Chapter 3
Chapter
Three
Itook a moment to compose myself. Cress was right—apart from a few stolen kisses, so blisteringly hot I flushed just thinking about them—Donovan and I hadn’t taken anything further. It had only been a couple of days since he kissed me on my doorstep. He wasn’t the problem. I was.
I had trouble accepting the fact that he wanted me. Sure, I was great and all—I was in fantastic shape, I looked after myself, I had a great job…
But he was literally a fae Prince.
He was the most astonishingly handsome man I’d ever set eyes on. The bravest, most capable, most vibrant and sexy creature in existence. He could have anyone he wanted. Anyone in all the Worlds, but he chose me.
I was a little worried that he wasn’t really choosing me at all.
Donovan’s commitment to duty was everything.
I remembered him saying once he would have married a troll if it meant securing the safety and prosperity of his kingdom, so I still had my doubts whether he was interested in me because he liked me or because he was just being a good little prince.
After all, the prophecy said that I would bond with one of them. Better him than his evil brother.
But I desperately wanted him to want me for me.
I knew without a doubt that I was in love with him.
I couldn’t stop thinking about him. The way he moved—graceful and silent, stalking like a predatory cat—the way he ate everything within reaching distance with relish and obvious enjoyment, the way he subtly maneuvered his body in between me and danger, even the way his eyes twinkled when he found something funny.
He had declared himself obsessed with me in exactly the same way… but I just couldn’t let myself believe it. Not yet.
There was no time to dwell on it right now, though—I had people to interview. I metaphorically took off my Chosen One hat again, pulled on my Department Manager hat, and got back to work.
The next interview went just as badly as the others—a woman with a heavy brow told me quite bluntly that she was only interested in the role if it was one-hundred percent remote, so she could work from home.
When I patiently explained that the role was never advertised as remote and would never be remote, she rudely stood up and walked out without another word.
The next young man was confused as to why he’d ever have to come into the office in the first place.
Frustrated, I took a break and did a circuit of the call center floor, putting out fires wherever I found them.
Dora in the complaints team was looking pale and shaky—it turned out she’d gotten a nasty threat from a particularly disgruntled customer—so I logged her off and told her to take an early lunch.
Frederika and Sammy from the sales team were almost coming to blows over who was going to get the commission points, so I separated them, asked them to both read the policy documents relating to where commission points were to be awarded, and come back to me if they had any other questions.
Then it was time to get back in the meeting room for more interviews.
After I curtly dismissed a woman who had no idea what she was interviewing for, and another young man who talked over me the whole time, insisting we could train AI to do the jobs of our employees, I took another break to bang my head on the table for a couple of minutes.
The next two applicants walked out when they discovered the job was definitely not remote and had no flexibility for work hours.
Cheryl knocked on the door. “Your next applicant is here.”
“Cheryl,” I waved at her. “Did you advertise this job as remote?”
“No. We don’t specify anything in particular when we post the listing.”
“You don’t give any details? No hours, no salary?”
She let out a little snort. “Of course not.”
I frowned. “Why not?”
“So we can widen the pool of applicants. We just put down that hours and salary are negotiable. They’re not.” She shrugged. “But they don’t need to know that.”
I resisted the urge to bang my head on the table. “Don’t you think that’s counterproductive?”
She looked at me, confused. “I don't understand. We just did what we usually do. We posted the ad and filtered the applicant responses, then called in the top twelve for you to interview.”
“Did you tell anyone the hours, or the salary, or the expectations?”
She rolled her eyes. “No. Of course not. That’s not how things are done, Susan.”
“Don’t you think it would be a better idea to specify exactly what the job is, exactly what the compensation is, and exactly what we’re looking for, so we don’t waste anyone’s time?”
She stared at me. “No.”
I let out a sigh. “What is it you usually do? What did the job ad say?”
Cheryl waved her hand in the air. “Exciting opportunity to lead a team of corporate go-getters in a cutting-edge industry. We just get the program to pick out keywords in their resumes. And we filter out all the non-Anglo sounding names.” Suddenly, her eyes widened.
She slapped a hand over her mouth. “Forget I said that.”
I gaped at her for a second. “Please tell me you were joking.”
She stared back at me. After a minute, her expression hardened. “You know how this game is played, Susan.”
I did know. In the old days, it was much worse—executives would order Human Resources to filter out any applicant that didn’t sound white or male.
In my early days as a stockbroker, I’d used my initials rather than my full name on my resume just to get my foot in the door for an interview.
And even then, I had to be twice as competent, twice as experienced, twice as dazzling in the interview to get the job.
Like Ginger Rogers said, “I did everything Fred did, only backwards and in high heels.”
I would add—and bleeding for five days out of every month.
Being a woman in the corporate jungle was tough. But I still managed it. I couldn’t imagine how much harder it would be if my name was Sudiksha instead of Susan.
Judging by the obstinate expression on Cheryl’s face, there was no point in complaining about it. I could almost hear the thoughts bouncing around in her square-shaped head. Who are you going to complain to, anyway? Human Resources?
They weren’t there to protect employees. Their sole job was to protect the company. The only thing that scared Human Resources was the threat of bad publicity.
“Cheryl,” I said, my voice ice-cold. “Do you want your name attached to the exposé on discriminatory hiring practices?”
Her glare vanished. “You wouldn’t.”
“I would.”
Her eyes narrowed. “Bitch,” she hissed. “You got one little promotion and now you think you run this whole show? I could get you fired so fast?—”
“Except that would make everything worse, because I could go on the record as being silenced for lodging an objection to Base Budget Insurance’s hiring practices.
” I tapped my phone, silently indicating I’d been recording our conversation.
I hadn’t, but I’d always been good at bluffing.
“I imagine that wouldn’t be good for publicity. ”
Cheryl was silent. She ground her jaw for a minute. “What do you want?”
I wanted the whole system overhauled. It was expensive, frustrating, time-consuming, counterproductive, and discriminatory. Burn the whole thing to the ground and start again.
Baby steps first. I took a deep breath. “Change the listing. Add the salary, location, and position expectations. I’ll filter the responses myself.”
She gasped. “The location, too? You want to give everything away?”
“Yes. I’ve wasted my whole day interviewing people, Cheryl. Half of them don’t want the job when they find out what it is, the other half lied through their teeth about their experience and qualifications so they could get through your stupid filters.”
She pursed her little mouth up so hard it looked like a cat’s butthole.
“Fine. But the next one is already here, so you might as well interview him.” She turned around and said something under her breath, something I didn’t catch, something like not that you deserve to breathe the same air as this unholy-looking piece of man flesh… .
My heart knocked against my ribs as Donovan walked into the room, tall, graceful, loose-limbed and lithe like a big cat. Cheryl closed the door with a bang.
The atmosphere in the room grew electric.
The meeting room wasn’t big, but it felt even smaller with the handsome fae prince taking up most of the space.
Donovan stared down at me, his dark emerald eyes hot.
Good grief, he was tall and so imposing.
The mundane light-blue business shirt wrapped around his broad shoulders and hugged his flat stomach.
His black dress pants were perfectly tailored to his long, powerful legs.
He’d pulled his long black hair back into a knot, showing off the carved line of his jaw and his perfect high cheekbones.
I gaped at him stupidly. His beauty, as usual, knocked the breath out of me.
Say something, Susan.
“Just so you know, the job is not remote,” I mumbled.
His lips twitched. “I will keep that in mind.”
We stared at each other for a long moment. “Uh… not that I’m unhappy to see you, Donovan…” Oh, dear God, my cheeks were growing hot. “But why are you here?”
“I confess I could not stay away,” he murmured, moving a little closer. “Please do not be offended, Chosen. I know you are capable of taking care of yourself, but you are meeting strangers in this room. I worry for your safety.”