Page 32 of Turn Up The Heat

Bellamy pressedthe phone to her ear. She had a sinking feeling that unless she figured out how to alter the time-space continuum to manage being in two places at once, she was definitely going to have to head home and figure out a way to come back for her car on Friday. Her boss was bound to flip into the stratosphere at the idea of Bellamy waiting in the mountains for her car to be fixed.

“Seriously? That bitch needs a hobby,” Holly said, thankfully letting Bellamy slide in the gossip department.

Jenna gave up a humorless smile and nursed her coffee, leaning against the narrow counter dividing the kitchenette from the common room. “I think making Bellamy’s life a living hellisher hobby.”

“Well, she’s getting really good at it,” Holly quipped.

Bellamy jerked the phone away from her ear, her boss’s recorded voice so grating and awful that the harping would be perfectly audible even if she laid the thing on the counter.

“Bellamy, I understand you’re away until Tuesday.” The words dripped with so much disdain that Bellamy cringed. God forbid she try to have a life on her days off. “But I absolutely need that Anderson contract on my desk first thing when you get back to the office.”

Bellamy swallowed. The Anderson contract, a.k.a. the Doorstop, was sitting, half-done, on Bellamy’s laptop at work, and her boss had told her she had at least a week to finish the research. How was she possibly going to pull this off?

The voicemail droned on. “Oh, and another thing. We’ve moved up the deadline for the research on the project you’ve been working on with Cooper, and I’m going to need all of those figures no later than mid-week.”

The message continued until the time limit for voicemail cut off, but far be it for a little thing like that to stop ol’ Bosszilla. She’d just called back and left her litany in installments. By the time Bellamy got to Mission Impossible, The Final Chapter, she was exhausted just from listening. Meeting these new deadlines would be difficult even if she was back in the city. There was no wayshe could pull it off while being stranded in the mountains with no car and her laptop locked in her desk a hundred miles away.

“I don’t think I can handle this.” She propped her elbows on the counter and dropped her head into her hands. “You know, when I finished my MBA two years ago, this is definitelynot what I had in mind.”

“Oh, honey. You had no way of knowing you’d get stuck working for such a heinous troll. Can you move within the company? Maybe there’s an opening for an analyst on another team,” Holly said, giving Bellamy’s back a gentle rub.

Man, she must be toeing the line of pretty pathetic to garner the sympathy-pat before breakfast. Bellamy sighed, peeking out from the thick tendrils of hair draped over her fingers. “Maybe, but you know what? That might just be a quick fix for a slow problem.”

Jenna drew her brows inward, leaning toward Bellamy from the other side of the counter. “What do you mean? When Bosszilla’s not hounding you—which, granted, is half the day, every day—you’re great at your job.”

Bellamy managed a tiny smile. “Thanks.”

“I’m not stroking your ego just for the hell of it. That’s the truth,” Jenna said, clearly having heard the doubt in Bellamy’s voice. “You graduated twelfth in your class at the most prestigious freaking business school in the country. Come on, admit it. You don’t exactly suck.”

“Just because you’re good at something doesn’t mean you love it, though,” Bellamy pointed out.

“I thought you did love it. Bosszilla aside,” Holly said.

“I guess the job just isn’t what I thought it would be. I definitely don’t love it, that’s for sure. To be brutally honest, I’m not even sure Ilikeit anymore.”

Bellamy thought of all the hours she spent holed up in her office, meticulously researching contracts and negotiating deals for clients. Sure, she was good at it—she’d never have gotten as far up the ranks as she had if she’d been poorly suited for the work. But the overwhelming majority of those hours had been spent wishing she were somewhere else. Somehow, all of her hard work and accomplishments just didn’t seem to outweigh the negatives.

Holly’s eyes went wide. “Wait. Are you saying you want to quit?”

“Yes. I mean, no!” Bellamy shook her head, although whether to emphasize her “no” or to clear her thoughts, she couldn’t be certain. “I don’t love the work. That part is true. But I think I’m just burned out. I can’t quit, like,forever.” The thought was crazy. For God’s sake, she’d just taken her boards last year. Besides… “Anyway, I went to school for this. What else could I possibly do for a living?”

“What else would youwantto do?”

Jenna’s question threw Bellamy off kilter, and it stopped her halfway between the counter and the cabinet over the mini-fridge, where she’d stashed the homemade muffins from the bakery at Joe’s.

“What do you mean, what do I want to do? I want to come up with a pain-free way to get my ass home tomorrow night so I can work on the stupid Anderson contract until daybreak and get Bosszilla off my back. Can I just ride with you guys?” She’d simply have to suck it up and have her car towed back to the city once Shane fixed it. Not ideal, but there were no other choices on the table.

“Not what do you want to do right now,” Jenna said. “I meant, if you could do something you really love for a living, what would you do? Would it be this?” she asked, point-blank.

Bellamy grabbed the bag of muffins and gave one to both Jenna and Holly before shrugging. “I don’t know. I guess I could go into marketing.” She took a bite of her muffin, savoring it. At least someone in Pine Mountain knew how to get the whole blueberries-to-batter ratio right.

“That’s the best you can come up with?” Jenna arched a brow, digging into her own muffin. “Marketing?”

“Hey!” Holly protested around a mouth full of cakey goodness. “I work in marketing, you know. And oh my God, these muffins are divine. But not as good as yours,” she amended, nodding at Bellamy.

“Exactly my point. You’re in marketing because you love it.” Jenna acknowledged Holly with a nod, then flicked her gaze back to where Bellamy had just parked herself on a bar stool at the counter. “But not everybody loves her job. Obviously.”

Bellamy shook her head. “You’re forgetting the fact that I spent years, not to mention a metric ton of money, going to school for this. I chose it. Plus, everyone expects me to have a business-oriented career.”

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