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1
Welcometo the Firm
I should have beenin the car already.
But I was stuck, frozen with anxiety and just downright stomach-churning fear, looking at my reflection in the bathroom mirror, willing myself to finish doing my eyeliner and, if I could get my hand to stop shaking long enough, swipe on a bit of mascara, too.
My warped, rusted medicine cabinet mirror looked back at me as a reminder of one of a hundred reasons I needed not to fuck this morning up.
But those reminders were contributing to my anxiety, which made it impossible to move as fast as I needed.
I put the eye makeup down, defeated, but not willing to risk putting my eye out, and looked at myself hard in the mirror. I knew what it was I was so afraid of.
My new employer would see what they were getting within moments of my arrival… and not like it. I mean, sure, they’d hired me, mainly because of the pressure Dimitri had put on them. But they were getting someone undereducated, underqualified, underskilled.
Under-everything.
And yet, this was my foot in the door. I had to make it work. I had to do something with it.
If I hadn’t skipped breakfast, I might have puked, I was so miserably wound up. Things got no better when I climbed into the old, bad-memory-filled Toyota Tacoma that I hated, wanted to trade in, and couldn’t afford not to keep. I drove with shaking knees, a churning stomach, and tingling fingers to the downtown skyscraper that held the law offices of Adam, Takayama, and Zeigler.
‘ATZ,’ as it was affectionately called, was the biggest law office in town, and as I rode the elevator to the fifteenth floor where main reception was situated, I felt like a bigger fraud than ever. Who was I to be rubbing elbows with people who did million-dollar settlement negotiations and such before lunch?
There were days I didn’t even get out of bed before lunch.
The receptionist, a pretty blonde girl who looked like she came right out of central casting, showed me to my desk, thankfully, with nothing more than small talk. She greeted me politely, showed me where the break room and a few other important office spots were, and promised she’d get someone down right away to help me get set up for my job.
I wasn’t sure what there was to ‘set up,’ but I didn’t let on. She didn’t need to know how green I was.
I thanked her, and had barely set my chair to the right height when my desk phone rang. After fumbling with a couple buttons, I got the line open without hanging up on anyone.
“Hello?” I said, steadying my voice.
“Is this Kaitlyn Jacobs?” an intriguing male voice at the end of the line asked.
Was this a prank? The guy sounded like he could work weekends as a phone sex operator… if those were still around.
“Yes, yes, this is Kaitlyn.”
“Good morning. Welcome. This is Shane Parker, one of the attorneys here at ATZ.”
“Oh… um, hello Mr. Parker,” I said in my most chipper happy-to-be-here voice, sweat beginning to run down between my boobs. Maybe it was sexy sweat? The guy did have a panty-melting voice.
“Kaitlyn, I need you to come to my office as soon as you can. I’m the associate in charge of new hire orientation.”
Really? One of the attorneys did orientation? I’d thought that was what admins were for, but then what did I know about law firms?
“Yes, sure Mr. Parker. Where can I find your office?”
On the other end of the line, his deep, sexy voice teased me. “Challenge yourself. But be quick, please.”
The line went dead, and I peeked around the edge of my cubicle, looking for help. “Hi… um, where can I find Mr. Parker’s office?”
My cubicle-neighbor, another pretty blonde with perfect bangs that left me wondering if ATZ hired from a modeling agency, gave me an upward pointing finger. “The associates are up on seventeen, partners on eighteen and nineteen, except for the big bosses. They’re on twenty.”
“Thanks,” I said. I extended my hand. “I’m Kaitlyn.”
“Julie… better hurry, knowing how Mr. Parker is,” she said, tapping an invisible watch on her wrist. “Man’s a demon on time management.”
