Page 3 of Secretary Crush
“Yeah, I got a new neighbor today, and Zoe had taken her in like a lost kitten. Anyway, she needs a job, and she said she was a secretary back in the city before she quit for the move. I was thinking if you need help and she needs a job…”
“You wouldn’t happen to be trying to buy yourself some brownie points with your pregnant fiancée, now would you?”
“What? I can’t help myself out in the process?”
I can’t help but laugh. “All right, tell her to come to the shop in the morning, and I’ll interview her.”
“Will do. Thanks, man.”
“Thank you for thinking of me,” I tell him, hanging up the phone.
I sit back in my chair and look around the small office space. This place has slowly been falling apart since Joanne and I called it quits six months ago. Joanne is my on-again, off-again girlfriend who is currently traveling the world on the back of some asshole’s motorcycle. The shitty part is that I built the bike they’re on. I took him on as a client, and one night of running late and asking her to open the shop for him basically pushed the two together. They kept things under wraps until I had his bike finished. Then they loaded up and rode off into the sunset.
But it is what it is. I’m not terribly upset about it. That’s just who Joanne is. She’s always looking for the next best thing while dreaming of getting out of this town. I might have been the next best thing at one point, but I wasn’t ever getting her out of town, and she knew it. So to her, I’m just a steppingstone. I’m the guy she runs to after all her horrible breakups. I’m the guy who gets her cleaned up no matter what drug she’s strung out on. I’m the one who brings her in, cleans her up, gives her food, water, shelter, and a job to get back up on her feet. I’m old reliable.
The guys around here like to give me shit and say that I’m wrapped around her little finger, that I can’t resist her, but neither of those is true. I feel I owe it to her father to take care of her. You see, back in high school, Joanne and I started dating. We got real serious real fast. We were young and stupid, and you couldn’t tell us anything. We had the world at our fingertips. I had my sights set on opening my own motorcycle garage—to fix, build, and create—and I was working toward that every day. And I had the only girl I’d ever loved at my side. Her father and I were close. Joanne had lost her mother at a young age, and she’d only ever had her dad. He did the best he could, but between working long hours and diving into his bottle every night, she was left to be wild most of the time.
When she started dating me, she calmed down. She wasn’t sneaking out of the house and doing God knows what with God knows who. I grounded her in a way, and in a sense, she grounded me too. Then just before we were set to graduate from high school, her dad was diagnosed with late-stage liver cancer. We watched him wilt away to nothing. On his deathbed, he promised me that I would get what I wanted out of life, and he asked me if I would take care of Joanne. I promised him I would. He knew I was young, and he knew there was a chance that she and I wouldn’t spend our lives together, but I understood what he was asking. Just watch over her even if I’m not with her. Keep her grounded.
It wasn’t long until he passed away, and to my surprise, his lawyer found me one day and told me he had left everything to me. I had the money I needed to open my shop. Still to this day, I owe that old man my life, so in an attempt to make up for it anyway I can, I keep up with my end of the deal. I do what I can for Joanne when she’s around. I make myself whatever she needs. If she needs a place to crash, I give her the key to my house. If she needs a job, she becomes the new office girl at the garage her father paid for. If she needs food, clothes, medical care, or rehab….well, I make sure she gets that too. I wish I could say that things between us have never been sexual, but that would be a lie. Usually, when she makes her way back into my life, we pick up where we left off, and that’s the only thing the guys around here know or see. She comes wandering back into my life, and suddenly, I’m no longer single.
“Boss, Andy is here to check out his bike,” Tony says, sticking his head into the office.
I nod, take a deep breath, and stand, pushing my way out of the office to take Andy to his newly built bike.
* * *
“Who in thehell has been making the coffee around here?” I yell out the office door at the guys, who are each standing next to whatever bike they’re working on.
“I made that pot,” Zane says, holding his hand up as he squats behind a bike.
“It’s like pure fucking mud. Did you put any water in the tank?”
He stands, and he’s wearing a smirk as he shrugs. “I followed the directions. I think the pot is finally crapping out. You should probably get a new one.”
Shaking my head, I sling the carafe back onto the burner and switch it off so it doesn’t burn the fucking shop down. There’s a knock on the door, and I turn around, wondering which asshole is trying to be funny by knocking on the door. That’s when I see a beautiful woman standing on the other side of the doorway, looking nervous and giving me a sheepish look.
She offers up a smile as her tiny hand sweeps a piece of her auburn hair behind her ear. “Hi, I’m Ella. I believe I’m supposed to be here for an interview. Are you Hudson?” she asks with a lift of her brow.
“Right, yes, yes I am. I’m sorry for the mess around here. This is why we’re looking for help.” I laugh.
Her green eyes sweep over the place, and if I’m not mistaken, she looks a little afraid.
Papers, files, newspapers, and trash cover the floor and the tops of the desk and counter space. Filing cabinets are stuffed full and spilling out onto the floor. Trash, empty fast food bags, paper cups, and dirty coffee cups litter the area. I don’t blame her for being scared of the place.
“Please, have a seat, and we’ll get started.”
She walks into the office, and I close the door behind her. She stops and looks at the chair across from mine at the desk. It’s now home to a stack of file folders.
“You can take my seat. I’ll stand,” I tell her.
She smiles and moves around the desk to sit. I can’t stop myself from taking her in. She’s wearing a white summer dress with tiny little flowers printed on it, and it’s sheer and flowing around her. It ends mid-thigh, and her long, dark hair hangs down her back in soft curls. She’s not wearing a ton of makeup, just a little pink on her cheeks and that stuff that makes her eyelashes look extra long and dark. Her lips are shimmering too. Her looks are so different from Joanne’s that I wonder how I can be attracted to them both.
Joanne has a big chest and curvy hips. She always bleaches her hair, and her face is always covered in makeup. But when she put on that bikini top and leather vest, I lost my mind. This girl seems young and sweet, innocent. Far too innocent to be around here with all these dirty, shit-talking guys.
“So, Gage says you just moved here from the city. What prompted the move?” I ask. Leaning against the wall, I cross my arms over my chest, reminding myself to keep my mind off that tiny little body under that dress that’s way too white to be wearing in a greasy motorcycle shop.
She nods and crosses her legs. My eyes follow them up from her toes, and something in my stomach tickles. “I did. I was living there with my boyfriend. However, things didn’t end well, so I moved here for a fresh start.”
