Page 7 of Grumpy Boss's Secret

I flailed, the chair spinning rapidly.

Ian Huntington was standing in the doorway of my office.

“What? Are you –” I spluttered. “Of all the –”

He wasn’t smiling; he was just standing there, watching me. He’d been watching me spin around in a circle mumbling about cheeseburgers like I was trying to cast a spell. I should have been embarrassed. I wasn’t. There was no room in my mind for anything but seething indignation.

“Have you ever heard of knocking?” I blurted, finally getting out a coherent sentence in a burst of volume.

Ian glanced down the hall as if worried someone might have heard me. Now he was embarrassed. Fancy that.

"Is this what you do on your first day?" he said. "Spin around in a circle in your chair like a twelve-year-old?"

I could feel my cheeks getting hot.

“No, no,” I said. “Come here.”

His eyebrows rose. “What?”

“Come here,” I said crisply. “Spinning around in a chair is what I do when I’m killing time before leaving because I already got a butt load of work done. Come and look at what I’ve already done today.”

Ian pursed his lips and walked over to me. I tried not to notice how my skin crackled with nervousness as he stepped beside me, just a foot away from my body.

“Look,” I said, showing him the call log on my work phone. “These are the numbers I called today.” I pulled up my work email on the computer. “These are the emails I’ve sent.” I clicked again. “This is the agenda for the photoshoot. The photographer is booked and paid, and I’ve created several rough drafts for the final promotional images.”

I looked up at Ian. He stared blankly at my computer screen, but his lips were slightly pushed forward. It almost looked like a pout, but it wasn't.

He was impressed. He should be.

“And that,” I said, spinning around in my chair again, “is what I did on my first day.”

Ian stepped away from me quickly as I began to spin. He momentarily stood next to my desk and said, "I guess you're not a twelve-year-old."

Was it my imagination, or had he been looking me up and down when he said it? Hard to tell when you’re spinning around in a circle.

“And don’t ever come into my office without knocking again,” I said, stopping myself. “That’s got to be illegal.”

“Why do you care?” Ian asked.

"What?" I cried loudly enough that Ian glanced behind him in the hallway again. "It's a violation of privacy."

“You’re at work,” Ian said. “You don’t need privacy here.”

“I absolutely do,” I said.

“What, do you take your pants off to work?”

My jaw dropped.

“How dare you?” I said.

“What? Do you?”

“No!”

“Why are you so upset that I asked? It was just a joke!”

“That was a joke? You really need to work on your delivery.”

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