Chapter One
Hearing Aretha Franklin belt out “Respect” from my alarm clock was enough to rudely jerk me awake. I blindly slapped the alarm button off, appreciating the silence for several moments and fighting my brain’s most sincere desire to slide back into comforting nothingness.
At least it was Friday.
It was while I was pulling the sheet off my body that “the experience,” my sex dream, came back to me, which absolutely snapped me wide-awake. I looked around the bed, but there were no binding materials, and I was left feeling strangely let down, which made no sense. Of course I was alone. This was my room in the apartment I share, and I’d simply had an erotic dream last night.
But it had seemed so real! REAL. What the hell was that last night? Why had it happened? There had to be a reason.
Could women have wet dreams too?
It was definitely worth asking Cynthia, my roommate, about. Of course, she was truly a morning person who went to the gym at the absurd hour of I’m-still-dead-to-the-world 5:00 a.m. before going to work, but luckily we worked together. Come lunchtime, it was on for some juicy chitchat.
I already knew what she was going to say. She would say that I, Taylor Lane, was sexually frustrated, which would be accurate, because I was twenty-four years old and hadn’t had a really good orgasm until last night in a dream. As it stood, I was going to have to wait until lunchtime to dish, and if I didn’t get a move on, I was going to be late for work.
I went to my shit job as an assistant to one of the most successful literary agents for feature film in Hollywood. But hey, if you can do your time at a shit job in Hollywood, you can get in, which is like manna from heaven for a girl like me. If you work hard and can handle the verbal and emotional abuse that’s going to get dumped on you, then you can write your ticket.
“Dammit, Taylor! Get the goddamn phone. Do I have to do every fucking thing myself?” Reggie Mason, my boss, was screaming from inside his office. I’d let a call slide while answering two other lines, because I was a few seconds too slow and hadn’t picked up before it went to voice mail. Shit.
“Sorry, Reggie.”
“Am I supposed to pick up my fucking calls now? Isn’t that part of your fucking job? Do I need to remind you that I fucking pay you to answer the fucking phone?”
“No, Reggie.”
“I can get someone better to do your job tomorrow, Taylor. Fucking take your head out of the clouds and do your job!”
I’d found that redirection was usually the best antidote for his freakish tantrums. “Simon is on line one. Stokely is on line two, and I’ll retrieve the message from voice mail.”
“Tell Simon we’re on for lunch. I’ll get Stokely. And don’t fucking let it happen again!”
And like that, the situation was defused.
I’ve worked for Reggie for nearly a year and a half, and I don’t worry about his firing threats anymore. I know he’s damn lucky that I haven’t gone AWOL on him like every other assistant. He’d have to start fresh and retrain a newbie, which he absolutely loathes having to do. Before me, the turnover rate on his assistant’s desk was about three months due to his daily mantrums.
Me, I’ve got staying power and a thick skin.
Lunch was slow in approaching, especially since I felt driven to find Cynthia so she could help me make sense of what I’d experienced. Sadly, when lunch finally arrived, Reggie stepped out of his office with his “we’re going to get a lot of shit done” expression in place. My heart sank just a little, but I bit back my disappointment with a deep breath and a steady gaze.