“You were mine, too.” Charlotte shook her head, refusing to allow her friend to be sucked under by the trauma and anguish that had blighted her teenage years. “Don’t let that tough, strong, fifteen-year-old girl down, Molly. Don’t shortchange yourself like I do.” Charlotte knew it was too late for her to break the bars of her own cage, but Molly had a shot and Charlotte would do everything in her power to make sure her friend took it.
“Is it worth it,” Molly said at last, the agony of memory in every word, “for a single month?”
“That’s for you to decide,” Charlotte said, then fanned her face. “But I vote for breaking the bed with Mr. Kissable.”
Molly burst out laughing, the sound a little wet. “Maybe you need a rock star of your own.”
“No way. I’d rather go to bed with T-Rex.” It was a flip comment that hid countless fantasies. And fantasies they would remain, she thought, as she and Molly found a place to eat after her best friend finished grilling her about her new boss. Because the fear inside her, it would permit nothing else, permit no extraordinary life where she caught and held the attention of a man like Gabriel Bishop.
THE NEXT MORNING, CHARLOTTE was still thinking about Molly and hoping her friend would find a way to talk to her rock star about the past, when geeky, sweet Tuck poked his head around her cubicle wall. “Charlie, did you hear?”
Put on guard by the awed shock in his tone, she said, “What?”
“Anya,” he whispered, eyes all but popping out of his head and dark blond hair disheveled. “He fired Anya.”
Charlotte collapsed into her chair, her knees like jelly. “Oh, no.” If Anya was gone, she had to be next. She jumped a foot when her phone rang even as the thought passed through her head.
“Ms. Baird. In my office.”
Hanging up with trembling hands, she pushed up her glasses and told herself she could deal with T-Rex and the chopping block. After all, she’d survived far worse. That’s what she had to remember. She’d survived. “I have to go upstairs,” she said to Tuck.
The nineteen-year-old’s face telegraphed his distress. “God, Charlie.”
“It’s okay. I’ll come see you afterward.” If she was even allowed back on the floor and not just shown the door.
People didn’t stare at her this time. She might’ve taken that for a vote of confidence if not for the funereal gloom on their faces when they glanced at her out of the corners of their eyes. Most of them had already been through the gauntlet, come out safe on the other side.
Most of them weren’t in a redundant position.
The walk upstairs and down the corridor felt like it took an eon, and then she was entering the T-Rex’s den, his door having been open. He was standing with his back to the glass wall with its incredible view, his cell phone to his ear. Today’s suit was a deep charcoal gray paired with a steel-gray shirt and a charcoal tie. Austere and dark, it threw his features into stark relief.
Gabriel Bishop was a gorgeous man.
Charlotte could admit that in the privacy of her own mind. Too big and muscled and dangerous, but gorgeous. Like a tiger was gorgeous. Right before it ate you.
Walking over to his desk, still involved in a discussion that—from the context—she guessed was with one of their South Island store managers, he picked up a cup of takeout coffee and held it out to her. She took it on a surge of hope. Despite her thoughts when they’d first met, T-Rex didn’t have a policy of offering his victims a last meal—or last drink. Since she wasn’t sure her jelly knees would continue to support her, she took a seat while he paced and talked.
After she girded herself to sip at his version of coffee, having glimpsed the tar-black stuff in the open takeout cup on his side of the desk, she found her taste buds blooming. He’d handed her a frothy, creamy latte—one of her favorites.
At this point, Charlotte had given up guessing how he knew things. But surely he wasn’t planning to fire her… unless he got off on being cruel. On raising hopes only to dash them. There were men like that. She knew. God, she knew.
Stomach a ball of ice between one thought and the next, she held on desperately to the cup as he ended the call and pinned her with his gaze.
“Ms. Baird, we need to have a serious discussion about your future.”
5
CHARLIE-MOUSE VS T-REX: ROUND 1
GABRIEL WATCHED CHARLOTTE’S SLENDER fingers tighten around the takeout cup so hard that she dented it.
Her cheeks had gone pale, but she kept her shoulders up and she found her voice. “Yes, sir?”
Good, he thought. The fact she was shy and uncomfortable around him was a distinct negative when it came to the position he was about to offer her, but she had guts and she had brains. He could work with that. “I need a new PA.”