2. Nate
2
NATE
I walked in through the main lobby door and stopped short.
“Juan. My man.” I grinned, approaching my favorite doorman. I didn’t necessarily have one favorite. All four of the security men who took shifts manning the front and main entrances to the office building were great guys.
Juan surpassed them all with his joviality. Dressed in his typical suited uniform, he classed it up with a red and green tie. Then a pin on his lapel that read Only 23 Days Until Christmas. The teeny numbers could be flipped for the countdown. He’d understood the assignment of getting into the holiday spirit. He always did.
“You like? Eh?” He beamed at me as I took a longer pause to shake his hand in greeting. Pointing at the pin, he raised his brows. “My grand-niece found this and insisted that I wear it.”
“It’s great,” I said, meaning it.
While Christmas was in the air, or starting to infuse it, the décor of the building sometimes seemed too… watered down. Too elegant. Too fancy-schmancy and lacking the pep and cheer this time of the year should signify. Juan’s bright-colored pin might come off as cheesy, but it made me smile.
“I can’t believe it’s already so close to the end of the year,” I added.
“And the big party.” He smiled wider.
I nodded, keeping my smile plastered on my face. While I loved this time of the year, I was not a fan of the annual holiday party. I used to be. Six years ago, I would’ve been competing with Juan for excitement about it. Now, it was a hindrance to get through.
He seemed to get the memo that I didn’t appreciate the reminder of that event. Having the grace to sober up a bit, he shook his head slightly and cleared his throat. As if that could clear the air.
Everyone at the company loved that party. We went all out with dinner, dancing, live bands, and bonuses given to all. Colleagues could hang out, coworkers could catch up with others’ families. It was a grand gesture of a party that started back when my grandparents still worked here as board chairs.
It used to be fun for me, too.
“Speaking of… With it so close to the end of the year, what are you even doing here, CO?” He patted my back as he nodded in acknowledgment at someone else entering behind me. “None of you CO folks come in much in December.” He checked his watch, as if needing to confirm it was indeed the last month of the year.
He called us all a CO for short, not to be rude but as an inside joke. I was a Chief Officer, the CFO here at one of the country’s oldest importing and exporting businesses. Malley Inc. was a conglomerate, a megacorp with many chief officers, but he was right. Not many of them came in daily as the year concluded.
I shrugged. “Eh, just some things to handle.” I patted my briefcase, using it like a prop. “Still have work to do.”
“Sure. Sure.” He nodded again, his happy mood diminished a bit. Just his mention of that damn party put a damper on his spirits, and I hated that. It’d taken him a moment too long to realize how much of a faux pas it was to bring up the party I didn’t look forward to any longer. But that wasn’t his problem. I had to move on from the crappy memories.
This was a jolly time of the year, a month full of festivity and fun.
It was supposed to be, but as I left him in the lobby and rode the elevator up to my floor, I sighed heavily.
Six years had passed. The memories that tainted one of my favorite seasons of the year should’ve faded by now, right?
That was why I was coming in to work—early, like usual. I had to stay busy. I wanted to keep myself preoccupied with little chance of downtime to be idle and think. If I let my mind wander, too many visuals of the past would come back and haunt me.
Fortunately, there was ample work for me to do. I strode straight to my office, smiling at the holiday jazz channel streaming quietly from my computer, and got down to it. December or not, work didn’t wait for anyone. I could be like my upper-level colleagues and slow down my pace, but I preferred to keep things moving. I would take a break. As soon as I endured that holiday party, I’d take off for some solitude and peace at my family’s cabin back home.
“You'd better not be thinking about taking off to that cabin of yours,” Julie, my office manager, stated dryly. She stood at the door to my office, crossing her arms and smirking.
“As a matter of fact, I was thinking about it,” I replied with a smile. “Good morning, Julie.”
She huffed. “ Good morning?” Entering my office a few feet, she snarled. The expression made her blue and white polka-dot-framed glasses slide down her nose, and she took a second to push them back up where they belonged. Free to move her hand again, she flung her arm back and pointed out the door. “ She showed up again. It is impossible for this to be a good morning when she can’t get it through her head that she’s fired.”
I chuckled, amused more than I should be with her irate reaction.
“Jessica came back?” I asked.
Julie dropped into a chair, grimacing. “I don’t understand it. I really don’t. Just how entitled are these young people going to get?”
I tilted my head, thinking back to the minimal details I'd learned about Jessica, the last in a long line of dime-a-dozen assistants who’d failed to last more than a few days on my floor. “I thought she was thirty-something.”
She waved her hand, dismissing me. “Whatever. The entitlement in this one…” Shooting up to sit straight, she narrowed her eyes at me. “Trying to claim that I can’t fire her because it doesn’t align with what her astrologers predicted for her?” She slapped her hand to her thigh, sending her short gray curls bouncing with the full-body movement. “Are you kidding me?”
Again, I lost the fight with a chuckle. It was ridiculous.
“If the woman could at least try to understand a word processing program, then I would’ve given her another chance. It is the holiday season, after all.”
I nodded, shuffling documents on my desk while listening to her familiar rant.
“That’s not minding her complete ignorance of spreadsheets.” She narrowed her eyes again and cringed, which called for another slide of her glasses down her nose. “How, Nate? How does an adult not know how to use a word processing program? A spreadsheet? I’m older than dirt and even I know those basics. They teach this stuff in school!”
“Maybe she wasn’t paying attention.”
She glared at me. “My five-year-old neighbor knows how to use those things. They’re teaching it in kindergarten.”
I shrugged. “Maybe Jessica wasn’t paying attention then, either. And it stuck.”
“And the breaks. Don’t get me started on her need for mental breaks.” She held up a finger. “Needing five minutes to shift back into her ‘work’ mode after getting coffee or going to the bathroom.” Another finger was stuck into the air. “Needing ten minutes of ‘decompression’ time to reflect after receiving instructions. Simple instructions! Like ‘take this file and hand it to this person.’ Oh, then the real kicker.” She stuck a third finger into the air, thrusting her hand upward so forcefully it was a punch. “Stating that she needed three times as long of a lunch hour because her ‘chi was off and she needed to recalibrate.’” She slapped her hand back down on her thigh.
Julie had been my office manager for twelve years, and I feared the day she wouldn’t be such a theatrical speaker.
“Recalibrate, Nate.” She shook her head as I laughed. “Recalibrate what ?” She knocked the side of her head. “There was nothing up there to calibrate or recalibrate.”
“Be nice,” I scolded playfully. She wasn’t a ball buster. And she—we—had seen the bottom of the barrel where assistants were concerned. While I sometimes saw them as fodder for amusement, I understood how much more challenging her job was when she couldn’t locate simple hired help for the most basic tasks of the office.
She growled. “And this close to the holidays, we’ll never find someone.”
“Not true.” I jiggled my mouse to wake up the screen. “Didn’t I forward the email to you? The staffing agency said they had someone to start ASAP.”
“Yeah, yeah. I saw. But that isn’t promising. Who knows how much worse this one will be?”
“Well, this one is vetted.” Sort of. “Someone I know texted me that they’d sent someone to apply for the position.”
Brandon Brown was one of my oldest friends, a staple since our boyhood days in Rockton. This wasn’t the first time he’d suggested someone to apply for the assistant position. His job as a bartender often had him playing therapist or just listening to customers, and he was aware of how the assistant position on my floor was a revolving door of too many quitters and fired, incompetent individuals.
“Don’t blame me if I’m skeptical,” Julie groused as she stood. “Security said they’d be up in a couple of minutes to escort Jessica out of the office. Again.”
“Just in time for the new assistant to show up,” I said cheerily. “Maybe this one will be different and stick.”
“Not counting on it,” she muttered dryly as she left.
I dragged my phone over and opened up the Notes app to type.
Add extra to Julie’s Christmas bonus.
I was a generous man to begin with, but she really deserved it all for what she had to put up with.
An hour later, when Julie returned, I got my first glimpse of this last-minute hire and knew she, without a doubt, would be different.
“Knock, knock,” Julie said as she entered with a short blonde at her side. A short, petite blonde I recognized despite the years between us. “Mr. McIntosh, this is?—”
“Rachel?” All the astonishment I felt came out with my blurted question. I stood, too stunned to see someone from my past here. “Rachel Brown?”
It can’t be. But it was. Those blue eyes were still as shrewd as ever. Sharp and smart. Calculating, even, but never in a scary way.
My best friend told his baby sister to apply for my assistant position?
My lips curled up at the sight of someone I knew. Or, I supposed, I used to know. Rachel was no baby now. Quite a few years stood between us in an age gap, but the mere feet between us in my office felt like a short bridge. She damn well wasn’t a kid here, the inquisitive and smart-ass little sibling who tagged along with me and my best friend back in the old days in the small town we all grew up in.
No. This was a woman, sexy, gorgeous, and mature. A flicker of surprise showed on her face when she spotted me, but she masked it quickly.
“Correct,” Julie said, not missing a beat but likely feeling like she’d lost the plot. “And this is?—”
“Nate?” Rachel replied, her brows shooting up high. She was speedy in covering up her shock, but she had a good grip on maintaining a sense of being professional.
Just one look at her, my best friend’s little sister all grown up, and I had a hard time remembering this was a professional setting at all. I hadn’t been immediately attracted to a woman like this in years. This instant awareness that kicked in and claimed me was an odd sensation to get used to, but in the back of my mind, as I stared at her, I knew that there would be nothing to get used to.
Sure, it threw me off to see her, of all people, showing up to work as the new assistant. But to think about getting involved with her in any other way?
No. No way.
I simply wasn’t ready. Six years ago, I made the mistake of trusting a beautiful woman, and I wasn’t sure I could ever take the risk to do so again.
Besides, she’s just here to work.
Right?