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And there she was. Miss Enter Without Fucking Knocking.
She was carrying paperwork, so we had two seconds flat for Faith to jump away from me, and she did. She jumped right out of the way and put her attention on my monitor screen, breaths still ragged when Erica looked in our direction and narrowed her eyebrows.
“Have I interrupted something?” she asked in her bitchiest sneer, and I questioned all over again why the hell she was still working with me.
“Just an impromptu meeting,” I snapped. “None of your fucking business, in fact.”
“It’s always my fucking business,” she said. “This whole office is my fucking business, Miles, and so is that office junior over there.”
“You can head back to your desk now, Faith,” I said as calmly as possible. “Thanks for answering my questions.”
Her nod was so quick, and so were her footsteps as she shot out of there, casting me only one final glance before disappearing from the Tate glare in a heartbeat.
I wasted no time in getting down to my response.
“Faith is no fucking office junior,” I snapped. “Don’t you dare speak to her like one.”
“Oh, right,” she snapped back. “So she comes in bleating and whining and crying the victim to you, does she, and suddenly she’s no little office junior? She was laughing like a pathetic little high schooler, Miles. I pulled her up on it. So fucking what?”
I didn’t have a clue what she was talking about and my expression must have said as much.
“She didn’t come here playing the victim?” she asked. “Oh, please. Of course she did.”
“I don’t have the faintest fucking idea what you’re bleating on about,” I told her.
She pulled her favourite snide face. “This morning, out there in the corridor, she was laughing like a sad little moron and I told her in no uncertain terms that she should stop being one. I’m allowed to demand professionalism in the workplace, after all.”
“You criticised her this morning?” I asked. “She was laughing and you told her she shouldn’t?”
“Damn right I did. I told her to be a fucking professional and leave the stupid giggling for the school yard.”
And so it made sense. Faith feeling she’d let herself down in her work responsibilities somehow.
I got to my feet, and Erica was taken aback by the genuine fury in my face, I could see it. I could fucking feel it. She looked uncharacteristically uncertain. Not quite at her full sense of self-assured bullshit.
“Don’t you ever even dream of criticising that girl in this workplace again,” I snarled, and this wasn’t bluster, or a lack of patience or a ringing out of some clash of personalities.
This was the truth. This was a warning. This was me.
She was quiet for a few long seconds, staring dumb until I resumed my seat, and then she recoiled, full of empty bravado as she jabbed her finger in my direction,
“That girl has you wrapped around her little finger!” she sneered. “She’s playing you for a fucking fool, Miles, little princess perfect. What are you going to buy her next? A fucking yacht? A pony for her back yard?”
“It’s none of your fucking business what I buy her,” I said, wondering where the pissing hell she’d heard about the car purchase from.
“See if you’re still saying that when little miss gold digger has milked you dry like a total fool before heading off to uni.”
I laughed out loud at that. “Faith isn’t a gold digger, Erica. She’s just a talented young woman trying her best to learn the antiques trade.”
“Then you really are a fool, Miles,” she snapped and stormed back to the office door. “A serious fucking fool.”
“I meant what I said,” I assured her before she left. “If you criticise Faith in this workplace again, there will be some serious fucking words exchanged between us. Don’t risk finding out.”
I wasn’t fucking joking either, and she knew it. She really knew it.
She didn’t give me the finger when she left today, and it was just as well.
My Erica Tate tolerating days were fast reaching their end.
It’d been a long fucking time coming.Chapter Twenty-ThreeFaithHow the rest of the day at the office crawled by. I kept myself as busy as possible, and out of Erica’s way as much as possible, but still she scowled across at me every time she caught my eye.
She hated me. Truly. For whatever imaginary crimes I’d committed, she really did hate me.
Still, I didn’t care. I couldn’t care. My heart was soaring sky high and struggling to stay under wraps without me bursting like a crazy girl and running squealing around the office. I kept my breaths steady and my fingers busy at the keyboard and pushed myself to focus, and then, eventually, I was on my way home with a frantic call to Holly being put in en route.
