Chapter Eighteen
Lumi
When I open my eyes in the morning, it’s to find myself wrapped around a sleeping Luka. At some point during the night, he must have joined me in the bed more fully because we are pressed together, and my head is lying on his bare chest. A chest covered in tattoos.
My head comes up too fast, and I nearly moan out loud as the room spins.
Not as bad as yesterday, but still bad enough that I don’t want to jump up and run.
I also don’t want to wake him up just yet.
It might be wrong, but I really want to take a long pause and check out the art that’s been laid out in front of me. Do most CEO’s have this many tattoos?
They seem to cover his entire upper body, all the way down to his elbows, but not below.
He moves in his sleep, causing me to cover my mouth so the gasp that falls out won’t wake him.
He doesn’t wake, though, and just rearranges himself, snuggling against me even more.
He whispers, and it sounds like he says my name, but that might be wishful thinking on my part.
Either way, I need to get out of here and check in with the Agency.
Hopefully, they’ll be understanding about my accident, and I’ll be able to keep my job.
The very thought has me slinking my way out of his grasp, which is no easy feat considering every time I think I might be getting close, he moves and wraps me up tighter.
I finally make it to a standing position and dress quickly. To hide the bloodstain on the front of the green dress, I borrow one of Luka’s sweaters and throw it over my top. I think this is the one he wore last night because it smells like him…or maybe that’s me, since I was all wrapped up in him.
I look back one last time at the man lying in the bed with his chest bare and his face softer than I’ve ever seen it before.
He looks so different from any other time I’ve seen him.
Not that he looks any less commanding or eye-catching.
In fact, getting to see him like this makes me fall a little more… Oh God!
I quietly close the door and tamp down the fear that rises inside of me. There is no way I am in love with this man! I can’t be. Nothing could be worse than stupid me taking his kindness and sweet nature as something it isn’t and idiotically falling in love. I don’t even know this man.
I make it down to the first floor, completely caught up in my own thoughts. And nearly run into a big, tall man standing in the way of me and the door. He’s almost as tall as Luka and seems vaguely familiar.
“Can I help you with anything, ma’am?”
“Oh, um, I…no.” God, I hope I wasn’t mumbling out loud like a completely insane person, like I suspect I was.
“Are you sure?” He might be big, but he has kind eyes.
“Um, actually, could you call me a cab or maybe an Uber?”
“What if I get Steve to take you wherever it is you want to go?”
Steve? “Um, I'm not sure. I need to go to two places, and I might be a while at the first one.”
“Steve won’t mind to wait on you at all. That’s what he does, ma’am. Waits for Mr. Frost to tell him where to go.”
“Oh! I don’t want to get him in any trouble. Won’t he be missed if he’s off running me around everywhere? I don’t want Mr. Frost to get angry at him for not being ready to take him where he needs to be.”
“I’m fairly certain Mr. Frost won’t mind at all. You’re one of the people on the list.”
“The list?” There’s a list?
“Of the people Steve should drive around and wait on.”
“Oh.” I’m on the list. Probably because L knew I would have to shop for him when the time came. “If it’s no trouble.”
“None whatsoever.”
The man stands with me as we wait for Steve to pull up. It doesn’t take him long, almost as if he were already waiting for someone to need him, lending credence to what the man beside me was telling me. It’s then that I realize I’ve not told him my name. Or gotten his.
“I’m Lumi, by the way, but you seem to already know that.”
“Denver, ma’am.”
“It was very nice to meet you.”
“It was very nice to meet you, ma’am.” It sounds like he adds a ‘finally’ under his breath, but if he did, I couldn’t say for sure.
He helps me in the back of the SUV and steps back, already speaking into a communication device on his wrist that I hadn’t noticed before.
Perhaps alerting the people at the gate that we are on our way.
I put it out of my mind as I rehearse what I am going to tell my boss.
When we pull up in front of the building where the Agency is located, I try to tell Steve he doesn’t have to wait on me if he needs to be somewhere else, but he only shakes his head and tells me the same thing Denver told me.
My palms are sweaty as I select my destination in the elevator. The smell of spruce is almost overpowering. I step off the elevator, but don’t get much further before being grabbed by Doris and jogged into my boss’s office.
“So, Ms. Lumi. We didn’t check in last evening after our post ended. Why is that?”
Oh, crap. I can already see Doris looking me up and down and taking note of the sweater I have on.
“I, um, had an accident at the client’s workplace and…”
“An accident? I bet you had an accident?” Doris all but barks the words out between her snarled-up lips as she looks down on me disapprovingly.
What? What does that mean?
“No, I really had an accident.”
“Like the ripped dress the last time you had an accident?”
“What? No. I fell and hit my head.” I lift my bangs so I can show them my bandage.
“So, you were in the hospital last night?”
Oh shit! My boss hasn’t taken his eyes off me since I walked in, and I can already tell he’s not going to like my answer.
“No. Mr. Frost insisted I stay with him as I needed some help last night and didn’t have anyone else.”
“So, you spent the night with Mr. Frost?” The way he says it makes it sound less than innocent.
“Well, I…”
“I told you when you hired her, it would lead to nothing but trouble. How is the company going recover from this? Fire her before someone finds out we hired a prostitute to be one of our elves.”
“Prostitute?! I’m not a prostitute! I’ve never even…” I stop myself before I can embarrass myself any further.
“Lumi, I’m sorry. You can see the position this puts us in. I can’t have my elves being call girls, no matter how rich the client is.”
“But, Mr. Dent, nothing happened. I wasn’t even…” He starts with a kind of fake compassion that I imagine every boss having to fire someone they don’t like, even as he looks down his nose at me.
“Enough, young lady!” He barks at me this time. No more faking sympathy. “I hired you despite you having no experience. I cannot condone this behavior. Return your elf suits at once. We’ll bill you for the ruined one.”
“Bill me?” I thought that was already taken out of what Janie paid them. “But…I don’t…I don’t have any money to pay for it.”
“Then I suggest you do what you do best, Lumi,” Doris’s voice is laced with contempt and a sick kind of glee, “get busy on your back.”
My mouth falls open, and I sit forward. The room is spinning, and I’m not convinced it’s because of the bump on my head. I may be sick right here in front of them.
“Please, Mr. Dent, you don’t understand…”
“You seem not to understand, Lumi. You’ve been terminated. Please leave the building and leave the elf outfit you have on.”
“What? I don’t…I don’t have anything else to wear.”
“You should have thought about that before you whored yourself out last night.” Doris gives me a cruel smile as she thinks of me having to walk out of the building in nothing but Luka’s sweater.
I look from one to the other but find no compassion, no understanding. And then the door bangs open. Both Doris and Mr. Dent jump as the massive man before us strides in.
“Mr. Frost? I…” Mr. Dent stands up and offers a hand, but Luka doesn’t shake it. “I can assure you this is not how we run the…,”
“Enough,” He practically bellows.
“You can’t save your…,” my face flushes as I wait for Doris to say the word whore again, and this time in front of Luka, “friend by throwing your weight around this time, sir.”
“You’re fired.”
Shock morphs across Doris’s face.
“You can’t fire me!”
“I can, and I have. You…you’re also fired,” he points at Mr. Dent, “because I now own your company.”