AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Admins, then. Been there, done that.
I took a lot of temp jobs when we first came here. Temping in the day, waitressing at night, paying out half my earnings to sitters, but I made it work, and I was always there with a bowl of oatmeal and a smile when Carly woke up.
Things got better once my Etsy store took off, even better when we got the Upper West Side apartment-and-parrot-sitting gig.
“I’m here to…see the board.” I shift my Smuckers purse. “Did they already start? I meant to get here earlier, but the subway.”
“They’ll be out in a bit for the official start.” The black-haired secretary comes around the desk. She has a Princess Leia hairdo that I definitely approve of, and her name is April according to the sign on her desk. “Who is this little guy?”
“Smuckers,” I say.
I take the wee prince out to receive his rightful petting, snap on a leash, and set him on the floor. “Did the meeting start? I thought it wasn’t starting until two.”
“Looks like some sort of pre-meeting,” she says, scratching Smuckers’s head. “Are you doing a charitable giving pitch? To the board?” she adds when I seem confused.
I suppose it’s natural to think it, being that I’m dressed as a librarian with a flair for dirges and dogs. “No, I’m actually on the board.”
April gives me the side-eye.
“I’m the new member,” I add. “In place of Bernadette. Technically, Smuckers is.”
April glances again between Smuckers and me, still not sure whether to believe me.
Not that I’m a mind reader.
Though my impressions are usually right.
Don’t be jealous. If you spent enough time being hated by everyone with access to Twitter, Facebook, and TMZ, you, too, could end up with the ability to instantly process the tiniest of movements, one of the few perks of going through the hell that I went through, and a talent I seem to share with the common housefly.
I feel Henry coming toward me well before I see him. My housefly-like room monitoring abilities don’t extend to people I can’t see, but apparently Henry is a special case; the sensation of him nearing prickles over my skin.
I turn to find his cobalt blue eyes fixed tightly on me. He saunters toward me like the prince of Wall Street. And the prince of Manhattan. And the prince of sunshine and men’s fashion and the coolly-striding-toward-you club.
My skin heats, and tiny Irishmen start up a jig in my belly.
The rest of them are flanking him on either side, but Henry outshines them, because he’s Henry Freaking Locke.
“Vicky,” he says. “And Smuckers. Right on time.”
“Looks like you already started.”
“Would we start without you?” He asks this in a friendly tone that makes the Irishmen jig even faster.
“Um…yes?” I say.
“That wasn’t a meeting,” Brett, aka the less glorious and way meaner copy of Henry, says.
“We’ll be back in ten.” Henry heads for the elevator, followed by his cufflinks and click-shoe entourage. Yeah, the board meeting definitely already started. First item on the agenda: exclude me.
“You’re an owner.”
I turn to find April looking at me anew.
“Well, technically it’s Smuckers,” I say.
She nods thoughtfully, seems to weigh her words. “You might ask for a full description of board privileges. Did you know we send cars to pick up all members?”
“No.”
