Chapter 1 Andrea
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Andrea
Pros: no more data reports, no more grunting boss, no more heels before sunrise. Cons: rent existed, student loans existed, and my grandmother’s voice in my head saying Andrea Marie Grey, you are not a quitter existed.
The cons won. They always did.
I dragged myself out of bed, showered, dried my hair, put on a floral pink blouse and a flowy skirt that made me feel like a person instead of a corporate drone, and left for the office before the sun had fully committed to being up.
Two years of working for Finneas Kingsley and my mornings started in the dark. That was just my life now.
The top floor of Kingsley Corp was quiet when I got there, which was normal because it was always quiet.
This level belonged to Finneas and Finneas alone, with my desk stationed outside his office and a handful of conference rooms that only got used when someone was important enough to be summoned up here.
The lights were still on their dim automatic setting and my heels echoed across the tile as I walked to my desk with my coffee, the sound bouncing off the walls in a way that made me feel like I was the only person alive at this hour, which I probably was, because no sane human woke up this early by choice.
The light in Finneas’s office was already on.
Of course it was. The man beat me here every single morning no matter how early I showed up, and I was half convinced he just never left.
Three used coffee cups were lined up on the edge of his desk, visible through the glass wall, with a fourth in his hand.
I kept a mental tally because someone had to, and it certainly wasn’t going to be him.
I set my bag down, turned around, and saw it.
A stack of files thick enough to use as a doorstop, sitting dead center on my desk. A sticky note on top in Finneas’s sharp handwriting: Tomorrow. No excuses.
I picked up the stack and flipped through the first few pages. Then the next few, and a few more after that, just to make sure I wasn’t hallucinating, because this was a week’s worth of data compilation. A full week. And he wanted it by tomorrow.
I grabbed the files and walked into his office without knocking.
“This is a week’s worth of work.”
Finneas was behind his desk, dark hair slightly disheveled, stubble lining his sharp jaw, reading something on his screen without looking up.
He was in a dark button-down with the sleeves rolled to his elbows and he looked like he hadn’t slept, but somehow that just made his face more annoyingly angular.
The man had no right looking that good at seven in the morning after what was clearly an all-nighter, and I resented him for it.
“Then work faster,” he said, still not looking at me.
“I’m one person, Finneas. One. Singular. I have two hands and one brain and there are only so many hours in a day.”
He looked up. Dark eyes, flat expression, jaw set.
That look had a reputation on this floor and every floor below it.
I’d seen grown men with MBAs stammer and backtrack under it.
I’d watched a senior account manager physically take a step backward once when Finneas turned it on him during a budget review.
I had been immune to it since week three of my employment.
“You’ll have a master summary on your desk by end of day,” I told him, keeping my voice even. “The full detailed report will be done tomorrow. That is the best anyone could do with this timeline, and you know it.”
He held my gaze for three full seconds. Then he waved his hand, that sharp flick of his wrist that I’d learned over two years meant fine, do it your way, I’ll allow it.
I didn’t leave.
“Also, that’s your fourth cup of coffee and it’s not even ten.”
“Don’t tell me what to do.”
“I’m not telling you what to do. I’m telling you that if you keep drinking coffee at this rate, you’re going to vibrate through the floor and I’ll have to explain to the building manager why the CEO left a Finneas-shaped hole in the ceiling of the floor below us.”
His jaw twitched. Not a smile. Finneas Kingsley did not smile. But that tiny twitch at the corner of his mouth was the closest thing I had ever gotten out of him in two years, and I had to physically stop myself from pumping my fist.
“If you switch to decaf for the rest of the day,” I continued, pressing my advantage because I had zero self-preservation instincts, “I won’t use pink wallpaper as the background for all your presentations this week.”
He grunted.
I had spent two years learning his grunt language and I was basically fluent at this point.
This particular grunt meant I will tolerate your threats because you are competent and I don’t want to train another assistant.
It also had a slight exhale at the end, which meant he was almost amused, which I counted as a personal victory.
“Your meeting with the Hargrove account is at two,” I said, shifting back to business. “I moved your three o’clock to Thursday because their team lead is out with the flu, and I already sent the revised agenda for the board call on Friday.”
He didn’t say thank you, because he never said thank you. Just looked back at his screen, which in Finneas language meant noted and approved.
I went back to my desk and worked like a woman possessed.
No lunch break. A granola bar from my drawer at eleven and a handful of almonds at two and that was it.
I reorganized the entire data set, built a master summary with color-coded categories, cross-referenced three quarters of financials, and compiled the whole thing into a clean document with indexed tabs.
My eyes were dry and my shoulders ached and I had been in the same chair for so long that my left foot had fallen asleep twice.
At some point during the afternoon, I caught him watching me through the glass wall of his office.
Our eyes met and he looked away first, back to his screen, like he hadn’t been staring at all.
My stomach did a traitorous little flip and I had to pretend I was reading an email so nobody, and by that I meant Finneas, would see the color rising up my neck.
By 6 pm, I dropped the finished summary on his desk with a satisfying thwack.
“Ahead of schedule. You’re welcome.”
He picked it up, read the first page, flipped to the second, then skipped ahead to the index.
I stood there, arms crossed, waiting for anything.
A “good job” or a “thank you” or a “wow Andrea, you are a miracle worker and this company would crumble to dust without you.” I wasn’t picky. I would have taken a nod.
He set it down.
“Fine.”
Not “acceptable.” Not even “good work” or a grunt of approval. Just “fine,” delivered with the same enthusiasm a person would use to describe gas station coffee.
I turned and walked back to my desk and grabbed my bag and my jacket and headed for the elevator.
Two years. Two years of delivering flawless work and getting “fine” in return.
Two years of pushing back and being pushed right back.
Two years of Finneas Kingsley and his grunts and his jaw and his dark eyes and his rolled-up sleeves and his complete inability to say two kind words in a row.
And I was still here. Every morning. Before the sun came up.
I didn’t want to think too hard about why.
The walk to Bonalisa Animal Shelter took twenty minutes, and I used every single one of them to decompress from whatever fresh torture Finneas had put me through that day.
The route was muscle memory at this point: left on Peachtree, past the dry cleaner that always had a cat sleeping in the window, right on Clover, down three blocks to the shelter tucked between a laundromat and a hardware store with a hand-painted sign over the door.
Maryjane was behind the front counter sorting through intake forms when I walked in.
I’d met her during my first week in Atlanta, when I was homesick and lonely and wandered into the shelter because I missed being around animals.
She’d handed me a leash, pointed at a hyperactive beagle, and said “walk him or he’s going to eat another shoe.
” We’d been best friends ever since. She was thirty, dark-haired, always had paint somewhere on her clothes from the mural she’d been working on in the back hallway for six months, and tonight she was wearing a t-shirt that said “Dog Mom” in glitter letters that were mostly peeled off.
“Bad day?” she asked without looking up.
“What gave it away?”
“You have the face. The Finneas face.”
I dropped into the folding chair next to the counter and put my forehead on the desk. The laminate was cool against my skin and I stayed there for a few seconds, just breathing.
“He gave me a week’s worth of work with a one-day deadline,” I said into the counter. “I finished it early because I’m incredible, and he said ‘fine.’ That’s it. Fine.”
“Mmhmm.”
“The man communicates entirely in grunts, Mary. He has a vocabulary of four sounds and a hand wave. I’ve literally been studying his grunts for two years like I’m a wildlife researcher and he’s a rare species of grumpy bear.”
“Mmhmm.”
“And he drinks coffee like he’s trying to single-handedly keep Colombia’s entire economy afloat.”
“Andrea.” Maryjane set down her pen and gave me a look, the one that meant she was about to say something I didn’t want to hear and was going to enjoy every second of it.
“You have been complaining about this man to me for two years. Two whole years. And in all that time, you have never once said you’re going to quit. ”
I sat up straight. “The job market is bad.”
“Uh huh.”
“And I have student loans. And the economy is, you know.” I waved my hand vaguely. “The economy.”
“Uh huh.”
“What?”
She leaned forward on her elbows. “And of course this has absolutely nothing to do with the fact that you have a massive crush on your hot boss.”