Page 102 of Crazy for this Girl

I lift a brow. “So you have been fucking one of the sales managers.”

“Once.”

My focus slits. “And the other?”

“No.” He shakes his head. “Too much of a brown nose. It’s not attractive.”

“And the assistant? Will I be walking into the employee’s bathroom with you bending her over the sink?”

“God, I hope so.” I open my mouth to run it about professionalism and sexual harassment when he beats me to it. “However…she’s too close to my workspace and screwing with that would be detrimental to what we’re trying to do here. Losing her would take a lot of time replacing her work ethic and what she brings to the table.”

“Wasn’t she supposed to be in that meeting I had today?

Elliott rakes his fingers through his thick hair. “Nah, she’s taken a few days off for personal shit.” He holds up an index finger to shut me right the hell up, knowing me like the back of my hand. This business is all I have to focus on that doesn’t include wanting to drink myself to death or put the barrel of a gun to my head. I tried that once, but Laynee saved my life that night. “She doesn’t ask for anything, Cal, so fuck off. Like I just got done saying, she’s the best assistant this branch has ever seen, and I took a shot on her. Hence why I haven’t fucked her yet. She’s better than yours in Pasadena.”

“I highly doubt that.”

My cousin grins at me. “Oh, Cal. Brooklyn’s just biding her time so she can jump your dick. That professional, I’ll make sure you don’t have to lift a fucking finger bullshit is purely that. Did you ask her to cut up your lunch for those first three weeks because your parents never taught you, or did she do that on her own?”

“Shut the fuck up,” I growl out. “I put an end to that.”

“Took you three weeks.”

“Because I only had two things I actually needed cut up during that time span.”

My cousin barks out laughing like the clown he is. “What about the time you accidentally caught her”—he holds up two fingers and quotes—“dressing in your office.”

“She thought I was gone for the day.” Which was total bullshit.

If I’m being honest, I was so fucked up, in the shadows of distress that I didn’t have the energy to fire her and interview someone else. So, I let it ride until she caught me on a bad day, then I exploded at her. It never happened again after that.

“It was four in the evening,” my cousin imparts. “You never leave at four—”

“I’m not mixing business with whatever fantasies my employees may or may not have about me.” I wave a hand in the air for him to get to the point of why I’m here. “Let’s get on with it.”

“I’m just proving a point that I, unfortunately, haven’t seen my assistant half-naked. Plain and simple.”

“Good for you.”

Elliot leans back more in his chair. “Go visit my mom on your way back to Cali when you’re finished here. She’s been asking about you ever since…what happened.”

Ever since I lost my fiancé and baby in a car accident.

“Where is she these days?” I ask, because even when she beat her illness last year, Elliott has been encouraging her with traveling around and seeing everything she’s ever wanted to see.

“Las Vegas.”

My lips curl into the first genuine smile since arriving to the Midwest. My Aunt Sherry literally deserves the world, and I wish she was my mother growing up. I never would’ve been forced into anything right out of high school, and Laynee would be mine. “She win anything yet? I could retire.”

Elliott scoffs at me, his arm coming around to hit my bicep. “You could retire here soon. You’re a fucking multi-millionaire the moment you sign the paperwork Friday.”

On my thirty-fifth birthday, just how my father wanted it to fall and how he always got it.

Me, I haven’t had what I wanted since I was seventeen. The day I turned from child to legal adult, he’s somehow had a handle on my life.

Starting with how he forged signed documents of me listing into the Marines. How he didn’t tell me until it was too late and I couldn’t back out.

The level of betrayal I felt to leave behind the girl I was in love with since I was thirteen fell to shit. Thirteen weeks of boot camp with no outside communication had my head split with how she felt.

---