3. Emma
Chapter Three
EMMA
E mma jumped off the bus, swearing under her breath. This line was running later and later every single day. She was eleven minutes behind schedule.
That wouldn’t have been a big deal last week, but it was a huge problem now. All because of one self-important jackass.
She didn’t know his first name. Just the last. Chapman.
Excuse me, Mr. Chapman. Hector, her boss was adamant she addressed him properly. Not that this was an actual issue. She’d been schlepping coffee from the ground floor café to his penthouse office for over a week now and the man hadn’t deigned to speak to her once.
Apparently, he had asked for her by name. Why? She had no idea. The man never spoke to her.
Kyle was sure it had to do with the troglodytes on the twenty-third floor. Mr. Chapman had heard them say something nasty about her and had reprimanded them. Her coworkers had practically canonized the man since.
“He looks after the little guy,” Hassan said while washing dishes.
Kyle had promptly agreed, going on about how forceful and righteous Mr. Chapman had been. “I bet he wants to ask if you’ve had trouble with those assholes before. ”
“But HR has already spoken to me about it,” she pointed out. The woman in charge had encouraged her to file a complaint if anything else happened. “There’s no reason he has to drag me up there.”
“Well, the man can drag me anywhere he wants.” Tattooed and wiry Bethany licked her lips and danced from side to side while she washed the mugs in the triple compartment sink. “Seven days a week, twenty-four seven.”
Emma suppressed a frown. “You know those two D-bags got reamed for saying something remarkably similar.”
Bethany shrugged, unconcerned. “I did not objectify Mr. Chapman by pointing out he has abs you can bounce a quarter off of or an ass like a ripe apple.” She had winked lasciviously. “Not yet anyway.”
Needless to say, Bethany had been intensely disappointed to learn Emma alone would be delivering his coffee.
“If he asked for you, then you have to go,” Hector had told her when she offered to switch with her coworker.
She’d tried to argue her way out of it, but Hector hadn’t budged. He’d even pulled out a brand-new apron, so she’d ‘put De Olla ’s best foot forward.’
But none of her coworkers' high-minded and idealistic conjectures came to anything because the illustrious god of the building never even looked at her. Not once.
He also never asked her about the men who’d been leering and speculating about the size of her breasts in voices loud enough for the entire floor to hear.
It would have been one thing if she’d caught him on the phone, wheeling and dealing the way someone who owned the building was supposed to.
But Mr. Chapman hadn’t been on the phone. Every single time she’d been summoned to his office to deliver his café de olla , the house specialty, he’d been standing behind his desk with his back to her, staring out the window at the city.
At first, she assumed he’d heard news he hadn’t liked. Maybe he’d gotten a call from his luxury car dealer telling him the Ferrari he wanted wasn’t available in midlife crisis red .
Or perhaps the weight of the gold toilet he’d installed in his penthouse had cracked the floor of his bathroom, sending it crashing down through the levels below.
Emma entertained herself with those excuses for a few days before the truth hit her.
The explanation for Mr. Moneybags’ behavior was simple really. Garrett Chapman was plotting world domination. He was probably outlining his hostile takeover of city hall or mulling over which politician to buy next.
But when the same thing kept happening day after day, Emma knew it wasn’t an accident. He was ignoring her on purpose.
Was it supposed to be a prize of some sort? Did His Highness think that getting a break from the busy café during the breakfast rush would be a treat? Was riding in the express elevator supposed to be the highlight of her day?
Kyle tried to defend him, of course. “Looking out the window could be meditation,” he suggested. “I’m sure it’s like really calming. He must be centering himself.”
Emma didn’t care if she was in the presence of a Zen master. Today was going to be the last she served that rich weirdo.
She glanced at her watch and quickened her pace. If she managed to get to the café in the next five minutes, she’d have just enough time to throw on her apron and grab the coffee her boss had been personally pouring all week.
Hector was so proud that his grandmother’s recipe was so popular. Flavored with piloncillo , cinnamon, anise, and a hint of cloves, the café de olla was brewed in clay pots, giving it a distinctive flavor.
However, that flavor came at the expense of time. Brewing it the old-fashioned way took much longer than making a latte with the espresso machine. But in her opinion, the flavors didn’t compare.
And it seemed Mr. Chapman agreed, she thought with a sigh.
Emma was taking a shortcut through the parking garage when she heard it. The meow. One too high-pitched and tiny to belong to a mature cat.
Forgetting all about the time and the task awaiting her, Emma crouched, checking under car after car.
She was only a few yards down from the main bank of elevators and the side door that led to the café. This was where the bigwigs had reserved parking spaces. It was a line of high-end sports cars, Mercedes, BMWs, interspersed with the occasional shiny Range Rover—the sporty kind meant to be driven in the mud but never were. Not by any of the suits in this building.
She had almost made it to the fire-engine red Ferrari next to the door when it swung open.
“Emma,” Bethany called out, her mouth turning up at the sight of her least favorite coworker on her hands and knees. “Did you lose something?”
“I heard a meow. I think there’s a kitten hiding somewhere here.”
Bethany wrinkled her nose. “In the garage?”
“I heard it,” she insisted.
“Well, there’s nothing you can do about it now. You’ve kept the future father of my children waiting a whole—” Bethany glanced at her watch. “Seven minutes for his coffee.”
“Really?” She straightened, dusting off her hands. “He didn’t have someone else do it?”
“I told him it was better to send me, but he didn’t go for it. Hassan took it up yesterday because it was your day off and Mr. Chapman complained.”
“He did?”
Emma couldn’t believe it. Was Kyle right? Was Mr. Chapman giving her space to complain about those douchebags from that accounting firm?
Or was everyone’s equal rights hero the worst of the lot?
“I bet he wouldn’t mind if you took it up,” she murmured. Emma wanted to see if it was just her he was weird about or all women.
Bethany threw up her hands. “That’s what I keep saying.”
“What if I tell Hector I have a headache coming on and need to sit on my bucket?”
There were no seats in the café’s small dishwashing room, just two upturned buckets they used as seats when they needed a break and the café had too many patrons for them to sit at one of the tables.
Bethany’s eyes widened. “You would do that for me?”
Emma shrugged. “Of course.”
Bethany threw her arms open and hugged her tight enough for Emma to feel the outlines of her nipple rings pressing into her chest.
But Emma hugged her back despite knowing the other woman’s goodwill would only last until she got a real headache and needed to take an unscheduled break.
“Mr. Moneybags can’t complain if I’m incapacitated,” she reasoned, letting the other woman go.
“No, he can’t.” Bethany practically skipped to the door.
They walked into the café together feeling upbeat.
But Hector wasn’t willing to let her off the hook. “We can’t tell Mr. Chapman no,” he said, sounding horrified.
She tried to change his mind, pointing out they were keeping the billionaire waiting every minute they argued. But Hector had seen her at her worst enough times to know that she wasn’t quite at bucket-level pain yet.
“It has to be you,” he said, handing her the coffee cup.
Resigned to her fate, Emma took it and trudged to the elevators.
And once again, Garrett Chapman stared out his window and didn’t say a word.
Garrett listened to the door close behind him. Disgusted, he banged his head on the glass.
He didn’t even need to look at the security footage to know that Emma hadn’t even glanced at his carefully laid trap.
Instead, she’d said, “Here’s your coffee, sir!” Then she set the cup on the only clear corner of his desk, leaving without a backward glance, just like she had every day since this farce had begun.
Emma hadn’t even commented on the increasing clutter. It must have been killing her not to say anything. His high school nemesis had been incapable of keeping her thoughts to herself. Her smart mouth had gotten her in and out of trouble more times than he could count.
But did she take the bait this time? That was a big fat hell no.
Pivoting, Garrett surveyed the carefully laid-out disaster before him. Almost every square inch of his office had been covered with piles of fake documents.
He’d spent an entire weekend dummying up contracts and sensitive financial documents to lay the perfect trap. Garrett knew entrapment was a bit underhanded, but what other way did he have to expose her?
At first, he’d merely covered his desk with them, even half turning one so she could read the name of the Montevalle development with ease.
When that hadn’t proved tempting enough, he had started arranging papers on the side tables, an avalanche spreading out onto every available surface—even the couch.
And damn it, she hadn’t so much as batted an eye. Not even to inform him that his office was becoming a firetrap.
Sighing, he started stacking his fake documents into a big pile. He’d have to have Fletcher’s assistant shred them before his analysts saw them and demanded to know what the hell was going on.