Page 16 of Darling Obsession

I guess Harlan Vance’s staff are about as friendly as he is.

I maybe shouldn’t have answered when the call display saidVance Industries.

But what good would avoiding him do?

The Vance family owns this whole building. And everything in it.

While they don’t ownme, per se, the insinuation was clear.

The Vances have the power. At least, if I want to keep working for them.

It’s Thursday morning, Crave bakery opened a couple of hours ago, and I’m in the back room, filling cream puffs with pastry cream. Or at least I was. I have my iPad set up on a stand while I work, and I’ve been chatting with Nicole all morning, too.

Now, I panic text the squad,He just called me into his office!!!And while I wait for their replies, I proceed to sweat about it while filling cream puffs and replaying my coworker’s words from last night.

Maybe the man who hates everything finally found something he likes.

And my personal favorite:If you’re smart, you’ll stay away from him.

Believe me, I’m trying.

I thought it would be easy enough, considering he’s a billionaire and I’m just a baker/waitress. But I had an unnerving feeling that our paths would cross again.

Maybe because my girlfriends seem so convinced of it.

Ever since I messaged them early this morning to tell them what happened at Velvet last night, Nicole can’t seem to come down off this cloud she’s on that Harlan Vance is going to get down on one knee for me. I adore Nicole, but she is desperately delusional when it comes to attractive men.

Dani sent me a detailed rundown of what to say to my employer—any of them—if he threatens my job. There are a lot of colorful swear words in it.

But now that Harlan Vance has called me in for a meeting, I’m seriously thinking I might need them.

My plan to break up with Justin tonight after I put in that overtime for him—while asserting my position that I’m staying here at Crave whether he likes it or not, and I expect no animosity at work from him—has taken a distant backseat in priority to my growing worry that I made a terrible first impression on one of my new employers, and my job at Velvet is now on the line.

Fearing that I’m about to imminently get fired is somehow worse than finding out Justin is screwing someone else. At least I haven’t seen Justin yet today. He hasn’t even come in yet this morning, but that’s not unusual.

For all I know he’s sleeping in late with chocolate girl.

Finally, my iPad chimes with aSquadresponse.

Nicole:SQUEEEE. He probably wants to ask you out!

Damn, it’s just Nicole. Again.

Me:Please. I’m his employee, not a Tinder match.

Nicole Lalonde is way too boy-crazy blind to help me with this. Dani said she’d be pretty tied up with a client today, though, so I guess I’m shit out of luck.

Me:I’m freaking out. He was supposed to be too busy with his very important life to remember the weird girl with turquoise hair who tried to read his text!

Nicole:You mean the dazzling hottie who crushed his will to live without her? Who melted his ice-cold heart into a roaring crotch fire?

Ugh. The ice-cold thing. As it turns out, that reputation precedes him, big time.

Not only did I serve drinks to a member of the Vance family—and piss him off—it had to bethatmember of the Vance family. The one who seems the scariest.

I don’t exactly have oodles of time to dig into it myself, but Nicole has all morning, apparently, and has been alerting me every time she finds something interesting online. Which isn’t much. It seems the Vance family is ultra private. Even Nicole, whose friend Megan is engaged to one of the Vances, and who was the reason I even heard about Velvet and the Vances in the first place, knows nothing about Harlan.

Except now that I met him and he tipped me two hundred bucks, she’s fully on board with Team Harlan, if he wants to marry me.

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