RICHARD (A BAD BOY ROMANCE) (36 page)

After a time, he grasped my hand in his good
one. “I remember. You helped me with my application before my interview.”

“I did,” I said. One might have thought our
very own staffing specialist would have been able to do that, but alas, Ross
wasn’t terribly familiar with the application process—nor anything else of
particular value, it seemed. “And I apologize that Mr. Culling hasn’t returned
your calls. I assume you’re here about the status of your background check and
interview?”

Mr. Davies nodded. I turned slightly over my
shoulder to see Miguel hanging back by the offices, keeping out of sight of Mr.
Davies. His face was turning redder by the second and he had a look of unease
about him, almost as if he knew what I was going to do.

I’d been lying for Ross and Miguel for far
too long. I was going to tell Mr. Davies the truth, and that was something
Miguel was desperately afraid of.

“Mr. Davies,” I said, turning back to him, but
this time without a smile. “I’m afraid Mr. Culling has been avoiding you.”

Lacy gasped. Miguel made a strangled sound
like a pig that had just been stuck in the belly. I continued:

“Your background check came back fine. Your
resume was all in order. Everything was perfect, really—except your arm.” I
slowed my words, taking care not to injure Mr. Davies at all in my anger toward
Miguel, Ross, and the rest of
ExecuSpace
. “Mr.
Culling felt that, as a salesperson, the arm would keep clients from signing on.
He didn’t have anything concrete to reject your application on, and he knows
discrimination against disabled people who can adequately perform the job at
hand is illegal, so he figured that simply avoiding you would do the trick.

“But now you’re here speaking to me because
he refuses to come out of his office and face you himself, and because our
general manager thinks that an administrative assistant making ten dollars an
hour is better equipped to explain these things to you than, say, a manager. I apologize
on their behalf, Mr. Davies, and on behalf of a company that you really, really
don’t want to work for, anyway. Not if you know what’s good for you.”

Mr. Davies looked at me for a very long time.
I knew how I looked on the outside—calm, perhaps cold even—but on the inside, I
felt like shit. It wasn’t that I had done anything wrong. I was upset because
in the four years I’d worked here, I’d failed to change a damn thing about this
awful company, and people like Mr. Davies were going to pay for it. None of
this would ever come down on Miguel or Ross’ shoulders. It was only nice
people, hardworking people who would bear the burden of
ExecuSpace’s
moral void. And I hated to be the one who had to inflict it.

“My… arm,” he said at last, and I nodded slowly.
“But it’s not an issue. I can write just fine. Drive, even. I don’t see what my
arm has to do with being a competent salesperson…”

“It doesn’t,” I assured him. “It has nothing
to do with it at all. But Mr. Culling feels that the perception of
ExecuSpace
might be marred by someone who doesn’t look like
the rest of us do, and for him, that’s cause enough not to hire you.” I saw the
look on his face, the slump in his shoulders, and added: “I really am sorry,
Mr. Davies. But after a month of being lied to, I thought the truth might—”

“The truth does
nothing
for me, Miss Hearst,” he snarled, a surprising rage blazing
in his eyes. I could see they were watering. They glimmered like hot coals. “A
job is what I need. And even a shitty one for a shitty company would have been
enough for me. But you people don’t give a shit about men like me, do you? All
you see is a withered arm and you think that means I’m trash, that I can just
be tossed into the gutter. You didn’t even have the decency to consider me for
the position, did you? You just saw the arm. That’s all.”

I pursed my lips. This was exactly what I’d
feared. Not only was Mr. Davies upset by the news, but he was taking that out
on me, the nearest available target. I had to swallow the compulsion to invite him
back to Ross’ office and knock on his door until he opened up, but Miguel would
probably just call security and have them haul both Mr. Davies and myself out.

“I’m sorry,” I repeated. “If you’d like, I
can get you the number for our corporate office in Virginia. There’s a woman
named Patricia who could hear your complaint…”

“That’s enough,” Miguel said, finally
loosening himself from the doorway and practically pushing me out of the way.
“Mr. Davies, I’m Miguel Herrera, the general manager for
ExecuSpace
.
Unfortunately, you just weren’t a good fit for the criteria we’re looking for
right now. I’m sorry no one’s gotten back to you sooner, but we’ve all been
very busy—”

“Do you think I’m stupid?” Mr. Davies asked
him, his face taut with barely-contained rage. “You must, because as much as I
think your receptionist there could give a rat’s ass about what happens to me,
at least she had the decency to be honest.”

I felt my own knot of anger and tried not to
grimace. “Receptionist” was something of a dirty word amongst personal and
administrative assistants. Even secretaries were higher up the food chain. A
receptionist was a person who did the least amount of work in the industry,
someone who answered a phone and filed a few papers, maybe.
Lacy
was a receptionist—barely. I didn’t
appreciate being compared to her.

But I understood that this wasn’t about me.
This was about Mr. Davies and his embarrassment at the treatment he’d endured.
Though I’d meant for the truth to be helpful to him, I knew that it couldn’t
have been easy to hear, and I tried to accept his hatred gracefully.

Miguel, however, was showing signs of
cracking. I could see his brow lining with deep wrinkles and the muscle in his
jaw was steadily twitching.

“Sir, I assure you, what Miss Hearst has said
is in no way representative of our company’s values or beliefs. She is
obviously
misinformed.”

“Then why?” Mr. Davies demanded, his voice
rising. “Why won’t Mr. Culling return my calls? Why did you decide not to hire
me?”

Miguel sneered. “We’re not under any legal
obligation to disclose that. In fact, our HR department discourages us from—”

“Fuck your HR department!” Mr. Davies railed,
getting so close to Miguel’s face I could see spittle marring his skin. “And
fuck you!”

Before Miguel could retaliate, Mr. Davies
left, storming off through the doors to the elevator with steps that shook the
office floor.

As the weight of his anger dissipated, I felt
another sensation flooding in. What I had done was, objectively, the right
thing. I’d given a man honestly when no one else would, and I’d stopped being
the whipping girl everyone wanted me to be. I’d stood up for myself and for my
own values. But at what cost?

Miguel turned to me. I raised my chin, doing
my best to look confident, but not smug. I was preparing to defend my decision
when the words I’d been dreading left his mouth.

“Get your things and turn in your
key card. You’re fired.”

Almost without thinking and with shock
softening the blow, I removed my lanyard and threw it at him.

“You can’t fire me. I quit five
minutes ago.”

I grabbed my clutch from the front desk,
turned, and strode out the doors, following Mr. Davies. Miguel was yelling
something at me, but I couldn’t hear him—probably some clichéd movie-villain
line about how I’d “never work in this town again.” He seemed like the type.

The blood rushing in my ears was deafening,
and I could feel my body quaking as I pressed the button for the elevator car.
Equal parts relief and dread seeped into me, but I tried not to let either one win
until I heard
Lacy’s
shrill voice calling to me over
the baritone roar of Miguel’s furor.

“But
Maddy
! I don’t
know what all you do! Send me an e-mail with everything once you get home,
okay?”

And then I finally let the dam
burst. I laughed.

And as the elevator car finally reached my
floor, and as it descended to the next, and the next, I laughed and laughed
some more.

My laughter died as soon as I hit the lobby.

It wasn’t until I’d shown myself out through
the revolving door that I realized the tears brimming in my eyes weren’t the
funny ones. They were hot and stinging, tears of rage, desperation, and utter
despair. Soon I realized that I really wasn’t laughing at all anymore, not even
in that hysterical way people do when they feel like they’ve got nothing else
they can do to chase the pain away.

No, I was sobbing. Sobbing so hard it hurt,
so hard my chest felt like it would split in two, so hard I was sure I could
feel my ribs starting to cave and poke at my lungs.

I was standing on the sidewalk of one of the
busiest streets in the city bawling my eyes out in the afternoon rush. Cars and
taxis whizzed by too fast for me to see anything more than the blur of their
movement, but somehow I was certain that the dark eyes inside them were all on
me. Passersby craned their necks to ogle at the crying woman slowly wandering
toward home, fascinated by me like I was some kind of moaning spirit haunting
47
^th
Street, a jilted bride still searching for her lover or a
desolate mother seeking her long-lost child.

They made the whole thing feel more dramatic
than it was, but for the most part, they all left me alone. That was fine by
me. The last thing I needed at that moment was a stranger’s pity.

I steadied myself for a moment on a parking
meter near one of those pruned-just-so trees cities put up along the sidewalks
to imply they weren’t
completely
destroying the environment. It was every bit as fake as the offices I used to
pretend to work for. I could feel cold sweat making long trails down the lines
in my palms despite the shade, and my chest felt like someone had taken the
muscles and stretching them out paper-thin. I knew what it was. I’d experienced
it before. In fact, panic attacks had become a common occurrence since I’d
started working at
ExecuSpace
, and even Zoloft
couldn’t seem to keep them at bay. Human beings weren’t meant to work the way
ExecuSpace
expected them to. Human beings weren’t meant to
endure such constant, debilitating stress.

As I sucked in long, slow breaths, I tried to
entertain myself with happier thoughts.
It’s
for the best. Think about your health. Think about your peace of mind. This job
couldn’t have been good for you. Even if it was putting food on the table,
who’s to say that you wouldn’t end up in the hospital for stress a few months
down the line? It’s not like they offered health insurance. You were one
medical disaster away from being destitute, anyway…

It was all true. But the fact remained that I
wasn’t one medical disaster away from financial ruin anymore. Now, thanks to a
rage that had been building for far too long and a mouth that didn’t know when
to seal itself shut, I was already there.

I changed tracks on my train of thought,
trying to get a grip on something solid—a plan, maybe. The damage was done, and
there was no way to undo it, but what I could do now was find a way to move
forward.

I knew the job market. I’d been searching for
a replacement position for months now in secret. I’d only had one interview,
and that position had offered even less in the way of compensation. Still, I
was sure I could find something, but time was a factor, and I had no safety
net.

That particular thought made my vision blurry
and my blood boil. It didn’t have to be like this…

The reason I had no safety net had a name,
and it was
Mother.

My mother, Amanda Hearst, didn’t believe in
being supportive. She believed in “tough love,” as in, “you better not screw
this up, honey, ‘cause you’re on your own.” She had made it clear to me from a
very young age that my mistakes were my own. My successes, however, she
attributed to her stellar parenting.
Classic
mother.

“Those other kids failed because their
parents let them,” she’d tell me, her carmine lips twisted into a smug smirk.
“If it wasn’t for me and how hard I’ve pushed you, you would be just like
them.”

I had comforted myself for a time with the
idea that she was only that hard on me because we were broke. We were the kind
of broke that nobody liked to talk about—lower middle-class, just poor enough
to scrape by, but somehow too wealthy to qualify for any kind of assistance. My
father had walked out on her when I was just a baby, and for years I told
myself that his abandonment and the way the system has spurned her had made her
feel like if she didn’t teach me to rely on myself—and only on myself—then I
would fall to the same fate. She didn’t want that for me, I always thought. She
just chose to show it in a cold and hurtful way.

That illusion had shattered three months ago
when my mother had announced her engagement to Charles Harvey, the billionaire
CEO of Harvey Enterprises. I had no idea what their business actually entailed,
but whatever it was, it brought him more money than God, and as my mother was
oh-so-quick to inform me, I wasn’t entitled to a penny of it.

“I didn’t raise you to be a leech,” she’d
told me when I’d said that it would be nice not to have to worry about money
for a change. I hadn’t meant that I intended on blowing it on some kind of
shopping spree. I’d always wanted to finish my college degree, and work was getting
in the way…

That didn’t matter to her.

Her scowl had sent chills down my spine and
twisted my guts into knots. “You’re not an infant, Madison. You’re an adult.
That means you make your own way in this world.” She’d looked so devastatingly
disappointed as she added, “I thought I’d taught you better than that.”

In my anger, I’d asked her what, exactly, I
would have to do to be worthy of a little help every now and then. It felt like
she’d punched me right in the face when she answered, “Marry rich.”

I’d realized then that my mother had never
had my best interests in mind. My father leaving hadn’t made her protective of
me. It had made her protective of herself. It had made her selfish and cruel,
and I hadn’t spoken to her since.

Which was why I couldn’t call her now. I
couldn’t dial her number and say, “Mom, I need help.” She wouldn’t give it. I
doubted if she would even bother to answer the phone.

As usual, I was on my own.

I was still trying to achieve a stiff upper
lip when I let go of the parking meter and set off down the sidewalk in the
direction of home. Unfortunately, the moment I did, I barreled straight into a
man who’d had the misfortune of stepping between me and my downward spiral.

His chest was so hard under his button-down
shirt that I was sure he’d broken my jaw, but the material of his blazer was so
soft that it felt like I’d landed on a cloud. It was silken, almost, and as I
gently pressed it with my fingers, tilting back my head to look up at who I’d
just assaulted, I felt his breath hitch at my touch.

As the halo of the sun faded behind a cloud,
I got a good look at the stranger’s face. My throat clenched and I uttered a
sound that was half a snort, half a wheeze.

“Preston? Seriously?”

“
Maddy
,” he said,
his stormy blue eyes glittering as he spoke my name. “Well, this is a
surprise…”

I wanted to tell him to fuck off. I wanted to
push him away and sweep past him in a fit of disgust. I wanted to walk so fast
down the sidewalk that I left all memory of him in my wake, a spoiled brat who
got absolutely everything his heart desired while I couldn’t even manage to
convince my own mother to keep me off the streets.

But I couldn’t do any of that. Instead, to my
shame and horror, I buried my face in his expensive blazer and cried.