Page 25 of Fierce

I sighed and kept typing. I would’ve known anyway. When Martine walked in, heads dropped down behind cubicle walls, fingers got busy, and conversation stopped. She sent a tsunami of silence before her every time she arrived. But then, bosses tended to do that.

This time, the cone of silence stopped outside my cubicle, and I saw her Manolo Blahnik tapping out of the corner of my eye. I turned and took in the Stella McCartney print skirt—too busy, I couldn’t help thinking—and asymmetrical white top.

“What happened to your shoes?” she asked.

I looked down, horrified. But no, I hadn’t forgotten myself and taken my sandals off. I always waited until she’d left for the evening. “Excuse me?”

“I know you don’t quite know the ropes yet, but—a little word, Hope. Those don’t quite work, do they? The ones you were wearing on Friday afternoon were much better.”

If I hadn’t felt so fragile, it wouldn’t have been so bad. As it was, her words called up a mental picture of my beautiful Jimmy Choos, abandoned on the floor of the restaurant. Just before I’d run out on Hemi.

“Thank you,” I said, meeting her eyes with an effort.

She nodded and headed into her office, and I turned back to my work. Another day, another dollar. And appropriate or not, Jimmy Choos don’t grow on trees. Not on twenty-nine bucks an hour in New York City.

Did it get better? Well, yes and no. The work didn’t, because I was soon buried again. But three hours later, a deliveryman was standing at my cube, hidden behind one of the biggest displays of flowers I’d ever seen outside a funeral parlor.

White roses and purple stock. No tightly folded, scentless, soulless greenhouse varieties, but huge blooms that wafted their fragrance through the air like the very scent of summer. There must have been two dozen roses in there.

It was over the top. It was glorious. And it was impossible for me to accept.

“No.” I was standing, blocking the entrance. “No.”

“Hey.” The deliveryman stepped back in alarm. “What?”

“Take them away. Give them to somebody else."

“Lady, I do that, and my boss finds out I did? He’ll fire me. This is a big account. Please.”

The one argument I couldn’t resist. I was still hesitating, the deliveryman was still in the corridor, and Nathan was out of his cube and watching with interest when Martine came out of her office.

“For me, I assume,” she said. “Bring them on in.”

“No,” I found myself saying. “Actually, they’re for me.” They weren’t hers. They were mine. I stepped back and let the man set them on my desk, then reached in the drawer for my purse.

“Nope,” he said when I pulled out a five. And when I continued to hold it out, he leaned closer and told me, his voice low, “Fifty bucks extra for me, my boss said, if I tell you we don’t accept tips. But I don’t want to say it out loud. I make a lot of deliveries to this building, and I don’t want to give anyone any ideas, you know?”

Fifty bucks? For not taking a tip? My head was full of fragrance, my heart full of confusion.

“Oh. Almost forgot.” He handed me the plastic bag he was carrying. “This.”

I opened the bag and pulled out the container. Lunch?

It was salmon. Salmon, and potatoes, and green beans. And it was warm.

“What…” I tried to ask him.

“Don’t ask me, lady. I just work there. They say deliver flowers, I deliver flowers. They say pick up lunch, I pick up lunch.”

“Well…thank you.”

“Nope. Thank whoever’s giving me my fifty bucks.” And he was gone.

Martine wasn’t, though. “Very nice,” she said. “But again, we really don’t need this kind of disruption in our workday. Please tell your…friends to send their gifts to your home from now on.”

My friends? What was I, a hooker? I opened my mouth, but what came out was, “Of course.”

“Our personal lives don’t really belong in the office, do they?” she said with a little smile. “And—” She looked at her watch. “I’m afraid I’m still waiting for that report.”

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