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What in the blazes was happening to him? He, a thirty year old man, was acting like a lovesick schoolboy. He sighed and rubbed his eyes. Somehow he had to fight this attraction to her. Richard Van Buren had trusted him with his daughter and he could not afford to jeopardize their relationship.
Roman was still sitting at his desk, staring out the window, when there was a knock at the door. Serena peeped in and he felt his heart tighten in his chest.
“What are you doing here?” His voice was sharper than he’d intended.
“It’s almost six o’clock. I thought you were gone already.” She stepped inside the room and pulled the door shut behind her. She looked just as fresh as she had first thing in the morning. If anything, she looked even more fetching right at this moment. She stood there looking so beautiful it was annoying. “I’m still here because of the work you gave me which you said you absolutely had to have first thing in the morning. I was going to leave it on your desk. ” She held out a folder as she approached.
He reached out and took it from her but did not bother to open it. Instead, he continued to stare at her in silence until she began to look uncomfortable and averted her eyes.
“It doesn’t matter that I stayed behind to finish it,” she continued, seeming to want to fill the silence. “It’s not like I’m rushing home to do anything special. I’ll probably just go home and watch TV.”
“What? No shopping at the mall? No partying in the evenings? I thought girls like you spent the evenings partying or hanging out with friends.”
“I don’t go out partying.” Her tone was cold and he could see the anger flash in her eyes but then her shoulders drooped almost imperceptibly. “And my best friends have both gone to Europe for the summer so I’m alone.”
“They can’t be all gone to Europe. Don’t you have other friends around here?”
She shook her head. “No, I don’t have many friends.”
“Why am I not surprised?” Roman said dryly.
Serena glared at him then said, “Well, you have your report. If you don’t need me for anything else I’ll be leaving.” Without waiting for his reply she turned and stalked out of the office, closing the door smartly behind her.
******
When Serena got home she flung herself into the sofa and turned on the television. She was still smarting from Roman’s comment about not being surprised that she didn’t have lots of friends. How dare he insinuate that she was unlikable? She gritted her teeth and frowned at the television screen, her mind racing to find ways to make him pay for that comment.
Maybe she could kidnap him and torture him by pulling out the hairs on his chest. Strand by strand. She smiled with mischief at the thought of watching him squirm then her heart jerked as she pictured her fingers caressing his torso. She had no idea whether or not Roman had hair on his chest but he just seemed like the type of man who would. She bit her lip and tried to concentrate on the news report of some flooding in Florida but her mind would not let go of the dark haired Adonis who made her heart thump.
Her mood finally lightened when America’s Funniest Videos came on. She laughed out loud when a minister’s robe caught on fire and he had to rip it off in front of the congregation. She was still chuckling when the television show went to a commercial break and she used the opportunity to get a drink of water from the kitchen. She took a bottle from the fridge and was turning to head back to the living room when she saw the stack of mail she’d left on the counter. She’d forgotten about that. She picked them up and took them back to the couch with her then sat back down just in time to see a toddler swing a baseball bat at his father’s groin. She shook her head and groaned in sympathy. That must have hurt.
She began opening mail as she watched the show, separating them into two piles. The one with junk mail was a lot bigger than the one with her real mail. In fact, she’d received only two real pieces of mail, both of which were bills. The first was for her cell phone. Four hundred and ninety-two dollars. She sighed. Not exactly what she needed now that she was on a limited budget.
She sat up straight, however, when she opened the second envelope. It was her credit card bill and it was a whole lot higher than she’d anticipated. She was only two hundred and sixty-five dollars away from reaching her twenty thousand dollar limit. Now where in the world was she going to get the money to pay off all of that? With the allowance her father used to give her it had never been a problem. In fact, she’d never had to worry about paying her own credit card bills before now. This time, though, she had nothing to fall back on except for the measly salary that she would receive a whole two weeks from now. Her credit card payment was due by the end of the month. And she couldn’t get money from her other credit cards to pay this one. The other two were all maxed out.
Her mood swung back to depression. There was no way she was going to survive for six months like this on the salary of an entry level management trainee. The fact that her father was paying for this apartment was a big help but it still left her in a hole because, by the time she paid her phone bill, bought food and gas, visited a few restaurants and put away money for miscellaneous spending, she’d be broke. And, of course, she had to do some shopping. It was her only emotional outlet.
Serena looked at the phone then back at the television. She was itching to call her father and plead with him to just forget this whole thing about her working. She wanted her old life back. She reached for the phone then pulled back her hand. It irked her to have to go crawling back to him but she didn’t know what else to do. Finally she decided to call. Desperate times called for desperate measures, they said. There was no way she was going to survive without any credit cards at all so she had no choice but to call.
But the conversation didn’t go as well as Serena had hoped. In fact, it was a disaster.
“Why haven’t you returned my calls,” was her father’s first response to her greeting. “I was planning to come over there just to see if you were alright. The least you could do is call your dad once in a while.” He sounded both annoyed and relieved.
“I’ve just been busy, Dad. I don’t get home till late evening and by the time I get here, I’m beat. I always plan to call you but then I fall asleep before I get a chance.”
“That’s no excuse. You have a cell phone. You can call me during the daytime. And I’m sure Roman wouldn’t kill you if you called me from the office.”
“Okay,” she said with a sigh, “I’ll do that.” She paused then before she could change her mind she blurted out, “Dad, why don’t we call this whole thing off? It’s not working out for me. I’ve got bills piling up and I don’t get paid for another two weeks.”
“What kinds of bills? I pay for your apartment and that includes your utilities. All you have to worry about is your food.”
“Yes,” she said slowly, “and my credit card bills.”
“I paid off all your credit card bills two months ago. Even though you maxed them all out at the same time I made sure all your balances were paid up. That’s almost thirty thousand dollars. Have you maxed them out again in such a short time?”
Serena bit her lip. “I guess I have,” she said, her voice soft and defeated. Then she added quickly, “But it’s just because it was graduation time and I had to do a lot of shopping. I had to go to the graduation ball and the ceremony looking good, didn’t I?”
“I guess so,” her father said, “but you didn’t have to shop at Prada for all your stuff.”
“But I didn’t,” she began to protest then stopped. She decided to change her tone. “Daddy, seeing that things are so tight for me, do you think I can start getting my allowance again? I need to pay off some of these bills.”
“Serena,” he began in the tone he used when scolding, “you know our agreement. No allowance for six months. You have to learn to live on a budget and manage on your salary. How do you expect to run this business when I’m gone if you can’t even run your own life? This pampering has got to stop. Spoiling you with hefty allowances and clearing off your credit card balance from shopping sprees is no way to prepare you for the world.” He sighed heavily. “I know it’s hard on you and I hate doing this but it’s for your own good.”
“So you’re not going to give me my allowance back?”
“No, I’m not.”
“Well, will you at least pay part of the credit card bills?”
“I’m sorry. I can’t.”
“This is so not fair,” Serena said bitterly. “You’re my dad. Why are you treating me like this?”
“You’re no longer a child, Serena. You need to start accepting responsibility and taking charge of your own life.”
“But all I asked for was-“
“That’s enough. I’m already helping you by paying for the apartment. Your monthly salary is all you have to work with so start working on a budget.”
