Page 5 of The Moon Also Rises
“No, it's not. It's where you store all the paperwork you should have shredded or filed already and where you have your lunch reading Mail Online and eating cheese and pickle sandwiches. And you can do that at your desk.”
I gasp with a hand on my chest. “And get grated cheese in the cracks of my keyboard? You savage, Sharon.”
“Me a savage? I'm not the one giving our new colleague the worst possible welcome.”
I close my eyes then and when I open them, I make sure I have a smile on my face. I turn to Rami.
“Yes, my apologies. I shouldn't have made… assumptions. Of course, you can work in here, for however long you need to.”
It literally pains me to say such nice things. Am I really becoming this grumpy in my middle age?
“Apology accepted, Jake,” he says with a returning smile so warm some of its heat reaches me, loosening a little of the tension in my shoulders. It’s as we share eye contact that I notice the colour of his eyes, a light, bright grey that seems to sparkle in the artificial lighting. God, how lucky do some people get having eyes that unusual, that captivating? No wonder he doesn’t seem to feel the need to make much of an effort with sparkling conversation. He doesn’t need to.
“Well, that's very decent of you.” Sharon gives me a very self-satisfied look. “Let’s make you some space over here.”
She reaches over and grabs the post and all the other stacks of paperwork. She scoops it all up and then strides over to my desk. There she dumps all the papers on what little space remains.
“You bitch,” I say, pulling harder on my pout so I don't show even a hint of a grin.
“Dateless desperado," she says back before she walks to the door. Her tone becomes sunnier as she turns to the man who will now be sharing my office. “Good luck, Rami!”
Sharon is gone before Rami replies, and he swallows whatever words he was muttering. I move to sit back at my desk, sighing again when I see the mess of papers covering it
“Sharon seems... interesting,” Rami ventures as he goes to the table and pulls out a chair.
“Sharon is a ruthless and insensitive battle-axe, but she's the best personal assistant I've ever had, and I love her dearly,” I say finding all those words suddenly exhausting. I can't believe I now have to summon the energy for small talk with this stranger. While he's certainly easy on the eye, he's already gone some way to show me he has the personality of a cucumber so I can't even enjoy a little banter.
“That makes complete sense,” he mumbles as he sits and opens his laptop. My top lip curls in a sneer when I notice it's a newer model than mine, and with a screen two inches bigger. The bastard.
“Who did you have to blow to get that?” I demand.
He practically gets whiplash from looking up at me so quickly. “Pardon?”
“Fancy laptop.” I waggle my finger at the device. “How did you get the job anyway? I don't remember you coming in for an interview. I sat in on some of them.” I know I would remember seeing those eyes recently.
Rami takes a moment to think on his answer, lips closed flat. “I didn't exactly go through the usual recruitment process,” he says, and I wait for more information but he closes his mouth again and turns back to the laptop.
“Are you friends with Bill, or Simeon?” I ask, referring to the two owners of the company we work for, Status Hotels & Venues. When I see his shoulders rise, I know my answer even though he doesn't speak.
“It's both, isn't it?” I ask and again his silence and tense upper body are confirmation.
Shit. If he's friends with them then not only do I have zero opportunity for banter but I also have to be on my best behaviour. In fact, I probably need to do more than that to undo the damage of the mistaken identity and the admittedly ridiculous gay-or-otherwise flap I just had.
Resisting the urge to groan and hang my head in my hands – because knowing my luck, this man has eyes in the back of his head as well as a much better laptop than me – I instead move the papers Sharon dumped on my desk to the floor and get back to work. And by work, I mean continuing to go through my contact list to find a suitable date for Lionel's wedding.
Chapter Two
Rami
He thinks I got this job because I'm friends with the owners.
Technically he's not wrong – I was offered the job without an interview – but saying we're friends is stretching the truth to elastic proportions. I wouldn’t call them more than acquaintances. I don't really have any friends. Not anymore.
In fact, one of my motivations for taking this role was to hopefully meet some new people and change that. I should have done it sooner – it has been nearly two years since I left LA after all – but making new social contacts is practically impossible when you're forty-three, more than a little mistrusting of people, and have a rather unpleasant recent past you find difficult to talk about.
I suppose it’s a good thing, therefore, that I can strike this guy off my list of potential new friends. Jake Forester is making it abundantly clear he doesn't want to have anything to do with me, even in a work sense, let alone a social setting. I'd like to say I'm relieved, but I'm not. I may even be a little disappointed. He's funny, quick-witted and although it’s only appeared once or twice, he has an almost addictive smile that teeters between cheeky and wicked perfectly. He has some of the best banter I’ve heard and has exactly the kind of sardonic, dry sense of humour I love, and yet the sharp look in his light brown eyes is making it very clear what he thinks about my getting here on an easy ride.
And he's not wrong. Getting this job was relatively easy. But everything else until that point was a long, bumpy, and at times horrendously difficult ride, which is probably why I feel defensive enough to open my mouth many long minutes after he last speaks.
