Chapter Thirteen #3
"Yes," she declared, bringing her hands in closer together, tapping the desk three times.
Nervous energy. "Out with the doom and gloom.
What's it to be? Shoots under my nails? Body in a ditch?
A swirly? A really bad Indian burn? Though, I don't think it is PC to say that anymore.
But I don't know any other term for it. They really need to work on that.
I can't even fathom the origins of that.
Such a weird saying—What?" she asked when I must have been giving her a look.
"You done babbling?" I asked, tone dry.
"Reagan?" another voice behind me asked, female, light.
"Not likely," she added as my head swiveled, finding a woman around Reagan's age with somewhat unruly coppery red hair hanging down past her rather ample chest. Her face was angular, an inverted triangle with a strong forehead and gently pointed chin.
Her blue eyes danced. Her artificially red lips curled into a smile as she looked me over.
"Though, I think you could find some fun ways of shutting her up," she offered, smile getting saucy as she moved to drop her hip on the edge of her boss's desk, facing me. "She'd probably really be into that."
"Krissy," Reagan said, tone a little strained. Whether it was annoyance or embarrassment was hard to tell. "Remember our talk about putting on your professional pants when you come to work?"
"I didn't put any pants on this morning," Krissy said, clearly inviting me to take a look at her long, shapely legs on full display thanks to the short hem of her blue and white polkadot dress.
"Krissy, down girl," Reagan demanded with what sounded like a laugh in that sexy voice of hers. "Go sit on a block of ice. We have, ah, business to discuss here."
"Oh, are you the new advertising guy?" Krissy asked, recovering just enough to stand up straight, letting her hem slip back down an inch or two.
"Yes, yes he is," Reagan agreed, lying a tad clumsily to my ears, but since Krissy had no reason to suspect dishonesty, she seemed to miss it.
"Right. Well, can I get you a coffee? Latte? Cappuccino? Tea? Green juice?"
"Green juice?" I asked, lip curling.
"Reagan makes it fresh every morning. Spinach, kale, celery, dandelion greens, wheatgrass, spirulina, ginger, and lemon."
"That sounds fucking disgusting," I told her honestly.
To that, Krissy laughed, full, uninhibited. I had a feeling that uninhibited was her default setting. "You strike me as a black coffee kind of guy."
"That's more like it," I agreed.
"Reagan? Soy mocha?" she asked.
"I, ah, yeah," she agreed, clearly feeling a little off-kilter.
"Extra shot?" Krissy asked, interpreting her boss's odd mood to tiredness.
"Two."
"Oh, watch out," Krissy said, moving past me, giving me a smirk. "If you thought she was chatty before, wait until you see her after an extra two shot latte."
With that, she was gone, leaving a heavy silence between the two of us for a long minute. "I'm the new advertisement guy, huh?"
"Well, I couldn’t exactly tell her why you were really here, could I?"
"Can't imagine it would be good for office morale to know their boss is a creepy stalker."
"Anyway," she said, sidestepping the title. "What is to be my threat, so I can get on with my day?"
"I..." I had no idea, honestly. Telling them to back off typically worked. I was getting the odd feeling that this course of action was not going to work for Reagan Hoffman. "A restraining order?" I supposed.
"That could be embarrassing if I were served at work," she mused, lips pursing a bit as she contemplated the idea.
"I imagine so," I agreed.
"Though, really, people can get served for any number of reasons.
Even in a professional capacity," she thought out loud.
"Alright," she agreed, nodding, moving to stand.
"I have been sufficiently warned," she declared, slipping into her shoes, then moving toward the door, leaving me to haul myself out of the chair and hobble behind her.
"Krissy, can you put his in a to-go cup?" she asked. "He isn't staying."
"Pity," Krissy pouted, but poured my coffee out of a ceramic glass and into a stainless fucking steel one.
She screwed on the cap and handed it to me before walking back to make Reagan's drink, a much more complicated process judging by her concentration on the task.
"You give out stainless steel mugs to people who visit your office?" I scoffed, shaking my head.
"We try not to produce any waste here," she informed me, chin lifting a bit.
Proud. Likely a change she had implemented.
And I guess it was commendable. "Besides," she added, tapping her delicate pink nail on the side of the cup, “it’s free advertisement," she finished, drawing my attention to the logo on the side.
"Have a good day. Try to ice that hip of yours," she called back as she disappeared into her office.
With nothing else to do, and knowing Krissy would probably devour me whole if I lingered, I made my way toward the steps, grumbling all the way down.
I got to the parking lot before I raised the cup, taking a long swig of too hot liquid, nearly groaning in surprised pleasure.
Good fucking coffee.
I shouldn't have been surprised.
Everything about this business operation, and Reagan Hoffman herself screamed money.
There was something about people who were born with it, raised with it, had known little else but the plush comfort of it.
It was in the big things, of course. The cars that were more than a downpayment on a house. The fancy shoes with a certain color staining the bottom of them.
But it was in the smaller things too. A very particular kind of speech, something that often made me think of old black and white movies. Polished. Cultured. Even when rambling. It was in the posture, in the confidence.
Reagan had all of that.
But seemingly none of the pompousness that could accompany that. Or the shallowness. Or even the entitlement.
It was refreshing.
And maybe a bit too appealing.
"Fuck," I hissed, shaking my head at myself as I slid my ass onto my seat, then had to grab the jeans covering my knee to lift my aching other side into the car.
It had never been hard—for me, at least, clearly Atlas was a different story—to stay on the side of professionalism.
Our clientele of the female persuasion usually fell into three types. The rich older woman with an attitude, the young, famous woman, or the damsel in distress.
None of those appealed to me.
I'd never wanted to fuck a client.
And certainly never the person who was causing problems for the client.
There'd be no denying, though, that when she had laughed back there in her office, my cock had started to stir to life.
Just the kind of complication I did not need on the job.
Especially, I decided as I backed out of the lot and waited to turn onto the main road once more, because Reagan Hoffman did not seem like she was going to stop.
Why else would she ask what the threat was? And then proceed to muse the ways in which she could excuse being served papers as anything other than for a restraining order.
She didn't plan to stop.
Why?
I had no idea.
She seemed, by all accounts, to have her shit together.
And after a bit more searching around back at the office, eating a bag of chips because Atlas had nabbed my lunch and, of course, had not replaced it, I felt even more sure that she was not the kind of person who stalked assholes like Michael McDermot.
She had gone to Yale.
She had a large friend circle if her Facebook was anything to go by. She'd actually hit the limit.
She was well-traveled, according to her pictures littering her Instagram account.
Her in a barely-there white bikini on light sand beach, giant sunglasses swallowing up most of her face.
Or her on a white mountain clad head to toe in deep purple snow gear.
Eating pizza in Rome. Sitting on a cliff overlooking the sea in Greece. Sipping coffee in France.
If there was a place people liked to travel, she had been there. And she had the picture to prove it.
People like that, who seemed successful, educated, worldly, and happy—she was beaming in every single picture—well, they typically didn't start stalking some jerk twice her age.
It wasn't even like Michael was a particularly good-looking older guy. Women could and often did go for a silver fox. But his hair was thinning in the front, smattered with very obvious hair plugs. His forehead was all hard creases of displeasure.
Sure, there was the money. The money was enough for some people.
But Reagan had her own money.
And she didn't strike me as someone who would put up with his dickishness just to get more.
So why would she stalk him?
Yeah, that was the question.
I had a feeling I would have another opportunity to figure that out, though.
Maybe even later that very night.