What the Heart Needs Read online

  “Abundantly,” she said, her voice dry as chalk.

  He liked that quality of hers; how she could make one agreeable word sound like a battle cry of mutiny. Somehow he knew she would do the job and do it well just so she could shove it in his face that she knew what she was doing and did not need to be talked down to. He wouldn’t be surprised if this new housekeeper was the most qualified, fastidious, and diligent housekeeper he, or anyone else, had ever had.

  “Is there anything else?” she asked when he was silent for a moment.

  “My schedule…”

  “Will be ready at a quarter to five,” she interrupted, backing toward the door.

  He made his usual grunting noise and she quickly left the room.

  She would work out nicely.

  --

  She dropped down onto the edge of Tad’s desk, closing her eyes and rubbing the lids with more pressure than was comfortable. She could feel a headache forming.

  “Hang in there, kid,” Tad said, hanging up the phone and starting to tidy his desk. “The first day is always the worst. Between me and you, on my lunch break my first day, I snuck into the bathroom stall and cried for twenty minutes straight. Then, when I got home, I cried myself to sleep.” He smiled, revealing one overly pointed eye tooth. “I know that doesn’t sound promising, but you really do start to like it here after a while.”

  “I don’t see how,” she mumbled, annoyed at herself that her voice sounded whiny.

  “He pushes you,” Tad said, smiling at their boss’s closed door. “He makes you realize how much you really are capable of doing.” He patted her leg, a little too high up on the thigh and, if it had been any other man, it would have been vastly inappropriate. “You will surprise yourself. Besides,” he grinned, a absurd glint in his eyes, “he is really yummy to look at.”

  “Oh, please,” Hannah scoffed, rolling her eyes childishly.

  “Now be honest,” Tad laughed, “you cant tell me you haven’t noticed! That’s not even possible.”

  “He’s old,” Hannah came back, not wanting to admit he was good-looking, but not wanting to lie either.

  “He’s older,” Tad corrected. “Age recommends a man. They have been around the block a time or two.”

  Hannah rose from the desk, picking up the part of the schedule Tad had compiled for her, then leaning down over Tad’s shoulder and saying, “Now you tell me. Which would you rather buy… a shiny new car or one with a hundred-thousand miles on it?”

  Tad’s laugh followed her all the way to the copy machine. “Don’t you worry, Hannah-Banana, you are going to make it after all!”

  Hannah leaned out of the copy room, lifted an invisible hat off her head and threw it in the air.

  She had barely been able to get all the schedules from the secretaries as they scrambled to get everything squared away before the end of the workday. The entire staff practically ran out the door at five, leaving the floor hauntingly empty.

  Hannah sat there alone, the lights dimmed to ease the headache that was now banging behind her eyes. She was at Tad’s long-abandoned desk, balancing Mr. Michaels’ checkbook. He had sprung the task on her last minute just when she was about to breathe a sigh of relief at the thought of being able to go home. Who even balanced their checkbooks anymore?

  The only good thing was she hadn’t seen him in over an hour. He had been sitting in his closed office and the only sign that he was even still there was the blinking light on the phone panel suggesting the use of his private line.

  Hannah tapped on the calculator she had to go down three floors to find, lifting up one credit card receipt after another. It was amazing that one man could do so much damage to his bank account in a single week when he never seemed to leave the office except for the occasional business meeting. She filled out the spreadsheet, humming quietly to herself to ease her frayed nerves.

  She had the sneaking suspicion he had given her this job to do just to mess with her. Maybe he was trying to make her break. As much as she would have loved nothing more than to go and throw them in his face, her pride made her accept the work with a smile even though it was already well past seven-pm and she still hadn’t had a chance to eat anything.

  She never even heard the door open. She jumped a few inches and yelped when she heard him ask, “What are you doing sitting at Tad’s desk?”

  “I… er… um… wasn’t assigned a desk of my own. That could have something to do with it,” she replied, not caring how surly her voice sounded. She was exhausted and all she wanted to do was pile the receipts into a envelope and be done with the day.

  Elliott’s eyebrow raised a little as he realized, for the first time, that perhaps his office staff wasn’t as loyal as he had thought. Someone was trying to make her day even harder than it had to be. He wasn’t happy about it. “Sally should have shown you your office this morning,” he informed her, a slight annoyance creeping into his usually tempered voice.

  “As you can see,” Hannah said, waving a hand around her, “she did not.”

  Elliott sighed and nodded, holding a hand out as if he was offering it to her. “Come on then, I will show you.”

  Hannah rose from the desk slowly, her body aching in places she didn’t realize she could have strained. Not even the promise of her own office could ease the urgency she felt to get back home, make a cup of soothing tea, and fall into bed.

  She followed EM into his office and then through the door to the right which she had assumed, up until then, was a storage room or a private bathroom. He pulled the door open, reached in, and switched on the light.

  Inside was a small black desk which faced away from the huge windows that lined that whole side of the building. A long, low black bookshelf lined the entire length of the wall they were facing. There were two doors, the one they stood in and one that led out into the lobby. There was a black and white hound’s-tooth love seat situated between both doors. There was a computer on the desk with an enormous flat screen monitor as well as her own phone and various office supplies. Situated on top of the bookshelf was a printer and her own fax.

  “Oh,” she said, sounding a little breathless even to herself. It was a lovely room. It was hers. She didn’t have to share or wait for someone else to leave their desk so that she could sit and type up something quickly before they returned. She had a fax machine. If she moved the coffee pot in there, she would never need to leave her office. And she had a sofa. A sofa! She could actually sit on something that wasn’t going to make her back, and shoulders, and butt ache in under fifteen minutes.

  Elliott’s lip turned up at the side as he watched her take it in. He never really thought much about having an office of one’s own, as he had always had one for himself. But seeing Hannah, the way she ran her fingers over the soft material of the loveseat, the shiny surface of the desk, and even the computer monitor, he realized how important such a little luxury could be for someone.

  Hannah sat down on the chair at the computer, having to pull the bar to lower it significantly. Whomever had occupied this office before her must have been considerably shorter than her.

  “In the top drawer of the desk,” he told her as she looked around, “there is a company credit card. Use it for anything that I ask you to do that requires money- food, errands, plane tickets.” She nodded at this, picking up the credit card and putting it into her purse. “You may charge your own lunch or dinners on it if you are here past six at night,” he said. “So, well, now you know your place. You may go home now. The checkbook is not an urgent thing,” he told her and walked out of the room, closing the door behind him.

  She could charge her lunch and dinners to the company credit card? What had gotten into him? That was completely inappropriate. He powered down his computer and shoved some papers into his briefcase that he wanted to look over before he went to bed. He had no reason to pay for her meals. She was his employee, not his girlfriend.

  Maybe he felt guilty. A
fter all, she would be working unjust hours for a pay that he would have scoffed at. And she was going to do so without complaint. Without any hassle. Without any red-rimmed eyes that suggested she had cried all during her break. The least he could do was offer dinner on him if he was going to make her work until eight or nine some nights.

  There must have been someone missing her. He had kept her for eleven hours straight. He saw her walk out into the lobby, her eyes looked small and tired and she rubbed her temple absentmindedly as she waited for the elevator. She glanced back toward his office with what he could only describe as distaste.

  She hated him. He couldn’t exactly blame her for it. He kept a breakneck pace and was demanding that of her. And it hadn’t exactly escaped him that he wasn’t as accustomed to praising employees as some other employers might be. She had certainly made it clear she didn’t appreciate how often he forgot to say thank you.

  He smiled to himself. She was a character. And she knew how to hustle. In the past five years, he had yet to find a assistant who had been able to finish all the tasks he gave them the first day. He was rough on them on purpose. He needed to weed out the ones who couldn’t handle it as quickly as possible because he couldn’t hold anyone’s hand through the long, hard work days that were certain to come eventually.

  Elliott grabbed his bag. He noticed she had left the light on in her office and went in to turn it off himself, despite the fact that the cleaning staff would be there in under an hour. As he reached for the switch, he noticed a stack of something on her desk and walked over to investigate. Next to her keyboard was his checkbook, receipts, and a intricately compiled spreadsheet. She had even put the receipts in chronological order and stapled them before putting them into the envelope.

  Elliott smiled. Her pride wouldn’t let her go home without finishing every last thing he had thrown at her.

  She was going to work out nicely.

  Hannah promised herself she wouldn’t, but she cried the whole way home. Though, she told herself, it was from pure exhaustion and not the result of a arrogant, demanding boss who seemed to view her as nothing more than another piece of office equipment.

  When she got home she noticed her mother had left her two messages- the first asking her how her first day went and the second a bit more concerned-sounding asking if everything was alright and telling her to call back at any hour.

  She slipped out of her shoes and cringed at the feel of blisters on the pads under her toes and on her heel. Apparently there were no shoes that could compete with running around all day. She made a mental note to drag out her old pair of server shoes from her closet for the next day. If they could survive eight hours waiting tables, maybe they would stand up to eleven hours waiting on a high-powered CEO’s every need.

  Her cell phone rang and she groaned as she reached for it, irrationally dreading the possibility that maybe it was EM calling her back into work. He didn’t even have her number, she reminded herself.

  She looked down at the screen and saw Tad’s name lit up. “Don’t you sleep?” she said as a greeting. “You get there even earlier to me. What are you doing up?”

  Hannah could practically hear the shrug in his voice as he said, “You get used to the long hours after a while. In a month or two you wont need a full night sleep anymore.”

  “Need? Maybe not. But want is another thing,” she said, pulling off her clothes and falling into bed in only her bra and panties. “Oh,” she said, sitting up. “how come you didn’t tell me I have an office?”

  “An office,” Tad repeated, sounding confused. “I’ve never seen one of you girls get an office before.”

  “Yeah,” she said, feeling her heart pound a bit. Why was she getting an office then? “The one right next to his.”

  Tad let out a whistle. “Well, Hannah-Banana, what did you do?”

  “What do you mean ‘what did I do’ ?”

  “Well, in the two years I have been here, there have been like twenty of you. And none of them have been given the permanency of an office. Frankly, I didn’t even know that was an office. I thought it was a bathroom seeing as I’ve yet to see him use the one on the floor.”

  “I thought the same thing,” Hannah said, feeling a bit giddy from being so tired. “I gave him like fifteen cups of coffee and he like never left the office.”

  “He’s a machine. Full automaton. But stop changing the subject. What did you do?”

  “I didn’t do anything,” She laughed. “Maybe I just make great coffee.”

  “Maybe he just likes your great ass,” Tad quipped.

  “Hey!”

  “Oh come on now. He’s a man. He has noticed. Hell, even I noticed and I have no interest in your ass.”

  “He has no interest in it either,” Hannah insisted, setting her alarm clock and praying seven hours of sleep would be enough to refresh her.

  “Oh please. Keep telling yourself that,” he said, sounding serious. “Don’t fall for it, okay? I know you swear you don’t even think he is the yummy piece of prime rib that he is, but I don’t believe that for a second. You know he’s gorgeous. But I have seen four of his assistants get infatuated and fall into bed with him. They usually quit a few days later when they realized he has no actual interest in them. And I didn’t care about them, they were vapid little gold diggers who saw him as an easy catch. But I like you. And I want you to hang around. Don’t let him rope you in.”

  “Dude,” Hannah said, wishing he would let this subject go, “he doesn’t even talk to me. Seriously. Not even a hello. Or thank you.”

  “He doesn’t need to talk to you to think about you naked.”

  “Oh, gross,” Hannah grimaced. “He’s not interested. And even if he was, I’m not. I need the money more than anything right now. So go to bed and rest easy. Nothing is going to happen with me and EM.”

  “Glad to hear it. Get some beauty rest.”

  “You too,” Hannah said, turning off the light and pulling the covers up to her neck.

  “Have you seen me? I don’t need beauty rest,” Tad laughed and wished her goodnight.

  Hannah wanted nothing more than to finally get some sleep, but her conversation with Tad played over and over in her head.

  Had EM noticed her? Somehow she really doubted it, but Tad seemed pretty certain. Could he really be thinking about her in a sexual way? It seemed unlikely. How could he think about her naked when he had hardly even glanced in her direction in eleven hours?

  She couldn’t even imagine how a sexual relationship could form between EM and one of his assistants. Had they just thrown themselves at him? She couldn’t see how it would work any other way.

  She couldn’t fathom, even, how he had gotten a reputation as such a ladies man. There seemed to be nothing charming about his character. If anything he seemed intensely uninteresting. He didn’t seem to have any social skills to speak of, let alone a charming character. He was always surly and condescending.

  How did he even have time for dating? He was at the office until nine most nights and then back there by eight the next morning.

  If she was honest, she would have admitted to Tad that over the course of the day she had noticed how attractive he is. He had an intriguing, mysterious air to him. And his eyes, when they were put in your direction, seemed to piece you to your soul. She had never seen eyes that blue before. And he had thick dark lashes around them which made them pop all the more. Then there was the sharpness of his cheekbones, hidden a little by that somehow attractive stubble.

  But he had a firm set to his jaw that seemed aggressive. And his mouth was prone to seriousness, not humor.

  And, in her opinion, that was not in any way her type. She preferred men who didn’t take themselves so seriously. Someone with an easy smile and eyes that hinted at humor and compassion.

  But all that was inconsequential. He was her boss. He signed the paychecks she so desperately needed. Even if relationships or sex were a focus of hers
, he would be the last man she would turn to.

  The very last.

  Four

  If possible, her second day felt even more overwhelming than her first. This was probably due to a night spent tossing and turning, followed by a string of curses hauled at her alarm clock when it went off after she had a scarce three hours of sleep.

  She felt frazzled, as if the entire world was a step ahead of her and she was scrambling to catch up.

  Maybe it was because her first day was such a shock, such a strange, alien experience of being an outsider that did not fully understand all the responsibilities she would have to handle every single day of her workweek while the rest of the staff seemed to function effortless in the breakneck pace.

  By lunchtime, her desk resembled that of a scatter-brained middle school teacher with far too many students and too many assignments to grade and not enough organizational skills.

  She had invoices and faxes, spreadsheets and travel guides. Mail and mail and more mail. The sheer volume of mail that was addressed to E. Michaels was jaw dropping. If his mail were just put on hold for a week, you could probably save a thousand rain forests from destruction. And this was only his personal mail. Imagine how much was addressed to the company at large. She got a twitch just thinking about it.

  Hannah tapped her foot impatiently in the mini kitchen, watching the clock and waiting for the coffee pot to finish brewing. She was running late. Mr. Michaels had an appointment in less than five minutes and she still had to make the coffee and get it back to the office.

  He could give her one of those looks of his if she was late. That kind of look that said “you are completely imcompetant’. Apparently it was a look everyone in the company was intimate with.