Page 2 of Daydreamer
Chapter 2
That sounds… fun
Lucy
“Maybe I should just quit,” I said, crossing my arms over my chest so I could tuck my hands into my sides to keep them warm and suppressing another shiver. The futility of carrying on in this environment was becoming painstakingly clear now. I was better off stagnating in Little Buckingham; at least I had some mates there. I was staring at Felix’s tie now. How did you even manage to get a tie to appear so perfect? Everything about this man was immaculate. I was feeling more like a scruffy little nobody by the minute.
“You can’t just quit!” Felix’s affronted tone shocked me into meeting his eyes again. He had pushed away from the desk to fully loom over me. Felix was very good at looming. His expression now was furious. “What kind of attitude is that?”
I frowned up at him. “I thought that’s what you were hinting at? Listen, we’re on the same page about my crapness. I’ve got past form for being crap at stuff. Honestly, I’m surprised you haven’t fired me sooner.”
“I’m not firing you, Luce,” he shot back, a panicked lookon his face now. “Don’t tell your mum that I’m firing you. That isnotwhat’s happening.”
My mum had been Felix’s nanny for his entire childhood. We grew up in the same village. Well, sort of the same village: my family had lived in a small cottage right next to the pub in the heart of Little Buckingham; Felix’s lived in a vast manor house with acres of land on the outskirts of the village. And whilst my brother Mike and I went to the village school, Felix had been sent off to a posh boarding prep school miles away. But it was my mum who looked after him when he was home. He spent a lot of time in our tiny cottage, and he absolutely loved my mum and my brother. Mike and Felix were both six years older than me, and although their lives had now gone in different directions (my brother was a carpenter, Felix a business tycoon), they still considered themselves best friends, together with the other third of their trio, Ollie, whose family lived in the neighbouring estate to Felix’s.
I was always fascinated by the beautiful, loud, expressive, glamorous boy who would fill our little cottage with his magnetic energy. I followed him, Mike and Ollie around the village like a puppy back then until my brother would tell me to bugger off. But Felix would argue my case for me. He always let me tag along. I must have been really annoying, but he never got frustrated with me. There’s no denying I was a rare one with my endless stories and quirkiness, but Felix always humoured me. He was always kind.
When my guinea pig died, I insisted on a formal funeral – a directive that my brother completely ignored, but fifteen-year-old Felix turned up in a fitted, designer black suit, looking grave and appropriately sombre. He even gave a brief eulogy for Coco, something along the lines of how he’d always remember the way Coco pooped in Mike’s shoes, that he had a very soft head for stroking, and that he’d only ever bitten Felix’s fingeronce (which he’d probably deserved as he’d been putting him in Mike’s shoe at the time so that he would poop in there again).
“God, don’t encourage her, mate,” Mike had grumbled. “She’s mad as a box of frogs.”
“Don’t listen to him, Shakespeare,” Felix had said as he ruffled my hair. “The last thing you want to be is normal.”
I sighed. It was clear that grown-up Felix didn’t have the same appreciation of my quirks as he’d had back then. But to be honest, he was quite different now to the boy I’d known. I couldn’t see the Felix of today being happy listening to my crazy stories for hours on end and calling me Shakespeare. This Felix had sharp edges; he was hardened. He only did Very Important Things with Very Important People. He only dated supermodels or famous actresses. He was ruthless in business, cut-throat even. Everyone in the office was scared of him, he never smiled – I hadn’t once spotted his dimple the entire month I’d been working here. This Felix didn’t want some oddly dressed blast from the past haunting his office and dragging down the tone.
But, despite the fact that he was now a billionaire, ran his own multinational property development empire and was one of the top two hundred richest people in the country, hestilldidn’t want to disappoint his nanny. So he was stuck with me.
“Er… right, well, whatishappening then?” I asked in confusion. The last half hour had definitely seemed like he was working up to firing me, and with good reason. “I won’t tell Mum that you fired me, if that’s what you’re worried about.”
“I’m not firing you,” he said again through gritted teeth.
I shrugged. “If you say so.”
“Lucy, for someone whoneedsthis job, you seem very at peace with losing it.”
I sighed. “Felix, I’m crap at this. There’s no getting around it. And I don’t fit in here at all.” I bit my lip before I carried on with thenext bit, willing my eyes to stop stinging. I would not cry in front of this man. “It’s not working out. Coming to London might have been a mistake.”
Felix crossed his arms over his chest and stared down at me. I attempted to keep my cool despite the intensity of his gaze. God, he was beautiful.
“You just need more confidence. For a start, you’ll feel better if you’re wearing the appropriate stuff. Hold on.”
He swivelled round and pressed the intercom like we were in a bad movie about an arrogant CEO. It should have been cheesy, but the gorgeous bastard made it work.
“Tabitha, would you mind coming in here, please?” he asked.
“Of course, sir,” said Tabitha in that super-efficient, intimidating tone I was used to from her. A few click-clacks of her heels and she was back in the office. She looked between me and Felix again, probably wondering why I wasn’t already collecting up my stuff and vacating the building.
“Lucy needs some help,” Felix said, and I blinked in confusion. “She needs office-appropriate clothes. A whole re-vamp. And I’m not sure that, left to her own devices, she can manage that much of a transformation.”
Tabitha fixed me with a piercing stare, her eyes raking from my messy bun to my Uggs and back again. She was an expert in disguising her emotions. The only way I knew that she was angry was the twitch in the corner of her left eye. I felt my face flood with heat. I’d always had a terrible blushing habit. I couldn’t experience the least bit of embarrassment without turning tomato red, and I wasn’t sure if I’d ever been so embarrassed in my life. I was a twenty-seven-year-old woman who clearly could not be trusted to dress myself. When Tabitha didn’t reply, Felix cleared his throat.
“You can take the company credit card. No spending limit.”
“Fine,” she said, turning her attention from me to Felix and smiling as if it was no problem whatsoever to take a socially backward and fashion-challenged loser out for a shopping trip. “When would you like us to go?”
“You can both go now,” he said, waving his hand through the air.
“But it’s the meeting with Anderson Corp – don’t you need me there?”
