The Dollhouse (13 page)

“Nothing I like more than a cheap date.”

“Oh, haha.” I nudged him hard in the side. “You can’t hold me responsible for anything embarrassing that I say or do.”

“No promises, sweetheart,” he said with a smirk. “You like horror movies?”

“Are you telling me there are people who don’t?”

“Nobody I know.” He slid off the couch and leaned over to turn on the DVD player. “I just picked up
Braindead
, it’s a new classic.”

“Sounds good.”

Zach returned to the couch and slipped his arm around me in a move so casual that I barely noticed it. His body felt warm and secure against mine, like being wrapped in a soft blanket.

We watched the movie for awhile, but Zach didn’t make any advances. His fingers played teasingly along the skin of my shoulder but that was the extent of our contact.

I finish the first beer and he brought me second, then a third. By that point, I knew that I was tipsy. The room swayed around me and I felt like I was floating on the gentle waves of a calm ocean.

On impulse, I turned to Zach, staring at his profile until he noticed and looked at me.

“What?”

I reached out and gently touched his cheek, his facial hair rough underneath my fingertips. “I keep waiting for you to kiss me, but you haven’t done it. Can I kiss you instead?”

His mouth fell open slightly, but he swallowed hard and then spoke. “If you want.”

I moved over his lap, my legs straddling either side of him. In this position, my head rose above his and I could look down at his face. He kept himself still, waiting on me to decide what to do.

At that moment, the idea that I was in control was more attractive to me than nearly anything else.

Zach waited for me, his arms hanging loosely at his sides. I leaned forward slowly and steadied myself by putting my hands on his shoulders. His face was cast mostly in shadow, broken only by an occasional flash of light from the television.

I kissed him. His lips were soft and moved tenderly against mine, still letting me take the lead. My hands moved back to his cheeks, making a light rasping sound as they glided against the short hair there.

My tongue slipped inside of his mouth. I pressed down harder but his response was slower and more gentle. His lips underneath mine were undemanding and tender.

I realized that I wanted him to grab me, to dominate me. I didn’t want to be the one in control. Sweetness and light just wasn’t enough for me anymore.

Zach looked at me quizzically as I pulled away. Even in my alcohol-induced haze, I recognized there was no easy way to extricate myself from the situation.

“I’m sorry, but I can’t do this,” I said.

He let me roll off of him. “Are you okay?”

“It’s fine, I just need to go home.”

“Are we moving too fast?” Zach retreated to the arm of the couch, obviously trying to give me space. “I should have known better than to bring a sweet girl like you back to my place on the first date.”

I didn’t have the heart to tell him that I was having the opposite problem. “It’s not your fault.”

He stood up and reached for my hand. “C’mon I’ll take you home.”

I regretfully took the offered hand. Zach was exactly the kind of guy that I should have been with — age-appropriate, good-hearted and laid back, not to mention pretty damn cute. But none of that solved the biggest problem.

He wasn’t Julian.

T
he sound
of my cell phone ringing shocked me awake. I groped across the bed trying to find it before the noise woke my sister, who stretched out next to me.

My fingers closed over it and I brought the phone to my ear.

“Hello?” I said groggily.

“Dalea?” Asked a perky female voice on the other end.

It was way too early in the morning for anyone to sound that happy. “Yeah, who’s this?”

“It’s Trina.”

“Oh.” I sat up a little, surprise bringing me out of the early morning stupor. “What’s up?”

“Sorry to call so early, but I wanted to make sure that I caught you before you went to work. I didn’t wake you, did I?”

“No,” I lied. I pulled the phone from my ear to check the time. “I’m always up by 7:30 in the morning.”

Trina giggled. “That’s a big change from when we were still in the dorms at college.”

“Something like that. I’m surprised you still even have this number.”

“Found it in one of my old phones. It’s good thing you never changed it.”

“Yeah.” I yawned. “What did you need?”

“You’re never in a million years going to guess what I’m about to tell you. I’ll give you a hint: it’s amazing news.”

I was definitely still too sleepy for guessing games. “If I’ll never be able to guess then you should just tell me, right?”

“Spoiled sport. I just got an email from my boss saying that our department has been authorized to hire a new intern and the position doesn’t even require a college degree.”

“That’s great,” I said, wondering how much longer it would take before I could politely hang up.

“You’re not getting it, silly. Guess who I’m recommending for the job.”

I pushed out of the bed and sat up completely, wanting to be sure I was hearing her correctly. “You’re offering me a job at Berkmore?”

“Well there’s a formal interview, but it’s really just a formality. The position is yours if you want it.”

“A job at Berkmore?” There was no way that this was a coincidence. Whatever little bird had been whispering in Trina’s ear, I knew it somehow led right back to Julian. He would do anything to have me under his thumb. “I don’t know—“

“Did I mention that the position is very well-paid?”

My achilles heel.
Would there ever be a time in my life when money wasn’t the easiest way to control me. “How well-paid?”

The number that Trina quoted was absurd. It made the tips I earned at the diner look like the change collected from under a couch cushion.

“You can’t be serious.”

Trina laughed, obviously enjoying my obvious surprise. “It really is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. Just say yes.”

What could Julian do to me anyway? I would be protected by HR policies and all of the people that I would be working with. As long as I made sure to never be alone with him, all that would be different was the massive paychecks and a job with some kind of future.

I could take what I wanted from Julian for once and beat him at his own game.

“When do I start?”

* * *

“
I
t’ll be
a lot of secretarial work at first,” Trina said, as she led me through the rows of cubicles that made up Berkmore Global’s marketing department. “But you’ll get more responsibility as you start to learn the ropes.”

“Sounds great.”

We were on the fifteenth floor of the high-rise Berkmore Building and the wall of plate-glass windows gave a great view of the city. I was glad that I didn’t have a fear of heights because the ground seemed very far away. The cars and people moving on the street below seemed as small as ants.

“This will be your desk.” She stopped at an empty cubicle. “Feel free to decorate it with photos or pictures, if you want. This is marketing so people have a tendency to get creative.”

I set my purse down on the desk and turned to her. “Thank you so much, Trina. You have no idea what this means to me.”

“I’m just glad I could help out a friend.” She reached over and gently squeezed my arm. “You can really go places here.”

“Still, though, this is amazing.”

“And I’m gonna do you one more favor,” she said, giving me a wink. “When you get your first paycheck, I’m taking you shopping for some new clothes. Got to look your best to feel your best.”

I glanced down at the brown knee-length skirt and button-down blouse that I wore, both hand-me-downs from my mother’s closet. “Is it that bad?”

“Not bad,” she said carefully. “But I think we can do a little better.”

Trina was impeccably dressed, as always. Her black Chanel dress was just molded enough to her body to be sexy, but still professional, and the shiny black pumps she wore made my scuffed Mary Jane’s look even more in need of replacement than they would otherwise.

“You are my muse,” I told her.

“Excellent.” She placed a stack of papers on my desk. “The primary part of your job is writing copy — advertising, press releases, that sort of thing.”

“Okay,” I said, a little hesitantly. I’d always been a decent writer in school, but this was a lot more high-stakes than an average English class assignment.

“Nobody expects you to get it perfect at first,” she said, her tone supportive. “I have a meeting to go to, but then I’ll be here to help get you started. If you get on the computer, there’s some good examples of stuff we’ve done before. Look through that and I’ll be back in no time.”

“Sounds good.”

I sat down at the computer desk and settled into the comfy office chair. The walls of the cubicle weren’t quite as tall as I was but afforded some privacy. The desk had a state-of-the-art Apple computer, not that I expected anything less, and the rest of the space was bare save for a small plastic vase full of fake yellow daisies.

I could hear the clacking of fingers on computer keys but it was still better background noise than the normal sounds of the diner – pots clanging and the cook yelling from behind the grill.

When I told Miranda that I was finally leaving for good, she’d been understandably disappointed.

“I knew it would happen someday,” she had said with a wistful expression. “But I didn’t expect it quite so soon. I hope this new gig is worth it.”

“This new job is amazing,” I assured her. “It’s a lot of data-entry type stuff at first, but it should get more interesting. And Trina told me that they do tuition reimbursement after you’ve been working there for a year. I might even be able to go back to school.”

“That’s great, honey.” She said, wrapping me in a tight hug. “But why bother with school when you’ll be meeting all those rich executives. Get a ring on your finger and your family’ll be set for life.”

“Men like that don’t look at a girl like me and think about marriage,” I had said as a cold feeling settled over me. “We’re way too easy to take advantage of.”

Miranda gave me one last squeeze before letting me go. “Just take care of yourself, girlie. It’s a big bad world out there.”

“Believe me, I know.”

I came out of my reverie to a loud knocking sound on the side of my cubicle.

I looked up. A disembodied face with a friendly smile, topped with dark hair, floated above the wall of my cubicle.

“Are you the new girl?” she asked with a bright smile.

“I guess so.” I automatically answered her smile with one of my own. “Who are you?”

“My name is Angie. I’m one of the copyeditors.”

It felt awkward to be sitting at the desk with her standing over me, I moved to get up but she stopped me.

“Don’t move, I’m coming around.”

I heard the scrape of wheels on the floor as she pushed her chair around from her cubicle to mine.

She spun into view, now sitting in the chair. Her full skirt flared out as she turned in a circle and she winked when she saw me watching.

“No point to life, if you’re not having fun.” She scooted closer in the chair and surveyed me critically. “You’re really pretty.

A blush worked its way up my cheeks. “Um…thank you.”

Angie pushed the glasses up on her nose. “But are you smart?”

“I think so.”

“Hmm.” Her eyebrows rose. “Where did you go to school?”

There was no rancor in the question, but I hesitated a moment before answering. “I didn’t, at least I didn’t graduate.”

“Self-made, I like it.” She crossed her arms and leaned back in the chair. “Most of the girls that we get down here are prima donnas from fancy schools who clack in here on designer shoes and have never done a day of work in their lives.”

I scoffed. “That’s definitely not me.”

“Oh, I can tell,” she said, but not like it was an insult. “I have no idea how your resume got past HR, but I’m glad it did.”

“Thanks, I think. How long have you worked here?”

“Five years this September.”

I knew what I wanted to ask her, but wasn’t quite sure how to put it into words. “Do you get treated well by the people in charge?”

“Definitely. This office reports to the VP of Marketing, he’s a really nice old guy that you’ll probably meet today, Mr. Pettigrew.”

“What about above that. Who does Mr. Pettigrew answer to?”

Angie pondered the question for a minute. “I guess that would be the CEO.”

“Julian Berkmore-Hathaway?” I ignored the shudder of awareness that coursed through me when I said his name.

“The very same,” Angie, obviously unaware of my reaction. “But we never see the big man up here. In the five years I’ve worked at this place, I think I’ve only laid eyes on the guy twice and never here in the office.”

Well, that’s something
, I thought with relief. Maybe it was just all a coincidence and Julian didn’t have anything to do with me getting this job. There were dozens of people in between him and me in the chain of command, maybe he didn’t even know that I was here.

And maybe a herd of pigs would go fling past the window.

* * *

“
L
ook alive
.”

I glanced up to see Trina running down the hallway between the line of cubicles, or at least as close to running as she could get in four-inch heels.

“What’s going on?” Angie asked, popping up from her cubicle.

“The meeting did not go well. Pettigrew is on his way up and he is not alone.”

“Who’s with him?”

“The entire board, including the CEO.”

I froze in place as everyone scrambled into action around me. It was tempting to dive under the desk and hide there but I resisted the urge, if just for the sake of what little pride I had left.

Trina grabbed my arm and pulled me out of the chair. “Come stand here, out of the way.”

“Does this happen often?” I asked.

“Never.”

The dozen or so people who worked in the department ended up in a line in front of the bay of cubicles and facing the elevator. From the look on everyone’s faces, you would have thought we were waiting on a firing squad.

When the elevator dinged, the woman standing next to me nearly jumped out of her skin. If I wasn’t so terrified of what would happen when I saw Julian again, the whole thing would have been comical.

The elevator doors opened to reveal a group of men in expensive suits. I immediately dropped my eyes, ducking slightly behind the woman beside me.

“Mr. Pettigrew, gentlemen, I’ve gathered the staff like you asked.” Trina’s voice was slightly more high-pitched than normal. “We’re ready for your announcement.”

I watched from the corner of my eye as Pettigrew stepped forward. He was shorter than the rest, with a slightly round body and a jolly face, but his voice was serious.

“As most of you may know, the ROI for our most recent advertising campaign has been more than underwhelming. Calling it a complete disaster would probably be fair. Market share is down by more than 8% and our closest competitor is quickly closing the gap. We are losing both corporate and retail customers.”

“I don’t know what the problem is.” Trina’s voice was nervous, but steady. “Those ads tested really well with focus groups.”

“Clearly the focus groups are wrong.” Julian spoke then and his voice rocked through me. “We need a new advertising campaign.”