Chapter Ten Rae
CHAPTER TEN
Rae
I HURRY UP THE stairs.
So what if it’s the same building? It’s a weird coincidence. Not the end of the world, right? Richmond’s not a huge city. Stranger things have happened.
Could this be a sign that I should absolutely become a full-fledged member of Off the Cuff?
Is this fate’s way of telling me I haven’t yet fulfilled my destiny?
Only instead of taming dragons and saving the world, like some elf princess from one of those fated mates romantasies I love so much, my one true path involves being called a good girl and getting spanked.
Very noble, I know.
With a final breath, I shove the handle down, lift my chin, and stride into the lobby.
“Yay!” Samantha yells from behind a big wood-and-glass reception desk. “The cookies are here!”
“Staff meeting!” a voice immediately responds from the wide, brightly lit open office area to the right, followed by the sound of about ten chairs rolling back from desks as people stand, whooping. At least two baseball caps take to the air like mortarboards at graduation.
“The eagle has landed. Cookies are here. I repeat. Cookies in the house. This is not a drill,” Samantha says into her phone, her voice echoing through a dozen speakers. She eyes my outfit. “Love the skirt. Is that—”
“Vintage. No label.”
“And the top?”
“Yes, it’s the one Brendan hated.” Too tight, he’d said. Too showy.
“May he rot in hell. The top is gorgeous on you.”
I smile. “Where’s my office?”
“Right there.” Wide-eyed, Sam points at a door to my left, directly off the lobby. “But you might want to—”
“Oh, honey! You’re here!” Dorothy glides through another door, this one straight ahead.
Our boss is a chaotic swirl of colorful fabrics and long gray hair.
She wraps me in her patchouli-sandalwood-scented arms and squeezes.
“Ugh! I just… missed you, honey!” Releasing me, she pinches one of my cheeks, a thing she’s always done.
In all fairness, I’ve got a pretty round face. I’d probably pinch them myself.
Which, of course, makes me think of getting pinched in other places and—
Nope. No. What happens at Off the Cuff—in the basement of this very building, no less!—stays at Off the Cuff.
“Missed you too, Dorothy. Before the meeting, could you and I quickly—”
“Ooooooh, are those the famous new-and-improved recipe?”
“Yeah, I’ll just put my stuff down and get these to—”
“Here. I’ll help.” She grabs the top plate, pulls back the foil, takes one, and shoves half a cookie in her mouth.
“That’s gluten-free.”
“Listen.” Her words come out garbled. “I won’t be around for long, so—”
“You won’t?” Why does that sound so ominous? Oh my god. Does she mean forever or just this morning? Is this what the consultant’s about?
“Goddamn, this cookie’s amazing. Wow. Okay.
Sorry. Your new office is right over there.
” She points across the wide, airy lobby, which is currently filling up with staff, excitedly greeting one another as they move down a long hall toward what I’m guessing is the conference room.
“Meeting first, though. I want to get you and Grant all set up together.”
“Actually, do you think I could have a moment before we’re all—?”
She hugs someone hello and then turns back to me as if I haven’t spoken. “Oh! You wouldn’t happen to have brought an extra butt pillow, would you? I forgot the old one at home, and my tailbone’s already acting—”
“Sure.” I balance the rest of the cookies on Samantha’s desk, slap her hand as she reaches for one, and rummage in the box of survival supplies I prepped over the weekend. “One memory foam desk chair pillow.” Special ordered last week, along with three backups.
“Ooooooh.” Dorothy side hugs me. “You are a gem, Rae. An absolute gem.”
“So, could we just chat before the team gets—?”
Not hearing me—or pretending not to?—she calls out, “Treats this way, kiddos!” and absconds down the hall with the entire plate of gluten-free cookies.
The quiet swoosh of her vegan-leather, Moroccan-style slippers is drowned out by the clank of dozens of metal bracelets and the pitter-patter of a full team of hungry developers, all following the Pied Piper scent of what might very well be the world’s best cookies.
Truly. It took me three years, and I literally cried when I finally got the recipe right.
So did Samantha, who declared them almost as good as watermelon Blow Pops.
“Here, let me help.” Samantha grabs the next plate from the pile. “We’ll be in the conference room. Better hurry.” She tilts her head toward me and whispers, “Work Dad’s in there. And did I mention he’s really, really nice to look at?”
Crap.
Work Dad. How does he already have a nickname? And what an innocuous title for a man whose presence is a sign that things are not nearly as hunky-dory as Dorothy likes to pretend.
The opening strains to “Something Bad Is Happening” from Falsettos automatically kick up in the back of my mind.
If only Dorothy would talk to me instead of this avoidance thing.
I zoom into my new office to dump my stuff and lock up the payroll and personnel files, and—
Come to a screeching halt.
Two desks face each other, one already showing signs of occupation. This can’t be my office.
“Um, Samantha. Someone’s already moved in here. Where’s my…?”
I turn. The reception area’s empty. From crowded thoroughfare to tumbleweed wasteland in the blink of an eye. That’s the power of cookies, I guess.
“Get your ass in here, Rae!” Jamie-Lynn Jones—who once conducted an entire Zoom meeting from the Mechanicsville County Fair Ferris wheel—yells from down the hall. “Oops! Sorry! Meant to say behind. Get your lovely little… I mean your… Just… come on.”
Armed with the full-gluten, -fat, and -dairy version of my cookies, I grab my things and race down the hall at a fast clip, almost miss the conference room door, spin to make up the difference, bag, coffee, plates and all, and plow into a brick wall.
A living brick wall. A wide, warm, solid brick wall with big hands that steady me.
An alarm bell goes off inside my head, faint but really, really shrill.
“You’re late,” says the wall in a voice that’s deep and rich, though it’s got some grit to it. Just a hint, like the finest sandpaper.
Uh-oh. I know this voice. I’ve felt it against my ear, my nape, and that sensitive place where my neck meets my shoulder.
No. Uh-uh. Nope.
I tighten my hold on the myriad things I should have just left on the desk in the other room and look up in the kind of dumbstruck slow motion that nightmares are made of.
No way. It can’t be him, him. Not the one-and-done dream Dom I decided I’d never be seeing again, despite having literally touched myself all weekend thinking about him.
There’s a moment of relief when I see his jawline. It’s square, like the General’s, but clean-shaven. Not a hint of that raspy five-o’clock shadow.
My heart sinks as soon as I take in the deeply cut cheekbones, the pissed-off brown eyes, and those hands like live wires on my skin…
Please, no. Please.
“Sir?” I whisper aloud, in front of the entire freaking staff, all of whom, for once, have gone eerily quiet.