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Donna brings out a key and opens the door to the office marked Carolyn Hughes, her maiden name which she told me she’ll change when she gets married to the lovely Tom in early July.
Her office door opens to floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking one of the quieter streets in this district. The room is spacious, its walls painted a warm taupe, the furniture, mostly glass, dark wood and steel, elegant. A few plants are dotted around and a painting of a meadow filled with wildflowers hangs opposite her large frosted-glass desk.
“Carrie’s tidied it up and locked the important stuff away, so you have some space.”
“Okay, thanks.”
I take Carrie’s black suit jacket off me and hang it on the hook on the door, glancing down at my shiny short-sleeved cream blouse, the likes of which I haven’t seen myself in since once performing the role of Annie at a school play in fifth grade.
She takes her clipboard out from under her arm, handing it to me. “This is our standard NDA. Are you okay to sign it before we start?”
An NDA? To temp for a week?
I scan the page, not exactly sure if there are any huge red flags, but I unclip the pen and sign it anyway, handing it back to her.
“Thank you, Indigo. Do you know what you’ll be doing here?” Donna asks, her perfectly coiffed curls bouncing as she talks.
“Um, honestly, no.”
“No worries. The boss’ll explain it to you. He told me you’ll be working with him all day anyway.”
“Okay.”
Carrie mentioned her boss to me—some mysterious brooding type, the son of the company owner. Apparently, he never talks about his private life and based on the way she raves about the effect he has on her and every other woman in the office, I’m fairly sure that if it weren’t for Tom, she’d have a major crush on the guy.
Personally, after my run-ins with Greyson Everitt this weekend, I think I’ve had my fill of the sullen unreadable types, but I’ll make it work.
A week of discomfort in exchange for a three-month emergency fund—I’ll happily grin and bear every minute of it.
“In fact,” she adds, glancing down at her smartwatch, “he wants you right now.” She hands me a key. “For this office. Make sure you hold onto that.”
I tuck it into a pocket inside my phone case.
“You can keep your stuff in here, just lock the door afterwards. We have cameras down the corridors. Haven’t had a theft here in almost a year, so it’s all safe.”
I drop my purse onto Carrie’s chair and leave, locking the door and following Donna down one corridor to the right, and then down another.
As we approach the large glass wall of a humungous meeting room and voices drift through the space, my heartrate inexplicably spikes and my mouth feels like I mistook my morning oatmeal for sawdust.
My steps falter as I enter the room, my feet not wanting to advance but doing it anyway as I slowly walk towards the long mahogany table, at which sit four men… including one I already know.
Holy fucking shit.
As the man I know gets to his feet, I contemplate my options, running for the door being by far the most appealing of them right now.
Donna walks us all the way round to the far side of the table near where he’s sitting.
“Indigo, this is Greyson Everitt, one of our senior directors. You’ll be working with him all week.”
“Greyson, this is Indigo—” She turns to me. “Sorry, I forgot your last name.”
My surname emerges, not from my mouth, but from Greyson Fucking Everitt’s.
“Nilsson.”
I feel the tremor of my breath in my chest, both at the fact that this man is going to my boss for the next week, and at the fact the he knew my legal name.
I did not give it to him. That much I’m sure of.
