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She stopped shaking my hand and smiled broadly. I couldn't tell if it was sincere or not, but it was certainly dazzling.
“Let me give you the tour,” she purred. I followed her stiletto heels like a puppy dog.
The facilities were incredible. Of course everything was expensive, I had expected that, but they weren't just showily expensive for touring stockholders. It was a treasure trove of up-to-date, genuinely impressive lab equipment.
The Space Division of ExploreR was not just working on targeting systems and astrophysics, which was my area of expertise. They were also exploring material science, safety technology, and even food. I was intrigued when Anya showed me the culinary lab. It was as if a five-star kitchen and my lab at university had had a baby: microscopes next to pipette-sized basters.
I must've looked through the window like a hungry wolf, because Anya smiled her possibly-fake, but undeniably beautiful smile and led me into the kitchen. We donned plastic gloves and hairnets, which made her look like a punk rocker in a music video, while I looked like a frumpy lunch lady. She gestured grandly around the room, giving her perfect tour-guide summary. She'd done something similar in all the other labs.
Her kitty-cat purr-fect voice rolled out, “Space travel poses an interesting culinary question. How do we get the most nutrition into the tastiest, longest-lasting package? Rob Michaels started the culinary science subdivision, because he believes it is only a matter of time before comfort and luxury are what differentiates the companies that provide space-travel services. He likes to quip, 'Just because you're a space-man, you're still human.'”
The chefs let me sample the food. The lead scientist/head chef was a beautiful woman. She looked like a curvy, darker-skinned Halle Berry, with beautiful cheeks and laughing eyes.
Was this entire company run by hot women? She personally fed me cheesecake, to be friendly, and I almost choked on the deliciousness and the bird's-eye view of her cleavage that this afforded me.
I was not staying composed. It was hard to feel composed around Anya.
We disposed of our hygiene gear and left the kitchen, and she offered to escort me back to my office. I was grateful.
I realized how rude I was and asked her, “What do you do, anyway?”
“I'm VP of Public Relations,” she did not smile, surprisingly enough, as she told me this.
“That must be a difficult job, with Rob Michaels putting his hands in every cookie jar he can get to,” I laughed.
I noticed how very Russian she looked when she was not smiling.
“What do you mean?” she asked. I felt as if I was in a jail cell with a bright light in my eyes: interrogation time.
I stammered like a dunce, and then finally said, “Everybody knows Rob Michaels's reputation, right? He's Silicon Valley's #1 player. MVP. He's probably made a pass at you, already.”
I was about to say How could he not? But I didn't feel like getting fired on my first day for sexual harassment.
Outside of my office door, Anya stopped and looked me in the eyes very sternly; a cruel nun about to discipline a child. I threw the image out of my head.
Anya spoke slowly, but firmly and with conviction, “Whatever Rob Michaels does in his off-time, of which there is very, very little, he never allows it to interfere with his responsibility to this company. Maybe he has had a few indiscretions outside of this building, but he has never disrespected an employee. He recognizes a woman's value, not as a woman or an object, but as a mind. At least, he does for the women with whom he works,” she slightly modified it, careful not to speak outside the truth.
She stared at me for a hard moment and then said, “It is an example the rest of us would do well to follow.”
I blushed, damn it all.
Which of my mental “indiscretions” had she sensed? My lecherous reaction to their genius head chef? My childish crush and already irrepressible fantasies about her?
Or maybe, the worst one of all, the lingering feeling of Rob Michaels's hand gripped around mine, broken glass glittering in the background, and his eyes shining with something I couldn't place?
