Chapter 15
Gabriella
My phone pinged with a notification. I stopped typing up an email and glanced down at the lit up screen. It was a text from Chandler. I rolled my eyes and ignored it, continuing on with my email. Five seconds later, my phone pinged again. I knew it was him without having to look.
“Impatient prick,” I muttered as I picked up my phone and swiped up on the screen
Chandler: I need tomorrow’s meeting rescheduled in my calendar.
Chandler: Now.
Me: That’s Bernice’s job. When will you get it through your thick head?
Chandler: She’s no good with computers.
Me: She’s managed this long.
Chandler: She’s 100 years old.
Chandler: Do it.
I slid my phone across my desk and sighed frustratedly.
The man was helpless. I opened a tab on my computer for our shared calendar and rescheduled his meeting, just so he would leave me the hell alone.
I heard a grunt of approval come from his office across the way.
It was his way of saying thank-you I supposed.
That was how the past few weeks had been.
Texts, emails, and grunts from his office.
We had stuck with his suggestion of communicating through screens, rather than face to face, as best we could.
Obviously, sometimes there was no way around it.
I knew the employees of the office could see our relationship was strained, but I hoped they chalked it up to Chandler being an asshole. That part was definitely true.
What they didn’t know was that same asshole had been so deep in me that I saw stars.
It was something I had tried to forget, but was failing miserably at.
It made me hate him even more. I should never have let my walls down, not even in a rage of passion.
The fact that I was trying to forget he was the best sex of my life made it even easier to keep him at arm’s length.
The distance had to help to get over it.
Despite our pretty much non-existent relationship at work, I still kept tabs on what he was doing within the company.
That was partly my job, after all. It irritated me that he was actually doing a decent job as CEO.
He was ballsier than my father, making moves that my father would never have the guts to make, and the payoff was well worth it.
The company was seeing numbers it hadn’t seen in years.
I was glad for it, but at the same time my hopes of my father coming around and realizing his mistake were flying out the top floor and crashing down to smithereens on the sidewalk below.
But despite his smart business moves, Chandler still treated every employee here like shit.
They were terrified of him. Especially Bernice.
It was a wonder he had kept her on as his assistant, although he probably wasn’t sending much work her way because it all seemed to land on me.
I wanted to bring this up to my father. Tell him that I’m no one’s assistant.
But after our last heated conversation, I decided against it.
Speaking of, my phone buzzed on the desk and I was relieved to see it wasn’t a call from the tyrant across the way. I quickly picked up.
“Hey, Dad,” I said, mustering up as much cheerfulness as I could.
“Gabriella,” he said in his all business tone. I knew it wasn’t a father-daughter call, but a business one. It usually always was.
“What’s up?” I asked, reaching for the mouse on my desk and hitting the send button on the email I had been working on.
“All ready for review night?” he asked.
I swallowed hard and looked at the date on my computer that now seemed to be screaming at me.
How could I forget? It was the one night of the year the CEO stayed all night to work on employee reviews.
I usually stayed with my father to help him, not leaving the office until usually 5 a.m., but I was hoping this year I wouldn’t have to stay.
I mentally crossed my fingers as I feigned obliviousness.
“That’s right. Chandler has quite the night ahead of him.”
“You both do.”
“What’s it have to do with me?” I asked more pointedly than I intended.
“He doesn’t know the employees that well yet. You have to stay and help him.”
I clenched my teeth as I glanced over at Chandler’s open door to his office. He sat at his desk, focused on whatever was on his computer screen. His green eyes darted back and forth, his lips pressed into a thin line of concentration. Damn him for looking so good.
“Hello? Are you there?” My father interrupted my thoughts.
“Yes, I’m here. Okay. Got it. I’ll stay and help.” I let out a sigh of defeat.
“Good girl.” He hung up without so much as a goodbye, leaving me annoyed with his way of talking to me like his pet.
I sat back in my chair and ran a hand through my hair, looking around the office.
In just a few hours, it would be cleared out, and all who would be left would be me and Chandler.
The man who I could still taste on my tongue.
I wondered if he realized I would be staying with him the entire night.
After weeks of keeping our distance, how was this going to go?
I heard his phone ring. I quickly glanced up and could see by the look on his face that my father was delivering the same news he had just laid out to me.
I wanted to laugh at the sheer terror on his face.
I quickly looked back at my computer, pretending to focus, knowing full well he would be looking over at any second.
The same way I had when the bomb was dropped. This night was sure to be interesting.
Shortly after 5 p.m., when the office had emptied out for the night, I lingered at my desk as long as I could, trying to delay the inevitable.
I knew if we just got started, the sooner it would be over.
I took a deep breath and walked to Chandler’s office to find him buried in stacked files that HR had brought over earlier.
He looked overwhelmed, his hair slightly unruly as if he had been running his hand through it.
It looked stupidly sexy. It was one of the rare times he showed anything other than his “can do” attitude.
I knocked on the frame of his door and he looked up, his gaze sharp now.
“You ready for this?” I asked, gesturing to the files.
“Just so you know, I didn’t ask for a babysitter…” he said.
“And I didn’t sign up for sitting with a toddler all night, but here we are.”
He blew a quick breath out his nose and nodded to the chair in front of him.
I sat down and looked around the mess of his office. It was a shitshow.
“You didn’t organize any of these?” I asked.
“Isn’t that HR’s job?” he snapped.
I ignored the bite in his voice and kept my voice cool.
“It’s easier to organize them by tenure. Then we review from longest tenure to least.”
He looked around, and as if admitting defeat, he nodded.
We spent the next hour creating piles with the files, and setting them in various corners of his office.
When we were done, his office was at least habitable, and we began going through each of our longest tenured employees.
My father had been right. Chandler knew nothing about anybody.
Some he wasn’t even sure were a man or a woman based off their names.
He would have made a damn mess of things if I wasn’t there.
Three hours in, Chandler ordered takeout from a nearby Chinese restaurant.
We sat in the middle of the files and ate directly from the boxes, as we continued evaluating each of the employees on file.
We should have taken a break, but I thought we both just wanted to work and not address the elephant in the room.
By 2 a.m. though, our eyes were growing heavy and our thoughts were groggy.
Everyone seemed to be blurring together.
There was no way we would be able to give a proper review if we pushed on.
Sensing that, Chandler stood up and stretched his back before heading to the large bookshelf against the wall.
He pulled down a bottle of bourbon I hadn’t noticed before, along with two glasses.
“We should take a break,” he said, sitting down across from me once more.
He poured a generous serving into a glass tumbler and handed it to me, before pouring his own. We both took a few silent sips and soaked in this time when our faces weren’t buried in paperwork.
“I have to admit, you know everyone here really well…” he said.
It might have been the first nice thing he had ever said to me. I stayed silent, not sure if I heard him correctly.
“How?” he asked, tilting his head.
I cleared my throat nervously, not sure what to do with this strange act of humanity.
“I’ve been here for ten years.” I shrugged. “You get to know people.”
He nodded, taking another sip of bourbon. “I’m surprised your dad didn’t give you the job.”
I jerked my chin back. Now, I had to be dreaming.
“Um, I was surprised too.”
“I could see that.” He chuckled, and the warmth of it settled around me like a warm hug.
I laughed softly and leaned back against the wall. “I was so convinced he was going to announce me. I’ve dedicated my life to this place. Not to mention, he promised I would take over one day.”
I shook my head, hating that I was opening up. Hating even more that I was comfortable doing so. Damn this bourbon.
“That’s shitty,” he said, chewing on his cheek.
“Yeah.” I took a deep breath and looked at him curiously. “What’s your story?”
“Excuse me?”
“You know my emotional damage…What’s yours?”
“You’re so dramatic.”
“So I’ve heard.” I rolled my eyes.
He laughed and reached for the bottle of bourbon, pouring some more into his glass. I adjusted my legs underneath me, as if prepping for what he was about to tell me.
“Let’s see…” he said, taking a sip. “My father cheated on my mother for over a decade. Had a whole other family that no one knew about. He eventually loved that family more, enough to leave me and my mom behind.”
I swallowed hard. His story was far worse than mine and I could see through his cool way of talking about it, that it had left a deep scar.
“Then my mom met someone new. Greg.” The emphasis he put on the name told me enough about how he felt about the guy. “They had a baby together. My brother, Nathan. Great guy.” It was the only time his expression softened during his short recap of his life. I could tell he cared for his brother.
“Now my mom is engaged to the guy. Just found out she’d been keeping it from me.”
“I take it you don’t like this Greg character,” I said, raising a brow.
“How intuitive of you.” He smirked.
I shook my head and brought my glass to my lips, trying to hide the warmth creeping into my cheeks from that smile.
“So, that’s my sad little story,” said Chandler before reaching for a file and scanning it over, as if trying to distract the weight of my stare and the sadness it held for him.
It was a sad story. It made me a little more understanding of the asshole he was, but also unlocked a new version of him. One that was willing to open up, no matter how much it hurt. One who cared more than he would ever admit. I wanted to hug him, but I knew it would make him feel weak.
“It’s made one hell of a man,” I said, offering him a small smile.
He looked up from the file in his hands and smiled back. For the first time, it wasn’t a smirk. It was real and it had my stomach doing somersaults.