7. Alba
SEVEN
ALBA
Ms. Clean,
Please accept this tribute as a sincerest apology for my previous transgressions.
V.A.
I took the little box of gold-wrapped chocolates between my fingers, eyes narrowing. Sincere apology, or snarky gift?
Unwrapping one of the treats, I took a seat at Mr. Big Shot’s desk. I kicked my feet up on his desk as I bit into the chocolate, gooey caramel dragging out the other half as I pulled it away from my lips. Delicious.
I uncapped his pen as I chewed the second half of the chocolate and scribbled my response:
Tribute accepted.
The sugar hit got me through the shift, but I still woke up the next day with an aching body that had to be forced to do the mounting list of chores before being dragged into the restaurant in too little time.
So maybe I was a little snippy when a familiar broad-shouldered man sat down in my section and opened the menu like he was going to order something other than the chicken breast.
“The specials are the same as last time you were in,” I said in way of greeting.
“Hello to you too, princess.”
“Please don’t call me that.”
“How about sunshine? Because of your disposition, you see.”
“Har har. How about you call me nothing?”
He grinned. “Chipper as always, huh. So the first few times weren’t a fluke.”
“And yet here you are.”
He tilted his head. “You seem more irritable than usual though. Is everything okay?”
I’d had a terrible morning. There didn’t seem to be enough time to get through all the drudgery, let alone leisure or recuperation.
My resolve had slipped while I ate breakfast, and I’d thumbed through the society pages of online magazines to look at all the people I no longer associated with.
I’d seen photos of my mother at a charity auction, dressed in Valentino, smiling with her paddle in her hand.
She’d bought artwork for the Hamptons house, apparently, which meant she was redecorating it again. Good for her.
And then my clothes had been damp, and they’d frozen hard on my way to work. The heat of the kitchens had thawed them again, but they hadn’t dried.
My life could be summarized into one word: discomfort.
Maybe the sincerity of Vaughn’s question is what made me slip up and tell him a partial truth: “Everything’s fine, except that my building’s dryers don’t seem to be working properly so now I’m stuck working in damp clothes for the next six hours.
” I smiled at the man who seemed to want to contribute to the discomfort whenever he could.
“But now you’re here, so at least everything is a little bit worse. ”
He laughed. It was a rich, warm sound that made a tingle go through my stomach. I liked making him laugh—except, no. He was the worst. I didn’t like him at all. A scowl drew my brows low, my fingers tightening around my tray.
I didn’t want to like the man. He represented everything I hated. He reminded me so much of James, in that there was something magnetic about him. Everyone in the room glanced at him at some time or another. When he walked in, people noticed.
He wasn’t the top dog—yet—but he had that special something that turned heads. Not just his good looks; it was his bearing, his ice-blue gaze that seemed to pierce through you, his confidence. If he got clothing that actually fit him properly, he would be unstoppable.
And I would still be here, serving him chicken breast for lunch, looking at photos of a life I didn’t want anymore but couldn’t seem to forget.
“Damp clothes,” he mused, wrinkling his nose. “That’s unfortunate. I won’t ask you if you cleared the lint trap,” he said, like we were sharing some kind of joke.
My brows tugged together. “The what now?”
He blinked at me. “The lint trap.”
“Oh.” I chuckled. “Right.”
“You know what a lint trap is, don’t you?”
“Yeah, sure,” I answered, waving a hand. “It traps lint.”
“Yeah.”
“Yeah.” I smiled brightly, dying inside.
This was something else I’d discovered over the course of the past fourteen months. There were countless things that I didn’t know. Obvious, normal things. Things that were second nature to most people—things that made me feel like a bumbling fool who was too dumb to make it through a day unaided.
I had no fucking clue what a lint trap was, nor did I know how it related to my clothes.
But I’d be damned if I ever let him see it. I pivoted to asking him if he wanted the chicken, and he handed me the menu with a nod. I scurried away, my chest hot, my cheeks burning.
Ducking into the staff room, I pulled out my phone and Googled “lint trap.”
Within a fraction of a second, I learned that apparently you were supposed to be cleaning this thing out with every single load of laundry. Major fire hazard. Freaking wonderful.
At least I hadn’t burned my building down.
Sighing, I leaned my phone against my thigh and lightly bashed my head against the wall.
“Hey, Alba!” Daisy, one of the other waitresses, said as she walked in, smelling of the outdoors with patches of bright red on her cheeks.
I faced her and held up my phone. “Do you know what a lint trap is?”
She unzipped her jacket and hung her purse up in one of the empty lockers. “Like, in a dryer?”
“Yeah. Never mind.” I put my phone away and shoved my embarrassment deep down, then squared my shoulders and went back out into the fray.
Vaughn’s food was ready, so I grabbed it from the expo and brought it to his table. That stiff smile was in place on my face, and I said my usual, “Did you need anything else?” before turning away.
“Alba,” he said, and the sound of my name on his tongue froze me in my tracks.
I turned, still feeling the burn of my embarrassment, and smiled at him. “Yes?”
“Other than my suit and the wine, what else did I do wrong?”
“Sorry?”
“The other day. My business meeting. What else did I screw up?”
I shrugged. “How am I supposed to know?”
“Don’t give me that,” he snapped, and the command in his voice made all my nerve endings sizzle.
I reared back. “Excuse me?”
“You knew about the suit. My assistant agreed, by the way.”
“Well, duh.” What was he getting at?
“So, tell me. I have another meeting coming up, and I don’t want to get dismissed before I even open my mouth to make my pitch.”
I rocked back on my heels. “Are you being serious right now? You really want my advice?” The girl who didn’t even know that lint traps existed or that they needed to be cleaned? He was asking me what I thought?
That hadn’t happened in…way longer than fourteen months.
“Alba,” he cajoled. “Come on. Be brutal. I know you want to be.”
I huffed a laugh despite myself, then shifted my weight and bit my lip. “Well…”
“You won’t hurt my feelings.”
“Your hair,” I said.
Vaughn’s brows slammed down. “What’s wrong with my hair?” he demanded.
I laughed, and the outrage on his face grew. I held up my hands to stop him, and I said, “The cut is just a little…rough around the edges.”
He stared at me for a moment, then glared out the window. “My hair.”
“You have a nice, thick head of hair,” I added, not wanting to be too harsh. “It’s just a little scruffy looking.”
A long sigh slipped through Vaughn’s lips, then he met my gaze again. “All right. The suit, the hair, the wine. What else?”
“Well, it depends on the person, but I got the sense that you launched into business way too soon. I was pouring you guys glasses of water for the first time, and you were already telling him about project pipeline projections, or whatever.” I waved a hand.
“It was a business lunch,” he growled. “I was talking business.”
“The man ordered a three-hundred-dollar bottle of Italian wine. He clearly wanted to be wooed.”
Vaughn rubbed his chin with his finger, his gaze falling to the table. “I misread him,” he said.
“I think so.”
“And you think my clothes would have made a difference?”
I shrugged. “They would’ve stopped you from being dismissed in the first five seconds.”
It was a sad but true fact of the elite world into which he was trying to break.
You had to look right, and act right, and talk right.
Only then would you be taken seriously. That either meant expensive designer clothing, custom pieces, or unbranded clothing that was tailored to perfection.
Once you were in, you were allowed to engage.
“So, my hair,” Vaughn said, lifting his head to look at me. “What would you change?”
Before I knew what I was doing, I reached over and ran my fingers through his strands. By the time I realized I was touching him, all I could do was brazen it out by acting casual and tugging at his hair slightly. He grunted in response, his head tilting toward me.
The noise sent a wash of heat through me, a tingle that started in my chest and moved down between my thighs. I dropped my hand to my side and took a step back. “A little off the sides. And maybe”—I let out a theatrical gasp—“some styling products.”
Vaughn’s eyes were pale and blue and intense, his throat bobbing as he swallowed. My heartbeat thrummed, and I hoped the heat crawling up my cheeks wasn’t accompanied by redness. He couldn’t know how much touching him had affected me.
He leaned back in his chair. “I’ve been cutting my own hair since I was sixteen.”
“Yeah. Don’t do that anymore,” I said.
His smile was wry, and I couldn’t help flashing one of my own in response.
For the first time, my grin was genuine. Our gazes lingered on each other, and then I cleared my throat and turned away to keep doing my job.
Mr. Big Shot,
Your desk chair squeaks when it tilts back. I’ve taken the liberty of oiling the mechanism.
C.W.
Ms. Clean,
Sitting in another’s office chair is bad manners. Shouldn’t you be scrubbing the carpet?
V.A.