in his closed office and the only sign that he was even still there was the blinking light on the phone panel suggesting the use of his private line.
Hannah tapped on the calculator she had to go down three floors to find, lifting up one credit card receipt after another. It was amazing that one man could do so much damage to his bank account in a single week when he never seemed to leave the office except for the occasional business meeting. She filled out the spreadsheet, humming quietly to herself to ease her frayed nerves. She had the sneaking suspicion he had given her this job to do just to mess with her. Maybe he was trying to make her break. As much as she would have loved nothing more than to go and throw them in his face, her pride made her accept the work with a smile even though it was already well past seven PM and she still hadn't had a chance to eat anything.
She never even heard the door open. She jumped a few inches and yelped when she heard him ask, "What are you doing sitting at Tad's desk?"
"I... er... um... wasn't assigned a desk of my own. That could have something to do with it," she replied, not caring how surly her voice sounded. She was exhausted and all she wanted to do was pile the receipts into a envelope and be done with the day.
Elliott's eyebrow raised a little as he realized, for the first time, that perhaps his office staff wasn't as loyal as he had thought. Someone was trying to make her day even harder than it had to be. He wasn't happy about it. "Sally should have shown you your office this morning," he informed her, a slight annoyance creeping into his usually tempered voice.
