I ignored his sarcasm and flipped my hair over my shoulder with what I hoped was an air of defiance. “I won’t take no for an answer.”
Caine’s already dark eyes shadowed with irritation as he said with a threatening calmness, “You’ll take it and you’ll get out before I personally remove you from my office.”
I shivered again at the thought of him putting those big hands of his anywhere near me. I quickly threw that thought aside and replied, “Please be fair.”
The air around him thickened with anger. “Fair?” he said, his voice hoarse. “What part of you being here is fair? I’m going to ask you to leave one more time, and if you don’t I will physically remove you.”
I closed my eyes, unable to see the pain in his without wanting to hurt my own father. Because my father was a weak and irresponsible man, Caine Carraway had lost everything, and despite all the “everything” he had around him now, I wasn’t convinced from what I’d seen so far that he actually had anything. “I’ll go,” I whispered. When I opened my eyes he was staring stonily at me. My stomach sank at the realization that this was it. His opinion of me hadn’t changed, and I was still jobless. “I really am sorry. I just … I’m just stuck.” And I meant that in so many ways. I grabbed the handle on his office door and had started to pull on it when his irritated sigh stopped me.
“I’ll call your boss and tell him to take you back.”
Relief swooshed through me as I whirled to look at him, amazed. “Really?”
He gave me his back. “Yes, but I will change my mind if you don’t get out of my office in the next five seconds.”
I shot out of that office in three seconds flat. I didn’t get everything I came for, which was probably why as I drove home my relief was gradually outweighed by my disappointment. It occurred to me that I wished Caine could see what I saw—that we were the same in some ways. And I didn’t want to be someone he hated.
However, it was clear Caine needed me to leave him alone. And I would. Even if it was the absolute last thing I wanted to do.
CHAPTER 3
The last day and a half of moping around my apartment had been torturous. With nothing but worry and time on my hands, I’d started reliving some pretty crappy memories, including that fateful day seven years ago when I found out the truth about my father and how he wasn’t an absentee father who gave up his jet-setting career in order to see us every day. No, he was a poor excuse for a man who abandoned his first family and took no responsibility for the woman who overdosed in his presence. This led to thinking about my relationship with my mom and about how shit things were before she died. None of those were things I wanted to remember, so I spent most of my time going over and over my accounts trying to figure out a way to stretch the savings I had. I could get by, living in my apartment without a well-paying job, for six months. This meant eventually giving up the apartment was inevitable.
Accounting was so depressing.
I lounged, legs dangling over the arm of my big comfy armchair that probably wouldn’t fit into the kind of apartment I’d have to move to if Benito didn’t hire me back, and I sipped at my Cherry Coke while Bing Crosby sang out “Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?” from my speakers.
“You sing it, Bing.” I raised my glass in the air in a gesture of solidarity and nearly spilled my soda as the much louder sounds of Bruce Springsteen singing “Johnny 99” blasted from my cell.
So I liked a relevant sound track to my life.
Heart racing, hoping the name I’d see on the screen was Benito, I rolled off the chair, landed hard on my knees, bit out a curse word, and scrambled along my floor, spilling Cherry Coke on the hardwood.
Almost smacking my nose against the wall, I got up onto my feet and snatched at the phone buzzing on my kitchen counter. I frowned at the number on the screen.
I didn’t recognize it.
Deflated, I answered in a pathetically sad tone, “Hello.”
“Hello, this is Ethan Rogers calling from Mr. Carraway’s office. Am I speaking to Miss Alexa Holland?”
My pulse started going wild again. “You are.” I held my breath.
“Mr. Carraway requests that you attend a meeting with him in his office tomorrow at noon.”
A meeting with Caine? What on earth—“Did he say why?”
“No, Miss Holland, he did not. May I tell him you’ll be available tomorrow at noon?”
Why, oh, why, after all his protestations did Caine want to see me again? What had happened since I crashed into his office? My stomach did that nervous flippy thing again. “Um …” Had Benito said yes or no? Or was this about something else? What did Caine want from me?