“I’d like to speak to Mr. Stark. It’s urgent.” The voice sounded angry.
“Of course, please wait a moment while I put you through.” FUCK! I looked down at the buttons. How exactly did I direct a call? I looked up at his office; he was still staring at me in a way that made my blood run cold.
I looked back down at the phone and started pressing buttons randomly. Crap! I was screwing up, and he knew it. The way he was shooting deadly laser beams out of his eyes at me right now made me want to burst into tears. I looked down at the phone cord, it was long, and without a second thought, I jumped up and started pulling it into his office. Maybe it would reach him? But it stoppedjustshort of the door. I looked at the cord attached to the receiver, the curled part, and without thinking I threw the receiver over my shoulder and started stretching out the tightly wound cord, careful not to break it. Finally, after what felt like hours of bloody pulling and stretching, the phone reached him by mere centimeters.
“Here we go . . .” I quickly passed him the receiver and then almost tripped over the phone cord on the way back out of his office. It was stretched to capacity and any sudden movements would probably send it flying across the room, like a bungee rope. I sat back down at my desk. I was shaking and he was watching me with an expression that I couldn’t read. But it scared me. And then he started talking and finally looked away.
I bit my bottom lip as I felt the tears well up. The last thing I needed to do now was cry, so I got up and raced to the bathroom in an attempt to get a grip on my now very turbulent emotions. I didn’t know how long I’d been in the bathroom, but the second I came out, I knew it had been too long. He was now standing in his office doorway, eyes fixed on my empty desk.
“Sorry, I just needed to . . .” I didn’t finish the sentence as I ran back to my desk and sat down.
“Please keep your restroom visits as short as possible. I don’t want you to miss any important calls—which is all of them, by the way.”
“Of course.” I nodded and tried not to fiddle with my hands, I still remembered the look of disdain he’d given me over that. God, this man was a dragon. All he needed to do now was breathe bloody fire and the picture would be complete.
“You put calls through like this.” He walked over to my desk and pressed some buttons. “And if you need me, please don’t knock on my door or come into my office, dial 124, that’s my extension.”
I nodded. “Of course. I’ll do that.” I forced myself to look up at him. “Uh, um, I would really like to know, if you have time, of course, I know you are a very, very busy man with all the important things you do, uh, but I would really like to, uh, uh . . .”
“Stop stuttering, Miss Granger!” His harsh tone made me shudder. “If you have something to ask me, come out and say it.”
“Okay. What exactly are my responsibilities here?” The words shot out of my mouth.
“I’m glad you asked. Come into my office in ten minutes. Bring a notepad.” He walked back to his office but paused before going in. “And please, go easy on the perfume. I can barely breathe in here!”
I nodded at him and forced a smile. Working for this man was clearly going to be hell on earth! Mind you, I had worked for worse. When Santiago’s evil twin, Ignacio, had come back from the Amazon rainforest and taken over as CEO, he’d killed me.
Oh dear Lord, I hope this man wasn’t capable of such things? But who knew with Ryan Stark? A few of his staff had looked up when he’d walked out of the office and looked back down quickly, as if they were all genuinely frightened of him.
I got that.Iwas frightened of him.
CHAPTERTWELVE
Ryan
He’d had to look away after she’d brought the phone into his office, or she would have seen him smile, which would have been very unfortunate. It was common practicenotto tell his new employees what to do. He liked watching them suffer and squirm and seeing how they would react to situations—you can tell a lot about a person when you throw them into the deep end. Sink or swim. And he always looked forward to the first call and the confusion and panic that followed. But today he’d been surprised.
No one had ever thought to get out of their chair and bring the phone directly to him. Most of them sat pressing buttons randomly until it drove him nuts. Others crept into his office and asked him what to do, and some buckled under his death stare and burst into tears when they couldn’t put the call through. But not her. She’d come up with a unique solution. Not one he ever wanted to see repeated, but nonetheless, it had been unique, even though the phone cord was now permanently damaged and stretched.
He watched his clock like a hawk to see if she was also punctual. He watched the second hand as it ticked its way up to ten minutes and just as the second hand reached 9 minutes 55 seconds, she knocked on the door.
“Come in,” he barked loudly. He looked up at her hands to see what she’d brought to write on. There were no notebooks in the office, another little one of his tests. He hated it when they came into his office with scraps of paper and once, one of them had even written on her hand. It had washed off when she went to the bathroom, and she’d forgotten absolutely everything he’d told her. He’d had to fire her. But not Doris Granger. She was carrying a small bunch of papers that she’d stapled together on the side. On the front, he could clearly read that she’d written “Notebook.”
“Sit.” He gestured. “You were asking what your responsibilities were.” He watched her as she laid the makeshift notebook on his table and took out a very sharpened pencil, letting it hover just above the page.
“Yes.” She looked up at him through her cracked glasses. They irritated the hell out of him. How could she even see through them? Maybe she should get new glasses altogether because these big, purple-framed things that she was currently wearing looked like they’d been fished out of a box at a garage sale. Not to mention that they totally obscured her entire face, they were that big.
“Ready,” she said, sounding confident, even though he could see her hand was shaking.
In his experience, it was always better for his staff to be scared of him: that way no friendships—or other things—developed. It was safer that way. Many years ago he’d made the terrible mistake of mixing business with pleasure, and that had ended very badly for him. He’d walked away with a broken heart and a seriously tarnished reputation, and she had walked away with his business partner. Office romances, friendships even, never worked. He had proof of that. Never cross that professional line.
“Right,” he said, turning his attention back to the strange woman sitting in front of him. “You need to answer all my calls, obviously. I have a diary, you have access to it on your computer, and you need to keep it up to date with all my meetings. Do you have any idea how important my meetings are, Miss Granger?”
“Um . . . very?” she replied.
“Very is an understatement. If I don’t attend certain meetings, this company could lose millions. And I would hate to have to deduct that from your salary.”
Her eyes widened at that. “No. Millions. Of course. I understand.” She looked back down at her notepad and wrote:
