Their Temporary Arrangement
Autore
Joss Wood
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11
One
Oh, how they would laugh to find out what a pickle, I, Lady Avangeline Forrester-Grantham, have found myself in. Old friends—though there aren’t that many left anymore—would snicker, and the press would salivate.
It is becoming harder and harder to keep the truth from Jack, Fox, Soren and Merrick. They have the write-your-will bit between their teeth and they won’t give in until I do as they ask. I have raised stubborn, determined men, something I always took pride in doing.
At this point in my life, their pinprick focus and sharp intelligence is a pain in my blue-blooded bottom.
But I will handle this, just like I’ve handled everything else that’s been thrown at me.
We don’t buckle. We don’t bend.
“Why did you leave your last permanent job?”
“I stole some money and failed a drug test.”
Fox Grantham looked at the blonde sitting opposite him. Right—if this latest candidate to be his personal assistant wasn’t joking, then hers had to be the dumbest response he’d ever heard when interviewing someone for a job.
He glanced down at her résumé sitting on top of a pile of folders—he hadn’t seen the surface of his desk since Dot left six weeks ago—and flipped to the second page. She was too young, in age and experience, and she didn’t have any of the organizational, personal and computer skills he needed. He wondered what his HR department was thinking sending him the applicant, then remembered they weren’t in a position to cherry-pick.
His fault, not theirs.
He dismissed her and gripped the bridge of his nose, trying to find the energy to get up and make himself a cup of coffee. He’d had his HR manager contact three of New York’s best recruitment agencies, but they were scraping the bottom of the barrel if the last candidate was all they could come up with. Then again, in the six weeks since Dot retired, he had gone through nine temps. He was, as the owner of one of the agencies told him this morning, a difficult and demanding client.
Sure, he expected his assistants to work long hours and he didn’t engage in personal conversations, but he paid exceedingly well and offered incredible benefits. That had to count for something, surely?
Damn you, Dot. He’d worked with her for over a decade, and her resignation had come as a blow. His sixty-year-old PA had the physical energy to keep up with him, the mental acuity to follow his rapid-fire thought processes and the skills of a master logistician. He couldn’t see why she couldn’t keep working for him after getting married. Dot had told him, with a roll of her eyes, that her new husband—six weeks from meeting to marriage! Madness—objected to her working ten-hour days and most weekends.
Reason eighty-two why Fox thought marriage, relationships and commitment were a bad idea. The fact that he’d lost his fantastic PA because she’d chosen a personal relationship over him annoyed him intensely.
“Oh, God, it’s glowering.”
Fox looked up as Jack walked into his office, his brother’s hands pushed into the pockets of his suit pants. Despite it being early evening, Jack looked like he’d just rolled in from a fashion shoot for GQ. His gray designer suit was exquisitely tailored to fit his broad shoulders and looked freshly pressed. His gray-and-mint-green-patterned tie was perfectly knotted. Mr. Perfection always looked like a million dollars and never, unlike Fox, lost his cool. Those were two of the many reasons why Jack was the public face of Grantham International, the multinational company he, Jack and their late brother, Malcolm, had established years ago.
“What’s the problem, Fox?”
“Stupid people. Every day, the stupid get stupider,” Fox answered.
“Or you get more impatient,” Jack pointed out, walking over to his window to look down at the ant-size cars zooming down 5th Avenue. Or, because this was New York and traffic was horrendous, crawling.
Jack made a fair point, Fox conceded. Instead of gaining more patience as he aged, he seemed to be losing chunks of it every year. By the time he was forty, in five years, he might qualify for entry into the Guinness World Records book for the most impatient person alive.
It wasn’t something to be proud of but... God. He didn’t have time to waste explaining to an endless string of assistants, each more inept than the last, what he wanted and how he wanted it done. Dot, damn her, just knew.
“I see Soren and Eliot’s engagement has caused a stir online,” Jack said. Fox darted him a quick look. Sometimes Jack’s expression was so imperturbable that even Fox, who knew him best, was uncertain of the emotion behind his calm words.
That wasn’t a problem anyone had with him. People never had any doubt about the way he felt. He wasn’t known for pussyfooting around.
“I like her,” Fox stated, leaning back in his chair and linking his hands over his flat stomach. Their cousin Soren, raised with them by their grandmother when all their parents were killed in a plane crash when they were kids, was more of a brother than a cousin. “I think she’s good for Soren.”
“High praise, since you don’t like fashion models.”
“I’m sure there are many as lovely, grounded, down-to-earth and sensible as Eliot,” Fox said. “But I’ve only met the ones who are bat-shit crazy.”
Jack chuckled. “I still can’t believe Soren is retiring from swimming.”
Honestly, Fox couldn’t, either. After winning a slew of gold medals in the latest Olympics and breaking a couple of world records, Soren had decided to quit the pool, start up a foundation and marry a jilted bride, the ex-supermodel Eliot Stone. And all in under a month. His head spun just thinking about it.
Growing up, he, Jack, Malcolm and Merrick—another brother by choice, the son of Avangeline’s housekeeper—had been fascinated by the food and hospitality industry. He, Malcolm and Jack had reignited the empire their grandmother had retired from to raise them, and Merrick had set up his chain of massively successful food trucks and diners, specializing in healthy fast food. But Soren, the outlier that he was, considered food fuel and didn’t know the difference between a spice and an herb. Swimming had been his focus, and he’d pursued it with the single-minded dedication every Grantham shared. But now that focus had shifted to his foundation.
Fox was glad that Soren had a foundation to set up and work to do. The Grantham boys tended to get into trouble when they had time on their hands.
Jack walked over to the chair and sat down, undoing the button of his jacket. He pushed back his sleeve and Fox noticed that he wore a pair of simple platinum cuff links that had once belonged to their father. He was glad Jack got some use out of their parents’ vast collection of jewelry. Fox never touched it—but then, he didn’t have the emotional connection to his parents’ memory Jack did. After all, he knew things about his allegedly perfect parents—gorgeous, successful, crazy in love—Jack didn’t.
Their mother’s rings and necklaces, bracelets, and earrings would stay in the safe-deposit box until Jack married, and then the stunning collection could be passed on to his wife and maybe a daughter. There was no doubt that his mom’s stunning, brilliant-cut, ten-carat Colombian emerald engagement ring would be passed on to Jack’s future wife. It had, briefly, adorned the left hand of Mal’s fiancée, Peyton, but she’d returned it after his death.
All Fox wanted from the collection was a magnificent nine-carat black opal ring, a gift to his mother she had never received. He had no one to give it to, never would have, but since he’d first seen it a decade ago, the stone—bloodred but flashing with vibrant streaks of blue, purple and green—had fascinated him.
“Have you heard from Peyton lately?” Fox asked, sitting up and putting his elbows on his desk. Their relationship with Mal’s ex had turned frosty after his death, but Jack had extended an olive branch last year.
A strong emotion he couldn’t identify jumped into Jack’s eyes, and Fox cocked his head, intrigued. And was he a shade paler than he was before? Hello... His brother had the best poker face he’d ever encountered, and he never gave anything away, ever. So why had the mere mention of Mal’s ex caused such a reaction? What had he missed here?
He was about to demand an answer when Merrick walked into his office, dressed as he always was in chino pants and an untucked button-down shirt. Merrick’s Native American ancestry could be picked up in his coal-black hair, his high cheekbones, straight nose and heavy eyebrows. His eyes were his mother’s, the bright blue of an Irish sky. Merrick, constantly on the road, operated his business virtually but used their conference room for meetings.
“Mom wants me to ask you whether you’ve lost the ability to use the phone,” Merrick said as he took the chair next to Jack, pulling his ankle up onto his opposite knee.
Fox winced. “I’ll call her tonight,” he told Merrick.
“Be prepared to have her nag you about being the next brother to temporarily relocate to Calcott Manor,” Merrick warned him. “She told me that if we are determined to keep an eye on Avangeline and her new guest, then she wants you to be the next up to bat.”
“Why me?” Fox demanded, gesturing to his messy desk. He couldn’t relocate to his grandmother’s estate—not when he had a company to run and a PA to hire. His life was in Manhattan. Frankly, he was angling to be the last brother on the roster—or maybe not land on it at all, if one of the others succeeded in their two goals of persuading their grandmother to write a will and to running Aly Garwood off the premises. Soren had taken first crack at it, but no dice. The will remained unwritten, and the scam artist who’d been leading Avangeline on with some BS story was still in residence. It was time for someone else to step up to bat, but why did it have to be him?
“Mom says you are burned-out and that you need to get out of the city before you end up with acute stress disorder or something like that,” Merrick casually explained. “I tried to tell her that you’ve always been a grumpy bastard, but she wouldn’t listen to me.”
Fox lifted a lazy middle finger and decided that it was in his best interests to change the subject before he found himself buckling under the pressure of Jacinta’s wishes.
“So, Soren now seems to think that Aly is the real deal,” he stated, still struggling to understand how his levelheaded, pragmatic cousin could have fallen for that hippie-dippy crap. Aly was nothing more than a scam artist, and the story she was peddling couldn’t possibly be real.
Yes, it was true that Aly Garwood had received a transplant of Malcolm’s liver on his death, but did she really expect them to believe that she’d also inherited some of their oldest brother’s quirks and personality traits? Her so-called proof was that she now liked beer and cars and sweets. Seriously, was that the best she could do? She could have found out any of that on the internet. They were Granthams, heirs to a multibillion-dollar fortune. Fox wouldn’t be surprised to find that someone had posted everything about him from the measurement of his inseam to his preferred brand of toothpaste online. Aly would have had no trouble digging up some nuggets on Mal. The real question was, what was she after? That was the question that would drive all the brothers to visit Connecticut if necessary—and they wouldn’t stop until they found the real reason why Aly Garwood had insinuated herself into Avangeline’s life.
“Soren is looking at everything through rose-colored glasses at the moment,” Merrick said. “He spent his trip to visit Avangeline falling in love with Eliot. It’s no wonder his head isn’t on straight. I’m going to need more proof than what Soren gave us to start believing her.”
“Precisely,” Jack agreed, and Fox nodded as well. He excelled at skepticism and cynicism: being that way was a damn good way not to get hurt. He’d learned that lesson early, and he’d learned it hard. Nothing was ever, ever the way it looked. There was always something lurking beneath the surface, something held back. It was important to keep digging to ensure he was never caught flat-footed or blindsided ever again.
“Moving on from Liver Lady,” Merrick said, playing with the laces on his shoes. “One of us—and by one of us, I mean you, Fox—needs to get up to Calcott Manor to keep an eye on the situation there. And to keep working on Avangeline to write her damn will.”
Avangeline was in her eighties now, and it would be a nightmare of epic proportions if she died without leaving a will. Since she was a shareholder in Grantham International as well as Merrick’s business, anything other than clear allocation of her assets would be a massive roadblock for any business decisions as probate worked its way through the court system and Avangeline’s estate was resolved. It would be far easier and cleaner if their grandmother wrote her damn will.
None of them could understand why Avangeline, who’d run a massive empire for forty years and had worked with lawyers her entire life, was balking at such an obvious business reality now. What could be behind this illogical, frankly stupid, streak of stubbornness?
“I can’t go up to Calcott Manor,” Fox said, gesturing to his desk. “I’d need to take a PA with me, and I don’t have one. Right now, I’m keeping my head above water by using Jack’s PA for anything urgent.”
“And she’s had it with you, too,” Jack told him.
What? He’d been on his best behavior with her!
“The reason you don’t have a PA is because you are impatient and demanding and you machine-gun instructions. You expect everyone you hire to hit the ground running, without giving them any training, and then you dump a pile of work on their heads and expect it back yesterday.”
Yeah, so? Dot had managed brilliantly. “I have a hell of a workload, and I don’t have time to babysit anyone,” he muttered.
“Well, you’re going to have to lower your expectations if you are going to find anyone willing to stick around for more than a day,” Jack told him. “Maybe you can find a PA in Hatfield.”
Yeah, and he just saw a purple pig fly past his window. If the agencies couldn’t find someone in New York City, there was little chance of finding someone up to standard in Hatfield, Connecticut, as he told his brothers.
“God, you can be such a jerk,” Merrick cheerfully told him. “How many temps have been through your office since Dot left? Six or seven?”
He shrugged, a little embarrassed to admit to more.
“What’s the common denominator?” Jack asked, then continued to speak before Fox could answer. “You. You’re the problem, not them.”
Fox looked at Merrick, who spread his hands out in a gesture of agreement.
Brilliant.
Jack leaned forward and rested his forearms on his knees, concern in his eyes. Fox recognized his expression. Jack was in white-knight mode, determined to rescue and protect. Except that Fox wasn’t a bird with broken wings. He didn’t need patching up. He just needed to not go to Calcott Manor and to find a damn assistant.
Like, yesterday....
“We’re worried about you,” Jack said, tipping his head sideways to include Merrick. “We think you are burned-out, that you are on the verge of a meltdown.”
No, he was not. “Look, working long hours is what I do—you know this!”
“These days, you never arrive after six or leave before eight,” Jack countered. “That’s fourteen hours, minimum.”
“What are you, my nanny?” Fox growled.
“When last did you have a date? Sex?” Jack demanded.
Four months ago? Five? He’d had a one-night stand shortly after his fling with Giselle, a prima ballerina with the American Ballet Company. His brothers were his closest friends, but he wasn’t going to discuss his sex life—as sad as it was—with them.
“It’s just been a hectic time,” he explained, hoping to get them off his back. “We opened the hotel in Dubai, a restaurant in Rio—”
“It’s no busier than it always is,” Jack countered. “You just won’t delegate.” He slapped his knees and stood up, his expression resolute. “You’re going to Calcott Manor for a month, with or without a PA.”
“I am not—”
Jack placed his hands on a pile of papers on Fox’s desk and glared at him, anger in his eyes. “Do not test us on this, Fox. We will drag your ass through this hotel and into a taxi if we have to.”
No, they wouldn’t. Fox started to scoff and looked at Merrick, waiting for him to join him in mocking Jack’s dramatics. But Merrick had risen to stand behind Jack, his eyes equally determined. Hell. They were being serious.
Fox rubbed the back of his neck, feeling exhausted. He didn’t want to relocate to Hatfield, but neither did he want to argue with his brothers. And he could, at a push, work remotely, without an assistant, for a week or two. After that, he’d either need to find help or come back to the city, but he’d cross that bridge when he came to it.
He moved his mouse and glanced at his huge monitor, quickly pulling up his calendar. Today was Tuesday—he had a few important meetings tomorrow and another on Friday.
“I can drive up on Saturday or Sunday morning, if that suits you two,” he suggested snidely, annoyed at being pushed into doing something he didn’t want to do.
“That’s fine,” Jack agreed.
“I was being sarcastic,” he muttered.
“We know. You excel at it,” Merrick retorted. He looked at Jack and held out his fist, which Jack bumped. “Our work here is done.”
“Bastards,” Fox told their departing backs. Both of them, as if they’d choreographed the move, put their hands behind their backs and extended their middle finger.
Brothers 1, Fox 0.
So far, so good.
The entrance to the Grantham brothers’ office suite, situated on the middle floor of the north wing of the square shaped Forrester-Grantham Hotel, was through a discreet lobby on the side entrance to the iconic building. Just as she had hoped, the receptionist hadn’t balked at the fact that she hadn’t been preregistered as a visitor. All she had to say was that she was Fox Grantham’s latest temp, and the receptionist handed over a visitor’s badge without hesitation. She’d also told her that, if she lasted the day, she’d eat her hat.
Oh, Ru Osman intended to last the day, the week, the month. Because if she didn’t, she might just murder her parents in their sleep.
Metaphorically, not literally.
Ru pushed a long curl off her cheek and tucked it behind her ear, eyeing the door leading to Fox Grantham’s office suite. He needs a PA, she told herself, and you have a master’s degree. You can handle this, no problem. Okay, her degree was in Asian studies but she did have some unusual computer skills.
She’d arrange some meetings, type up some notes and create a couple of spreadsheets. Easy-peasy. She’d rebuilt houses after the Haitian earthquake and worked as a night porter in a busy youth hostel in Athens. She knew how to operate keep things running in busy, chaotic environments, how to keep her cool when she was faced with difficult personalities, how to stay focused and gather the info she needed when she was handed a difficult or challenging task. Surely she could manage a few weeks working for Mr. Gorgeous but Apparently Grumpy?
Ru took a deep breath, opened the door to his office suite and released a long breath to find his luxurious, glass-walled corner office empty. The PA’s desk sat in the corner of the outer office, and behind it was a credenza and banks of cupboards. A state-of-the-art computer sat on the desk, and Ru started to salivate.
Despite being a world wanderer, she was a computer geek and had been, once upon a time, a better-than-decent hacker. After having her bells-and-whistles computer stolen in Rome, she’d downgraded to a lightweight, smaller computer that could be tucked into her backpack and kept close with ease. She’d used that machine for years, until it finally gave up the ghost in the humidity of Kuala Lumpur three months ago. She’d also fallen ill with a virus that had kept her in bed for two weeks and low on energy for another six.
The combination of medical bills and being unable to work had decimated her savings, and she’d had no choice but to finally use the open-ended ticket her parents had purchased for her to return to the States. She’d moved back home and promptly moved out a week later, unable to deal with their constant hovering.
“Darling, you are skinny and pale—eat an egg, drink this green smoothie and have an afternoon rest.”
“I’ve updated your résumé, Ru. One of the guys at my club thinks he can swing you a job inputting data for his company.”
Ru never took afternoon naps, far preferred gin to green smoothies and knew that she’d never have the patience for a data-entry job. It didn’t matter that she was in her late twenties and hadn’t lived with them for long time, her parents fussed. The fact that she was back in their city, on home turf, meant that they had first dibs on her time, burying her under a barrage of comments about how she should be safe, avoid rideshares, lock her doors and marry someone who could protect her.
Her phone rang. Ru pulled it out of her bag, scowling at the “The ‘Rents” displayed on the screen. How was it that whenever she thought of them, her parents called her? Did they have some kind of Google Alert set on her brain?
Ignoring them would just result in frantic texts along with even more calls, so it was easier and less time consuming to answer so she accepted their video call. “Morning, parents.”
Her parents cheerfully greeted her, and Ru smiled at their enthusiasm in spite of herself. Yes, they drove her up the wall, but it was sweet that they were always so happy to talk to her. She was the center of their world, the reason the sun rose and set every day.
“We thought we could meet you somewhere for brunch?” her mom suggested. “Our treat.”
Um...she didn’t want to lie to them, but neither did she want to tell them she was trying to land this job. They would get overly excited that she was looking for a job in the city, and their hopes would be raised that she might settle down at last. No matter how often she reminded them that she was leaving, they lived in constant hope she’d stick and stay.
“Sorry, Momma, I can’t. I have...plans.”
Oh, God, that made her sound like she had a date.
“With Scott?” Taranah demanded, excited.
Ru tipped her head back to look at the ceiling. “No, Mom, not with Scott. I keep telling you that nothing will ever happen between Scott and me.”
“Why not? You dated him.”
She adored her mother, she did, but she really didn’t want to explain the concept of friends with benefits to the woman who, genuinely, believed that sex only belonged in the confines of marriage. “Stop nagging her about Scott, Tara,” her dad said. “Are you sure you can’t join us for brunch, sweetheart?”
“Sorry, Dad. But you and Mom go,” she suggested. “Pretend it’s a date.”
“I hated dating,” her father replied morosely.
“Like you can remember that far back, Mazdak,” Tara teased, resting her temple on Dad’s shoulder. “Okay, honey, come see us soon, okay?”
Ru said goodbye, and their faces left her screen. They loved her and they wanted her, their only child, to be around rather than flitting off to some far-away country. While she was close by, she knew she should spend more time with them. If only they’d be a little less in her face...
“Who the hell are you?”
At the sound of a lovely, rich and deep male voice, Ru turned around slowly, deliberately taking her time. She had to look like she belonged here, like she’d been sent from the recruitment agency. But, dear God, how was she supposed to talk when six feet something of sheer lusciousness stood in the doorway to his office, his dark hair wet with perspiration and his tanned, wide shoulders and huge arms on display? His gym tank top dipped low under his arms and showed off the muscles of his rib cage and the light sprinkling of dark hair on his chest. She couldn’t stop her eyes from drifting down, taking in his muscled thighs beneath the hem of his expensive jogging shorts. Strong calves, she noticed, big feet encased in a pricey pair of running shoes.
Yum yum yum...
Out of Breath and Grumpy repeated his question with more force, and Ru jerked out of her reverie—long nose, overlong hair, a sexy bottom lip and a very stubborn chin—and lifted her eyebrows at the annoyance in his eyes. They were a fantastic shade of deep blue, the color of space on a winter’s night. Fascinating...
His lips flattened further, and Ru warned herself to get a grip. Knowing she could show no fear, she sent a very deliberate look at the clock on the wall.
“I’m Ru Osman, and you’re late,” she told him, knowing that she was taking a huge gamble goading him. But she’d suspected if she showed him a hint of fear, he’d gobble her up and spit her up.
“For your information, I was at my desk at five forty-five this morning,” he told her, lifting the bottom of his shirt to wipe his slick face. Ru nearly swallowed her tongue at his six-pack. “You have ten seconds to tell me who you are and why you are in my office,” Fox said, hands on his hips.
“I’m from Bednar Recruitment, and I’m on temporary assignment to you.”
He cocked his head to the side, and Ru felt like a bug under a magnifying glass. “I thought they weren’t prepared to send me any more candidates.”
They weren’t, but he didn’t need to know that. She tried to distract him by changing the subject. “I need a job, and you require a personal assistant. Sounds like we both have what the other needs.”
He stared at her, not looking convinced. “What did you say your name was again?” he asked.
“Ru Osman,” she replied.
“Experience?” he barked.
“Enough,” she shot back, lying through her teeth. “Shouldn’t you hit the shower? Or are you intending to work in your gym clothes?” she asked.
“You’re bossy,” he stated.
“And you’re ripe,” she countered, although that wasn’t true. Sure, she could smell that he’d exercised, but his scent was a very pleasing combination of perspiration, deodorant and a lemony cologne. Honestly, if she could bottle it, it would be an overnight bestseller.
“Stay there,” he barked before walking into his inner office, immediately turning right and disappearing. Intrigued at his vanishing act, she stood up and crossed the room to take a better look. Through the glass walls of his office and in the corner closest to her, she saw a half-open door showing a mirror on the wall. In the reflection, she saw Fox pull off his top, muscles rippling across his shoulders and chest. God, he was...
Ripped. Built. Muscled... All those words applied. He was fantastically sexy, and for the first time in, wow...the first time ever...she wanted to step into that private bathroom, slide her hands under the band of his shorts and explore that long body with her tongue and her teeth. She wanted to taste his mouth, feel his stubble on the sensitive skin of her breasts, his lips on her stomach...she imagined him going even lower.
The sound of voices in the corridor pulled her back, and she lifted her hands to her face, feeling the heat below her fingertips. What was wrong with her? She didn’t react this way to men. She was no virgin, and she’d long since mastered the casual fling. Usually, an attractive guy barely caused a blip on her radar. But Fox Grantham was causing her world to spin, wobble and threaten to fly off its axis.
Enough now, you cretin.
Ru shook her head, dropped her hands, and when she looked back at the door to his bathroom, it was shut.
Good. That was good.
Even better was the fact that he hadn’t thrown her out of his office or arrested her for trespassing.
Ru paced the outer office, keeping an eye on the bathroom door.
Okay, this had to be the craziest thing she’d done in a while. A long while. She’d talked herself into Fox Grantham’s office and lied to the man’s face.
She didn’t like lying but, unfortunately, she was running out of options. Since arriving back in the States, she’d looked for temporary jobs but hadn’t been able to find any that paid enough to make it worth her while. She’d needed a lot of money quickly to pay off her bills and replenish her savings so she could get back to traveling. Flights weren’t cheap, and working as Grantham’s PA was a good solution.
Because she needed to get back to traveling. It wasn’t anything as simple as itchy feet or trouble settling down. No, she craved the freedom of travel, the liberty to choose her own direction in life every single day, for the exact same reason that her loving-but-overbearing parents wanted to lock her down and keep her close.
Because that’s what happened when you were abducted, the subject of an Amber alert and found two weeks later.
Luckily, she’d been so young, just shy of her third birthday, and remembered little of the entire experience. Her abductor had been a woman with mental health issues who’d been desperate for a child and had treated her like a princess—but the experience had left her whole family, and their friends, traumatized.
Her parents had reacted by battening down the hatches. Their efforts to keep her safe included everything but wrapping her in cotton wool, then bubble wrap, and placing her on a shelf. Ru’s response—not just to the experience of being held captive but also to her parents’ overprotectiveness—had been to break free the first chance she got and explore the world on her own terms. That was the life she’d chosen, the life she loved...and she wanted to get back to it as soon as possible.
Ru sighed, walked back to the PA’s desk and sat down in the chair, easily finding the button to power up the computer.
A box appeared on the log-in screen, and Ru dusted off some of her old, rusty skills to get around it, smirking with satisfaction when she got in barely two minutes later. Ru leaned back in her seat, her eyes flying over the desktop icons. There was a calendar app, a logo with a G and a C intertwined, and a mail app. She opened the calendar app, saw that Fox had an all-day meeting scheduled and, very helpfully, that her predecessor had typed in a list of all the documents he required. Ru did a search for the documents, sent them to the printer and slipped them into a folder she found in the third drawer of her desk.
God bless you, previous PA person. And yes, she totally planned on taking the credit for her predecessor’s good work and efficiency.
She eyed the computer, thinking that she had the skills to go snooping. Deciding to be good, she slipped into his office to put the folder on his desk, and, needing something to do, she tidied his very messy desk. Maybe it would earn her extra brownie points. She needed them—because sooner or later, he was going to realize that she had no connection to the recruitment agency after all.
Shellie, a college friend, and owner of the couch she was currently sleeping on, worked at the recruitment agency and had told her about how none of the experienced and smart women she suggested survived more than a week working for Fox Grantham. Complaints ranged from him being demanding to being terse and rude. Some reported him having a hair-trigger temper, though Shellie was convinced that claim was overexaggerated. But Fox Grantham was, she conceded, a handful.
He paid extremely well, far above the average, but he didn’t only demand a pound of flesh, he wanted spines and internal organs, too.
Ru’s ears had perked up when she heard he paid extremely well. Good money meant that she could be gone by autumn. In Australia, her next stop, she could distance herself from her parents and their anxiety and rid herself of the caged-in feeling she got whenever she came back home.
She often thought that anxiety and fear were the fourth and fifth members of their family.
