I planned on working through lunch that day, trying to get everything pulled together so that when Jillian came back to work on Monday, it would be like she’d never left. No, better than when she left. I really wanted her to know how seriously I’d taken running her business while she was gone, even bringing in a few new clients while taking care of our existing ones. And mentoring a new intern with the same patience and guidance that she’d given me when I walked through those doors for the first time.
And that while, yes, we’d lost the carpet on the third floor, I’d replaced it with something even better.
I’d put together storyboards showing the progress on the Claremont; very striking. I’d streamlined one of the payroll reports so she could see not only total hours worked for her hourly employees but how many hours had been allocated to each project. And I almost had all the invoices for all active accounts and projects categorized and color coded in different colored folders, which were spread out all over my office.
I was checking my math on a particularly long itemized receipt when Simon unexpectedly sailed in with a pizza box at twelve thirty. He plunked it down square in the middle of my desk with a flourish.
“Whoa, whoa, what’s this?” I exclaimed, looking up from my adding machine and realizing that I’d lost count for the third time.
“It’s called lunch, babe,” he said with a proud smile, pulling sodas out of a bag and looking for a place to put them down. “Damn, woman, I’ve never seen your desk this messy.”
“Simon, wait, don’t—”
He’d picked up three of my folders and stacked them together to make room, mixing up everything I was working on. “There we go—much better.”
I took off my glasses and glared at him. “Do you have any idea how much time that took me to organize this morning?”
He looked guiltily at the stack. “Oops?” he offered.
“What are you doing here, anyway?” I took the stack from him and started to separate them all over again.
“It’s House Day, Nightie Girl.” He looked at me like I was crazy. “I thought we could celebrate with a little lunch, and I know what you’re going to say before you say it: You’re too busy. No problem—that’s why I brought lunch to you!”
“Hey, Caroline, did you still want me to work on the cost projections for—oh, hey, Simon!” Monica said, breezing in from the hallway and stopping short when she caught sight of my boyfriend. She had a monster crush. It normally made me chuckle to watch her stammer and stutter around him, but today I didn’t even feel a flash of amusement.
“Monica, how’d you like some pizza?” he offered, picking up the box from my desk. The papers underneath were now stained with grease.
I pulled a colored pencil from my head and started to chew.
“Oh no, I already ate a pizza, I mean I didn’t eat an entire pizza, I mean I went out for an entire pizza, I mean a slice! I had a small slice of pizza, and a salad, mostly salad and—”
I stopped her. It was embarrassing. “Yes, Monica, please work on the cost projections for the Anderson account and let me know if you have questions. Thank you.”
“Okay, sure, no problem, I’ll just be naked in the other room—I mean working! I just—crap. Bye!”
I dropped my head to my desk. Monica was the most talented, most mature young woman I knew. I would have killed for the poise she possessed at such a young age—except when Wallbanger was involved. Then she turned to goo. I could relate. And she didn’t even know he had the power to move an entire bed with the strength of his hips alone.
Speaking of hips, they moved into my field of vision, along with the pizza box.
“So, lunch?”
I started to laugh. I couldn’t help it. I was at that point when you either laugh or cry, and the scales just happened to tip toward laughter. I looked up at him, celebrating House Day in his own sweet and unaware way, and cackled like a loon. “Sure, Simon. Let’s have some pizza.”
I took the box from his hands, and right there on the top, surrounded by an army of dancing pepperoni and wearing a chef’s hat, was a picture of the devil himself.
Cory Weinstein. Pizza chain owner. Discount giver. Self-described man about town.
And the jackrabbit fucker who’d hijacked my O.
My eye began to twitch. The floor, to pitch. My skin he’d seen just once now crawled and creeped and bunched and itched.
The laughter that was ringing out from my lips turned to a shriek that stopped traffic all over town, upset several fruit carts, and may very well have been the slight earthquake tremor that was reported that night on the news. And my knees were kissing my chin as my body turned roly-poly in an effort to protect itself at all costs.