Page 18 of Mr. Perfect

Good luck in all your future—

Oh, hell, no. She can’t leave now. Two weeks? Where the hell will I find someone to replace her in two weeks? She’s not even part of a department. She has no real underlings. She has no interns, or shadows, or counterparts.

And I just gave her a fucking promotion this morning! Before I even started playing these silly phone games with her.

I stand up and pull my jacket on, striding out of my office. Almost everyone is gone as I get in the elevator and take it down to the garage level. Fuck the train. Everyone is on the train right now. I’ll catch a golf cart over to the hangar.

No one is there to help me find a key, and they are all locked up tight, so I push through a door and start jogging. The airport is not really ours. Not technically. We rent a hangar just off the south end of the municipal airport where all the private jets fly into for Tech Center business. So it’s quite a distance from the Atrium to the tarmac.

Fifteen minutes later I burst into the empty hangar and see that little office lit up by a single lightbulb in the far west corner.

Ellie Hatcher is in there packing up her things.

I shove the door open, out of breath, sweating like I just came from the gym, and pissed as hell. “What are you doing?”

“Excuse me?” Pearl Button says. She’s not wearing a pearl-button sweater. Still the same kimono silk shirt from this morning. In fact, I can, now that I look, see that she has no bra on. Her nipples are pushing against the thin fabric.

“I just got off the phone with Andrew Manco. He’s upset that you’re leaving. I thought we had worked this out?”

“When would we have done that? Before or after you had me on my knees in front of your cock?”

I put a hand up. “I didn’t have you do anything.”

“No? You didn’t stick your tongue down my throat, open my blouse, rip my bra off, and then stick your fingers inside my pussy? Was I dreaming it? Because I have to tell you, that’s quite a fantasy I had.”

Jesus Christ. The second I hear ‘pussy’ come from those sweet lips I get hard. I clear my throat. “I gave you a promotion this morning, Miss Hatcher.”

“To what? Stairwell dick-sucker?”

“Stop that!” I say.

“Stop what?”

“Talking dirty! I can’t fucking take it.”

“Whatever.” She sighs. “I’m leaving.” She packs up one small box of personal items and walks towards me. “Flip that light off when you’re done here, will you?”

I take the box from her hands and set it down on a bookshelf next to me. “Eloise—”

“Ellie,” she corrects.

“Look, I’m sorry I humiliated you this morning. I was just having fun, OK? I didn’t think you’d take it this hard, and I’m sorry.”

“It’s not about you,” Ellie says, waving an envelope in my face.

I snatch it out of her and read the front. “Mr. Alexander Stonewall, corporate office? What the hell is this?”

“My formal resignation to your father. I figure I owe him something in writing after seven years.” She snatches the letter back and crosses her arms across her chest.

“You’re not sending that letter. You’re not quitting,” I say, more determined than the last time I said it.

“It’s done, Stonewall. Get over it.” I try to snatch the letter back, but she darts aside. “Who do you think you are?”

“Your boss,” I snarl. “That’s who. And I’m telling you, you’re not allowed to just quit and leave us hanging like this. Two weeks isn’t enough time to get a grip on what you do here. I need all your contacts, all your schedules, all your—”

“How dare you accuse me of trying to steal corporate property!”

“Give me the letter.” I reach for it again, but she skirts out of my reach, this time running around to the other side of her industrial-sized metal desk. “You want to play chase, Miss Hatcher?”