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“Yes, I understand that,” she said, her voice noticeably slowing. “I do know how to do my job.” She stood up. “Thank you for meeting with me this morning.”
“Well, you didn’t give me much of a choice,” I said, standing and giving her a tight smile.
She gathered the papers on my desk and shoved them back into her messenger bag, tossing it over her shoulder.
“There are some other people Minnie mentioned she would like me to meet, and then I need to get started. Your presence needs a tremendous amount of work and improvement. I’ve got my work cut out for me,” she said.
I watched her leave, noting the sway of her hips as she walked, and wondered how in fresh hell this was going to work. Merry didn’t choose her words lightly, and the way she threw my mother’s name out there was like drawing a line in the sand. She wanted to make sure I knew she was already familiar with my mother and they were on the same team, like she had gotten Mom’s approval, so she wasn’t as concerned with what I thought of her. So not only was she beautiful, confident, and sexy, making it hard enough to think about working around her, but she talked to me like I was disconnected from the world and had an attitude about it. This was going to be delightful.
I needed to have a few words with my mother. Not even bothering to turn my computer on, I left my office to find Mom. My first stop was her office, and I half expected to find Merry already there. But I didn’t. In fact, I didn’t find either of them. Her office was dark, the door closed. Next, I tried the breakroom, but it, too, was empty. Mysteriously, she was missing from every place I searched for her, and I wondered if she had already gotten wind I was on my way and planned on ducking me for the day.
4
Merry
I had to commend myself for my mature and professional behavior. I managed to get all the way through that infuriating and condescending conversation with Quentin Freeman without so much as pointing out the various ways he was proving himself to be an arrogant, insufferable jackass, or telling him exactly what bridge he could jump off. It seemed like a victory to me. As it was, I walked away from the office with my hands clenched into fists so tightly my fingernails cut into my palms and made me wish I hadn’t bothered to go into the salon the week before the interview to top off my professional look with a set of acrylics. It wasn’t like I needed them for the position, anyway.
I made it all the way out of the building and into the fresh air of the morning before letting out an exasperated sound that was just a little bit too close to a growl. My grandmother went to a lot of effort when I was young to teach me how to be a lady. While the idea of growling at people in public wasn’t specifically mentioned, I was fairly certain it was an unspoken no-no. Especially in a work setting. And especially at my boss.
My boss. Just thinking those words filled me with aggravation all over again. Of everybody who could have been the successful and wealthy CEO of the company I was now working for, it had to be the infuriating and gorgeous man who struck me silent the instant I saw him. If the social media of this place was halfway fucking decent maybe I’d have gotten a better grasp of who everybody was around here and not to be so shocked when he came into the office.
That would have made my position obsolete and I wouldn’t be in this situation, but that was beside the point. At least I wouldn’t have come up with a vision in my mind of what the head of a racing company looked like, then gotten knocked for a loop when he walked into the office. Quentin was hot. Stupidly hot. He was tall, dark, and brooding, and even with clothes on it looked like he was crafted out of marble. But he was also disconnected, stuffy, and full of himself.
Granted, he was also an eligible millionaire many a woman had drooled over but not landed. When I heard there was an opening at Freeman Racing for the exact type of position I was champing at the bit to get, I asked around about the company and did a little research. All the pictures I could find related to the company had groups of people in them. There were never any specific images of one person or another, making it almost impossible for me to get familiar with the Freeman family or who was who without doing some deep-dive searching I simply didn’t have time to do. That meant when I stumbled on the stories and blogs about women trying to land Quentin and getting quickly rebuffed, I didn’t have an image of who they were talking about.
