Sushi for One? (8 page)

“Let’s go.” Aiden hustled past Spenser, who was flirting with a cute volleyball player in a sports bra.

With a hasty goody-bye to the underdressed girl, Spenser followed him to the parking lot. “Already? I thought we were going to stay to watch the whole tournament.”

“I didn’t think athletic girls were your type.” Aiden hit the button to deactivate his SUV’s car alarm.

“They’re not.” Spenser grinned. “She came up to me, buddy.”

His gregarious friend attracted girls like stray dogs to a sausage truck. “Well, I’ve seen enough volleyball today.”

Spenser opened the passenger side door. “So are you going to listen to me and learn to play volleyball?”

Aiden hesitated.

“What’s the problem?” Spenser climbed in and buckled his seat belt. “You get so many clients with volleyball injuries, it’ll only add to your reputation to play it and understand the sport, the kinds of injuries.”

Aiden glanced out his window back toward the park, picked her out as she talked to a shorter Asian woman with a yellow shirt. Lex stood slimmer than Trish, more graceful. Deeper voice, more outspoken.

“I saw you talking to her.” Spenser’s voice had that ribbing tone.

“I’m a masochist.”

“What do you mean?”

He didn’t answer. He should have left it alone. Shouldn’t have reacted when Richard carelessly pointed out his sister on the grass volleyball court.

“Who is she?”

“You remember that girl, Trish?”

“The one who came on to you?”

“That’s her cousin.”

Spenser peered at Lex again, brows knit. “Is she anything like Trish?”

“She’s Christian.” That sealed it for him. Yup, his interest in her had officially ended.

Spenser sighed but didn’t bring up the religion argument again.

Belatedly, Aiden realized the indirect insult. “No offense.”

Spenser cocked an eyebrow at him. “None taken.”

He started the engine. Maybe it was a good thing he’d met Lex. She looked just like Trish, except way more attractive. He should run in the other direction.

But she’d been beautiful playing on that volleyball court . . .

She’d also been blunt and borderline rude. His attraction had taken a nosedive when he realized she didn’t feel the same physical pull that he did.

He started to pull out of the parking space when a horn blared. He hit the brakes. A hefty Explorer roared past.

Great. Just thinking about the girl would get him killed.

TEN

L
ex’s heart thudded from her chest down to her stomach as soon as she walked in the glass doors Tuesday morning. Directly ahead of her, the conference room was jam-packed with her coworkers.

She checked her watch. 9:15 a.m. She had stayed until almost eleven last night — Everett had checked in on her before he left at seven — so she
knew
she hadn’t gotten an email or a phone call about an all-hands meeting.

She tried to discreetly edge into the room, but Everett threw her a nasty look from his seat on the far side. She remained standing by the open door, next to Jerry, who swayed visibly. He bumped into her arm. She took a side step away.

The admin’s whining voice carried over everyone’s nodding heads. “And so, because of all the extra work I’ve been getting, from now on you have to submit a copy of this form — ” She waved a white sheet —“in triplicate, a week before you need it done. No more last-minute things.”

“Even for a customer?” Anna’s incredulous voice burst out.

The Gorgon admin’s cheeks colored a dusky orange. “Well, if it’s for a customer — ”

“Everything is for customers. We don’t ask you to pick up our dry cleaning.”

Lex almost burst a sinus trying to stifle her sniggering. The admin did exactly that for Everett because she had a crush on him.

The Gorgon babbled, trying to regain control of the situation.

Lex’s mind wandered. She had a lot to do today, and sitting — or in her case, standing — in a useless meeting meant she’d need to stay late again.

When the meeting finally broke, Lex hurried to her desk.

Yup, she had an email. Sent this morning at 8:30 a.m., calling for “an important mandatory meeting” at nine.

“Lex, I want to talk to you.” Everett appeared at her elbow, blowing steam. “In my office.”

A hissing, fizzing pressure started to build in her gut. No way. He knew Lex had stayed late last night, so her being fifteen minutes late this morning shouldn’t be a problem.

Shouldn’t. This was Everett, after all.

He slammed his office door behind her. “How dare you miss an all-hands meeting?”

“You didn’t send the email until 8:30 a.m. today.” Lex’s gut bubbled.

“You’re supposed to be into work by 9 o’clock.”

“I stayed here working until eleven last night.” She spoke low to try to keep her voice calm.
I have learned the secret of being content . . .

“How do I know you’re telling the truth?”

Lex had to take a slow breath through flared nostrils before she answered. “You checked in on me before you left last night at seven.”

“You could have left right after I did.”

“I sent you an email at eleven, just before I went home.”

Everett’s thunderous brow knit, then he circled the desk to check his computer. His face grew redder. “Ah . . . You could have altered your computer time stamp.”

“What?”
I have
learned
the
secret
of being
content
. . . content . . . content . . .

He straightened to face her. He seemed to feel stronger with the desk in between them. “The bottom line is you should have arrived earlier, no matter how late you stayed. It’s an embarrassment to me when you sneak into a mandatory meeting late.”

Lex felt like an overworked racing engine about to bust a gasket.

“It wasn’t that important a meeting.”

“Every meeting is important. You’re on probation as of now.”

The edges of her vision clouded in, but not because she was going to faint. No, she was going to slap that silly, superior smile off his face.

“You can’t put me on probation.”

“And why not?” From Everett’s loose fish lips, sarcasm sounded stupid and silly.

“Because I quit.”

Oh my goodness, did she really say that?

Everett’s eyes and mouth became the size of three baseballs.

Lex’s brain boiled. She could feel it. And it felt good. “I quit. I could work at Starbucks and get more respect than I do here, and with the hours I put in, it’s the same hourly rate.”

Lex turned and yanked open the office door. She paused at the threshold to turn and face him. “Everett, you are a complete schmuck!”

Wow, that felt good.

She stomped to her desk and grabbed the plastic bag holding her lunch. She collected only her personal items — well, she did steal her favorite pen — shouldered her purse, and marched out the door.

The sunlight hit her full in the face as she exited. Illuminating the realities she’d ignored while packing up her desk.

What. Had. She. Done?

Go right back inside and fix it. Forgive your enemies.

No way, Jose. Not speaking to Everett ever again.

Patient endurance, remember? Go talk to the Gorgon admin. She handles all the HR stuff.

Like she’ d listen to me.

Nope, this was right. Sure, it would be tough — okay, maybe a little less than impossible — for an engineer to get another job in Silicon Valley. But she had stared into the horrific face of incompetence in Everett, and she wasn’t going to take it anymore. Even a receptionist job — even someplace other than SPZ — would be better than that.

She marched to her car. She’d fax, mail, and email a copy of her resignation letter from home. Clean, indisputable cut. She was free. Unfettered. Flying high.

And financially unsound.

Well, not dead broke. She had enough to survive on for years since she lived at home, but no loan officer would touch her now. Goodbye, condo.

Her cell rang. “Hello?”

“Alexis Sakai?”

“Yes.” She straightened.

“This is Wendy Tran from SPZ Human Resources. We received your résumé, and we’d like to bring you in for an interview. Are you free tomorrow?”

Aaack! She was late!

Lex leaped into her klunk-mobile and peeled out of the driveway. She navigated Highway 85 like a pro, zipping in and out as she drove north to Sunnyvale. Other drivers bore down on their horns with relish.

She got onto De Anza Boulevard. SPZ’s massive square office building lay just ahead. She darted into the right lane —
Squeeeeeal! Bam!

The jolting impact to her right front slammed her car to a halt.

Ripping pain across her chest. Then eerie silence.

Bright sunlight. No sounds.

She gasped in a heaving breath. Then another. Her ears started working again, and she heard the honking from the cars stuck behind her.

Her chest hurt. Was she having a heart attack? No, the seatbelt had cut through the thin fabric of her interview blouse. A red swatch burned across her breastbone.

This wasn’t happening. This wasn’t happening. This wasn’t happening.

The other driver, an older man who looked frighteningly like Everett, had a mouth worse than a sailor. Lex remembered her dad’s admonitions to always keep her trap shut, especially if it just might be entirely, horrifically, and irrefutably her fault. She traded insurance information.

The car didn’t look
that
bad. Her bumper was only hanging off a little — nothing duct tape wouldn’t fix, right? And while the frame had dented inward and scraped against her right front tire, couldn’t a mechanic just pound it back into shape?

Lucky for her, the accident happened only a few feet from the entrance to a strip mall parking lot. She had more than enough strength to push her tiny car the few feet into a stall.

Except her interview started thirty minutes ago and she smelled like rubber tires.

Lex jogged — well, teetered as fast as she could in pumps — to the SPZ building a block down. She burst through the glass doors into cool air conditioning and collapsed at the receptionist’s desk. “Lex Sakai, and I’m late for my interview.”

Instead of a receptionist, a security guard sat at the desk and gave her a bored look. He punched in a few keys, a mini-printer buzzed out with her information on a card, and he handed her the ID tag. “Go down the hall, turn left, and wait in Conference Room C12.”

Lex clipped down the hallway, peeking briefly into a few open doors. A couple large empty offices, a couple conference rooms. She curbed left around the corner.

“Hey!”

Something warm — no, make that something
hot
splashed on her blouse. Lex bent over too late — some of it trickled down her shirt into her underwear.

Coffee. Extra-strong, from the smell. All over her white blouse and staining a narrow vertical strip down her pencil skirt.

A heavily made-up woman glared at her. “Serves you right for not watching where you’re going.”

The nerve! “You could use a few less calories anyway, toots.”

The woman opened her fuchsia lips in a soundless gasp. Then with a high-pitched grunt, she huffed off. Lex felt hot enough to steam the coffee out of her clothes as she watched the woman waddle into an office and slam the door.

Lex hadn’t passed any restrooms, so she moved on until she saw a break—room — probably where the coffee came from. She nabbed some paper towels and hustled back to conference room C12.

She dabbed at the stain while she waited. Ten minutes. Twenty minutes.

What gives?

She made her way back to the receptionist’s desk. A different security guard sat behind the counter.

“I came in twenty minutes ago and the other guy told me to go to conference room C12, but no one’s come to meet me yet.”

“Name?”

Lex stabbed a finger at her name tag.

The guard typed her name into his computer. “Oh. Miss Sakai, you were supposed to be in conference room D22. They’ve been waiting for you.”

Lex swallowed a hysterical scream. “Where is it?”

“Up the stairs, to the right, second door on the left.”

Her stupid pencil skirt wouldn’t let her take the stairs two at a time. She entered the conference room hot and panting. Three pairs of eyes glared at her.

One older gentleman with a ring of silver hair set down the phone. “The security guard told us you’d been sent to another conference room.” From his tone, he didn’t seem to believe her or the guard.

“I’m sorry.”
Pant, pant.
“The first — ”
Pant, pant
— “security guard — ”
Pant, pant, wheeeze.

“Never mind.” A middle-aged man with a long, thin face waved her to a seat and introduced the silver-haired man and a young,antsy man. “We didn’t get copies of your résumé. Do you have extra ones?”

“Yes, sir — ” Lex opened her leather folio and grabbed —

One sheet. Where were her other copies?

In the printer. At home. Forgotten as she rushed out of the house.

“Uh . . . I only have one copy.”

The antsy man rolled his eyes.

Lex sat down on the chair, resting her hand on the smooth plastic armrest —

Eeewww.

Something sticky-slippery, like a cross between glue and butter.

All over the armrest, and now coating her palm.

This was going to be either a very short or a very long interview.