Page 31 of More Than Words

My personal phone didn’t have any missed messages when I checked them on my walk down the hall, so I breathed a sigh of relief that I wasn’t needed at home to clean up messes or hunt down any wily octogenarians. It seemed I was getting a momentary reprieve.

“You’re here late.” A quiet voice called out from behind the reception desk, startling me a little as I turned the corner.

“I could say the same about you,” I chuckled nervously as I shoved my phone into my pants pocket and looked over at the reception desk. Andrea, the receptionist and executive assistant to the genre editors, had her hair pinned up into a sloppy bun, and a slew of textbooks and notebooks were strewn across her typically pristine desk. “Shouldn’t you have taken off at 5:00 with the rest of the admin staff?”

“Yeah,” she smiled, her eyes nervously flicking between the mess she’d made and my eyes. I know my office may have been meticulously organized, but I wasn’t going to judge her for spreading out while she was clearly working on something. “But my apartment is a shoebox, and the restaurant below is loud, so I didn’t think I’d get much studying done there.”

Tilting my head to the side, I tried to recall what I knew about her. I knew she was only a year or so younger than Sam, with a bachelor’s degree. I’d seen her name on the interview list for the copy-editing intern pool a few times, but she was somehow still at the reception desk. “I thought you already had your degree.”

She blushed, looking down and tucking her short hair behind her ear. “I do. But it didn’t seem to give me much leverage when I was applying for jobs, so I started my graduate degree this semester. Hopefully, once I’m done, I can get something more than a glorified secretary position.”

Hmm. I respected that. I had a master’s degree in Literary Editing and Publishing, as well as several industry certifications and part of a Ph.D. I’d abandoned when Hutch was discharged. She was right. Things were different now than when I’d been hired as a proofer straight out of Boston College. The industry was getting saturated, and it was cutthroat to get a position with more than lateral movement within a house.

Quite a few of the people in my graduate classes did freelance now since the self-publishing industry was growing in popularity, so the industry was changing. I’d just been lucky enough to discover a few authors who had secured my place at Vivid.

“Well, keep at it. Positions open here a few times a year. Just make sure you’re keeping an eye on the listings as they come up. They’ll get snatched up quickly.” I knew there was talk about a few people transferring or retiring soon, so as people moved up to fill those positions, there would be a scramble from the university intern pool to plug in the holes with the entry-level jobs.

“I have been. Sloane sends out a memo to all the executive assistants when things open, so I usually see them before they get posted. No luck yet.”

“Hang in there.” Pulling my phone from my pocket, I glanced at the time, knowing that if I didn’t get moving, I’d only get in a partial workout.

“Sorry,” she apologized, waving me toward the elevators. “I didn’t mean to distract you. Have a good evening Mr. O’Neill.”

“You can call me Adrian,” I laughed, feeling old as fuck when people called me Mr. O’Neill. That was Pops, not me. “I’m not that much of a dick.”

She blushed again, ducking her head as I headed into the elevator lobby. Thankfully, it didn’t take long for the car to arrive, and I was able to get down to the second floor, which housed the fitness center, without a million stops on the way down. The fitness crowd that came down here immediately after work should be clearing out now, but the gym closed at 9:00, so I knew I needed to get changed and get moving, or I’d be crunched for time.

While the heavy bar had a great appeal for tiring myself out, I didn’t have a spotter lined up, so I settled for a moderately heavy weight on the leg press and pushed myself until I couldn’t get out more quality reps. Knowing I would be feeling it tomorrow but had a manuscript to get through a developmental edit on, I went lighter on the arms, the repetitive motion of the chest fly helping to clear my mind.

After a good forty-five minutes of torturing myself through the various chest and arm repetitions, I wiped my sweaty face and guzzled down the rest of my water.

It was times like these I missed the twenty-four-hour gym down the street in my old neighborhood. I used to wake up at five and go for a run before high school and exhaust myself after practices in the afternoon with free weights.

Then I got used to a nicer facility after graduation, spending hours after classes in the university weight room during the off-season. College was lonely for me. Trying desperately to fit in with the other guys on the baseball team or in the library, trying to keep up with my studies. It would have been easy to get caught up in the party lifestyle, but I wasn’t throwing away my only opportunity to make something of myself.

Guilt was a constant companion while I enjoyed the perks of being a scholarship athlete and my brother was off literally fighting for his life in places he couldn’t even tell me about. We tried to keep up an email correspondence, but he’d go silent for weeks at a time and come back sounding more jaded than ever after a particularly long deployment. He didn’t tell me the terrible things he witnessed overseas, and I didn’t ask, but the guilt was always there that I was close to home and building a secure life for myself while he risked his every day.

Weary and sore, I took a shower in the locker room and got dressed in casual clothes, pocketed my car keys, and headed to the parking garage.

A flash of a blonde ponytail caught my attention as I made my way across the closed lobby of the building, my pace slowing as I watched a woman in a pair of tight leggings and a baggy sweatshirt grumble at her phone.

“Can I help you with something?” I asked as I walked closer, my steps faltering when Isobel turned toward me. I wasn’t used to seeing her face bare, but she still stunned me as I took in the flush in her cheeks and the sweat along her hairline—she was beautiful. She’d clearly been trying to work off some aggression in the gym tonight like I had been.

“I’m good. Just trying to get this stupid app downloaded on my work phone, and the network is being slow as fuck. My personal phone died, and I forgot to charge it this afternoon. Kind of hard to request a ride home if I can’t log into the damn app.”

Without hesitation, my mouth opened. “I’ll give you a ride.”

“Yeah, I’m sure you’d like that,” she mumbled before she turned away from me and continued stabbing her finger on the screen.

“Is, I’m not trying to be difficult, but at this rate, you’ll be waiting here a while, and I feel guilty leaving a woman stranded after dark if I can help.”

“Oh, so you need to come in and flex your muscles to protect me because I’m a helpless little woman?”

God, why did she have to think the worst of me immediately? I knew the answer to that, but I didn’t like it. “I’m offering to be a nice guy, not because I think you’re helpless. My mother raised me to be a gentleman. Please let me escort you home safely.”

“Could have fooled me, Dickhead.”

Flinching as she hurled that nickname at me like an insult, I took a deep breath and walked closer with my hands held up in supplication. “I know you’re pissed at me, and you should be because my mouth gets me into trouble with you, but I’m not trying to be a dick right now.”

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