Chapter 3
Chapter
Three
BLAIRE
Sitting in my small cubicle, I wasn’t sure if it was possible for work to get any worse. Everything had piled up over the last few weeks, leaving me working twice as hard just to keep up.
Burying my face in my hands, I wondered where the hell I went wrong.
I couldn’t get his face out of my mind. He screamed trouble, everything from his ripped black jeans, to those goddamn tattoos I couldn’t stop imagining.
I hadn’t even heard his voice, and yet he already occupied a large part of my brain.
Already. As if there was going to be more of him in my head. I scoffed, scrubbing my hands over my face. There would never be more.
I needed to focus on fixing my sleep. I needed a list. I grabbed my computer, and started typing out the words as they came to me.
Step One: Call your psychologist. Yes, Blaire. The psychologist you insisted you didn’t need to see again. Call them.
Step Two: Research holistic methods to help with sleep. Melatonin, maybe?
Step Three: Stop with the stupid nightmares already. It was just my mind wandering, I should be able to control it. The nightmare was helping nothing.
Step Four: Convince Harry I’m ready for the promotion he mentioned months ago. Promotion = more money = safer apartment = no more bad dreams.
Step Five: Stop thinking about the damn man at the coffee shop. It’s never going to happen. Stop being an idiot, and
“Knock, knock.”
I slammed my laptop shut at the sound of a voice behind me, and whipped around in my chair to see Duke, one of my colleagues.
He smiled at me, a smile that had seen years of braces as a teen, and whitening treatment as an adult.
It was too perfect, and unnerved me when I thought about it for too long.
“What can I do for you?” I asked, trying to not appear as unsettled as I felt. How long had he been standing there? Had he seen my stupid list? I wouldn’t put it past him to spy on me.
Duke and I had gone on a single date, years ago when we both started at the firm.
Like countless women before me, I found myself suckered in by his charm, his perfect wardrobe, and the way his light brown hair never seemed out of place.
Halfway through our dinner, I realized that was all he had going for him.
Duke had replaced actual personality with what he no doubt considered sparkling perfectionism.
While it was enticing from a distance, it bored me out of my mind.
“I had a great meeting with Harry this morning, and he asked me if I could send you over on my way back to my office. Hopefully I left him in an excellent mood for you.” Duke leaned against the cubicle wall, casually crossing one ankle in front of the other. Perfectly, of course.
I rolled my eyes. After our disastrous date, Duke wanted to go out again. I tried to let him down easy, but he wasn’t the kind of guy who dealt with rejection well. I wasn’t sure he had ever forgiven me for it.
“Aren’t you just the sweetest?” I cooed.
Duke shrugged. “It’s no secret that Harry needs someone to fill that executive role. If we’re being honest with ourselves, I’m the best candidate.”
There it was again, that word. Honest. I was beginning to doubt anyone knew what honesty was, besides something you told yourself enough times there was nothing else to believe.
I huffed, getting to my feet. “You and I both know I brought in more clients last year."
Duke smiled, a slimy thing I wanted to wipe off his perfectly smug face. “Maybe. But we also both know who’s been on top of their game lately. And you, sweetheart, have been sleepwalking for weeks.”
“I’m not your sweetheart. Besides, even half asleep, I’m twice the project manager you’ll ever be.” I pushed past his large frame, but before I could clear the door, he grabbed my wrist.
His voice dropped. “Watch yourself, Blaire. This promotion is mine. You’d be better off accepting the inevitable.”
“Let go of me,” I snapped. I tugged my wrist free, and with one last glare, turned and held my head high, weaving through the cubicles toward Harry’s office.
Duke was petty, so there was a definite possibility he’d never forgiven me for rejecting him.
I did my best to stay on his good side, as hard as it was sometimes.
If I hadn’t been so exhausted and out of it today, I wouldn’t have pushed back as much as I did.
Duke most likely came from money, influential parents, and connections I would never have.
Pissing off someone like him typically wasn’t advisable.
I stopped in front of Harry’s large office, taking a deep breath and straightening my shirt. Keep it together, Blaire. It’s just a meeting. You’ve done this a thousand times before.
I knocked on the solid wood door, and Harry’s voice carried out from inside. “Come in.”
Pushing through, I put on my most charming smile. Harry’s desk faced the door, and he bent at a sharp angle over a pile of colorful paperwork.
“Duke said you were ready to see me.” My voice sounded a lot more confident than I felt, my nerves still shattered from my strange encounter this morning.
Harry looked up, gesturing toward the chair opposite him.
“Blaire, yes. Please, sit.” His soft belly, gentle face, and bald head formed the father I’d long been missing, but his general aura screamed authority.
Harry might have looked like a pushover, but he hadn’t climbed to power without being good at what he did.
I sat, squeezing my hands in my lap as if the pressure could stop the trembling. My bagel threatened to make a return, all over Harry’s massive desk.
Leaning back in his chair, he steepled his fingers. “Look, I’m going to be blunt with you, because I feel like you can handle it, and I respect you enough for you to deserve it.”
“Yes, sir. I appreciate the honesty.” The longer I sat in front of my boss, the less I had to force myself to pretend to be the capable woman he hired. I knew I had talent, and was worthy of whatever he was going to extend to me.
“I need someone to take over Bob’s role.
We’ve been running one executive short for far too long, and it’s putting too much work on my desk.
I’m too old to be wining and dining new clients, and I want you in that role, Blaire.
You’re bright, far brighter than most people your age.
You’re a hard worker, and have a personality our clients can relate to. ” Harry leveled me with a steady gaze.
“Thank you.” I blinked, trying to process what he said. He wanted me. While I wasn’t surprised, I hadn’t been expecting him to offer me the position today. Duke seemed pretty confident in my office.
“But…”
With that single word, my stomach dropped. “But?” I repeated. Here it came. The other shoe.
“Your work hasn’t been up to the level I know you’re capable of for the last little while.
You’ve been late more than once. You’ve forgotten meetings and missed a deadline.
I want you to be in charge of your own team, but I can’t take you on with your current performance.
I don’t know what’s going on in your personal life, but it’s affecting your work. ”
“I completely understand, sir. There has been a…situation, but it’s been resolved.
I promise you, my focus will be entirely back on this company from here on out.
” I hoped. It wasn’t really a lie. Not the kind I was used to, anyway.
I thought back to the plan I had typed up on my computer.
If I followed the plan, I could be back to myself in no time.
Harry gave me a sharp nod. “That’s what I like to hear.
You have too much potential to waste it on some boy, if that’s where your mind has been lately.
This is my proposal. The board isn’t expecting my decision until next month.
You show me the same drive and commitment you had before, and it’ll be your name on Bob’s old office door.
Otherwise, I’ll be forced to name Duke as his replacement.
He’s not my first choice, but…” He shrugged, not needing to finish his sentence for me to understand.
My instinct was to be annoyed with his assumption I was messed up over a boy, but I knew Harry meant it only out of concern for me.
His daughter was close to my age, and in a way he was kind of right.
I was messed up over a boy. The only difference was that I was dreaming of killing them instead of kissing them.
Duke wasn’t his first choice, but his work hadn’t slacked over the last few months. He wasn’t suffering from nightmares that kept him up at night. In fact, the only thing keeping him awake was probably a recurring dream about a bad haircut that never happened.
Meanwhile, I woke up thinking I was covered in blood.
I saw dead bodies in front of me.
I thought I had been covering my ass at work enough, but obviously not.
I met Harry’s stare easily, conveying every bit of the woman who had brought herself up from the ground.
“You have nothing to worry about. The situation has been taken care of. Come next month, there will be no need to consider any name other than mine.”
Harry grinned, different than Duke’s smirk and yet similar. These men were used to getting what they wanted, and they both wanted something from me. “That’s the spirit.”
He stood up, offering me his hand to shake. “You know, Blaire, I see something of myself in you.”
Murder? Violence?
“Diligence. Commitment. You’re willing to do whatever it takes to get what you want.”
The memory of the dream gave me tingles in my fingertips. “I’ll make you proud.”
Maybe that was the kind of thing I would’ve said to my own dad.
He returned to the papers strewn across his desk, a new marketing campaign for a magazine I never read.
With a sigh, I trekked back to my desk, my plan to get my life back on track cycling through my head.
I couldn’t afford to go backward. I had worked so hard to get where I was, and I deserved to at least knock on that glass ceiling, if not smash it.
I wouldn’t go back.
It wasn’t an option.