What the Heart Needs (14 page)

With her gorgeous hair pulled back from her face, he made out the sharp outline of her jawbone as she turned to pour him a cup of coffee. Her hands were still shaking.

“Are you feeling well?” he heard himself asking as she walked the cup back over to him and placed it down.

He reached for it before she let go of it and his fingers captured hers beneath his. Her eyes shot up to his then, wide and shocked. He felt the coolness of her fingers against his. She looked at him for a moment, looking confused and aroused all at once. Then she quickly dropped her eyes and pulled her hand away.

“Fine,” she said, her lips quirking up at the edges in what could have been construed as a smile. Quickly, she gathered her papers and scurried out of the room, closing her office door quietly behind her.

What the hell was going on at his office? Ninety-percent of his employees seemed out of character and angry. And his own assistant looked like she was a crumbling piece of delicate china. No one would ever accuse him of being unobservant, but somehow all of that had crawled under his radar.

Elliott raked a hand over his chin. He had been more disrtacted than usual. Dan had been a constant thorn in his side. Every day she was coming up with more and more ridiculous demands in the settlement. She wanted the entire stock of his library. He had never known the woman to pick up a book, and every last book in his study had been there years before he even laid eyes on her.

Then she wanted not only a lump sum of cash, but alimony. Apparently in a few months she had become accustomed to a certain lifestyle and expected him to provide her the ability to live lavishly for the rest of her life.

He sighed heavily. He wasn’t even entirely sure how he had ended up married in the first place. Dan had been a particularly heated affair he had planned on ending. He just never got around to it. Which was probably due to a good sexual chemistry and Dan’s voracious appetitie for sex in increasingly new and different situations. She had been exciting and a challenge. And he had somehow allowed his dick to lead him into marriage. There was no other way to explain it.

She was an awful, spoiled, selfish witch of a woman. And he had always known that. But he had signed over his freedom to her anyway.

Then he had spent every single day afterward regretting it.

She had spent money like water. She got shoes, jewelry and clothing until every closet in the house was overflowing. He had come home to find her entertaining men alone in the middle of the night. One after another after another. Until he finally told her to get the hell out of his house. He spent the next six weeks sleeping with every woman he found the least bit attractive.

He wasn’t exactly proud of his behavior. While he had never really committed to exclusivity in his relations, he believed in fidelity. Dating was for screwing around. Marriage was for coming home to the same woman every night. But he justified his oats-sewing because of Dan’s own revolving door of sexual partners.

Elliott shook his head. That damn woman was screwing around with his business and he wasn’t going to be able to allow that to continue. Stabbing his finger onto the fourth button on his phone, he heard the phone ring and Tad’s upbeat voice answered. “EM Corporation. Tad speaking. How may I help you?”

“Tad, can I see you in my office,” he said and hung up without an answer.

He heard the knock on his door less than twenty seconds later. It was unusual for him to call anyone into his office. Tad had probably never even been inside. He looked calm though. Curious but calm.

“What is going on in my office?” he asked, bluntly.

“You’re going to have to be more specific,” Tad responded, giving Elliott a lopsided smile.

“Something is up with everyone. You’re the only person who I don’t sense something up with.”

Tad sighed, caught between his obligation to fill in his boss and his desire to not pit himself against the staff, or worse yet, Hannah.

“Is Hannah sick?” Elliot blurted out, cursing himself for it.

“What? No,” Tad said quickly, looking shocked.

“Then what is going on?” Elliott demanded, losing his patience.

Tad closed his eyes for a minute. “Look. I really cant get into it, Mr.Michaels. It isn’t my place to tell you. It is Hannah’s business, not mine. But I can tell you that something is up with the staff here. And something needs to be done about it.”

“Well that isn’t too cryptic,” Elliott said, leaning back in his chair.

“I’m sorry,” Tad said, looking worried. “I really am but I am between a rock and a hard place here.”

Elliott nodded. “I understand. I’m glad to get confirmation that something is going on though. That is isn’t just a weird feeling I am picking up on.” Tad nodded, tapping his foot nervously. “Go on back to work.” When Tad glanced at the door with anxiety, he smirked. “Just tell them I needed to discuss a raise with you. It’s probably about time anyway,” Elliott shrugged.

“Oh,” Tad said, smiling brightly and standing. “Thanks. Really. Thanks.”

Elliott waved a hand, brushing off the gratitude and dismissing him at the same time.

Of course Tad wasn’t going to share private details about Hannah. Had it been any other employee, he might have gotten something. But it hadn’t escaped his notice that Tad had befriended Hannah almost instantly and the two were often seen working side-by-side. And he had heard Tad’s voice inside of Hannah’s office often, even more so as the time went by.

But he could tell that Tad was concerned. Whatever was going on had him worried. And it included Hannah. And it was probably why she was losing weight and not sleeping.

Maybe it was him.

The thought burst into his head with a sharp, bright clarity. Maybe he was being a slave driver. It was something he perhaps always knew about himself. He had high standards. But before Hannah, no one had ever been able to live up to them. Maybe her ability to keep up was causing him to drive everyone else a little bit harder. And not everyone was capable of working at a brow-beating pace.

It could easily be causing a morale problem. People were feeling overworked and underappreciated. It also made sense why Hannah seemed worse off than anyone else. She worked so closely by him. He expected even more from her. Every time she met his standards, he supposed he saw an opportunity and raised them.

He needed to be more aware of his actions.

Hitting the intercom button, he asked Hannah to come in for a moment.

She appeared a few minutes later, apologizing for having to finish a phonecall.

“I want you to leave at five with everyone else today,” he told her while she stood there, shifting from foot to foot.

At his words, her eyebrows lowered, furrowing closer together. “May I ask why?” she said after a moment, looking completely confused.

Elliott shrugged. She almost looked offended. He hid a smirk behind a quick cough. “I have dinner plans,” he said and watched her pull out a notepad and scan it. It was, presumably, his schedule which she kept in painstaking detail. “James just called and we need to discuss a few things,” he lied easily and watched her confusion disappear. “I wont be back in the office after so there is no need for you to be here. I’m sure you have errands you are running behind on with how often you are here.”

Hannah nodded, looking almost uneasy.

He groped for words to say. She just stood there, waiting for further instructions from him and all he wanted to do was find something to say to ease the vacant look in her eyes.

“Just make sure the schedule is put together before you leave,” he clarified and could swear there was a look of dread in her eyes before she nodded and left the room.

--

He’s sending you home because he sees what a worthless piece of trash you are. Rot in hell, whore.

Hannah sat down at her desk and brought up her email. She felt every bit a coward by emailing everyone to ask for their schedules for the next day. It was her job to go to each secretary and get it herself. Lately, Tad had just been showing up with the compiled list for her, saving her the anxiety of having to do it herself. She jotted an email really quickly:

Mr. Michaels will be leaving the office early tonight. He will need you to send all of your schedules to me to be compiled before five o’clock. Thanks.

And then CC’d all the secretaries.

She couldn’t understand why he was sending her home. Even when he left for dinner meetings, he let her about her business. There was always more than enough to keep her there past eight every night. Sending her home was completely unnecessary. She would only have to push herself harder the next day to catch up to all the things she couldn’t get to for having to leave early.

Of course, she figured, she could just disregard his order. She could stay late as usual and get all of her work done. Somehow she thought he would find out. But more so, she admitted to herself begrudgingly, she was worried about staying at the office late alone anymore. It was one thing when he was right there within yelling distance. But when the next closest person was a cleaning person three floors below… she couldn’t bring herself to muster the courage to stay.

Though sitting at home all night was an equally unappetizing thought. What was she going to do? It’s not like she had any television to watch. She was never home enough to have needs that needed to be filled by running errands. She had to clean Ricky’s cage but that would only take a couple minutes.

Hannah sighed, deciding to spend her night cleaning. She wasn’t particularly a neat freak, but she went through phases when she was stressed or lonely that she spent hours or even days scrubbing every inch of her apartment. She hadn’t bothered taking out a broom or mop since she started at EM. It was probably woefully in need of a scrubbing. She could blast some music and clean until she felt a little better about her life.

It only took four hours and three-times scrubbed over floors for her to feel like a giant had been lifted from her shoulders. She took her laundry and laptop she had just bought on the way home from work and sat in the laundry room. She took up all five washing machines at once and checking her work email. She figured she had followed EM’s instructions for leaving the office. He would never really know that she had spent out of work time working. And she doubted he would mind. He liked efficiency. She was sure he worked at home all the time. She was just living by his example.

She answered a few emails that had been sent from the IT department and finance. There was a ding, alerting her to a new email in her inbox.

She shrugged at the unusual, never-before-seen address and clicked it.

You can kiss his ass all you want. He wont be impressed. He isn’t going to fall in love with you. Get over yourself. He will see you for what you really are- a useless piece of trash, a disposable washrag. I am going to break you down sooner or later. You might as well give in and leave now you miserable bitch… it is only going to get worse for you.

With shaking hands, Hannah flagged the message in a saved folder and closed her laptop. It wasn’t weird that someone knew her work email- everyone at the office that she had contact with was familiar with it. But it bothered her that someone somehow knew that she was working from home. How could they know? A part of her tried to convince her that it was likely just a lucky guess but somewhere deep inside her belly an unease was planted and took root.

She knew the message was right. She knew it was only going to get worse. Though she believed it was only because she was buckling under the pressure.

Nine

But then the emails started coming in waves, dozens, hundreds- filling her whole inbox and forcing her to try to sift through them to find actual work correspondence. Notes started to appear under the windshield of her car several times a day. Then she walked to her car to run to get lunch for EM and found someone had painted the word “slut” across her windshield in bright red lipstick.

It wasn’t like her to cry in public but she leaned against her car and bawled her eyes out for twenty minutes, bent forward and her body shaking with sobs like she hadn’t experienced since her breakup with Sam when she decided to move away from Stars Landing. It somehow felt good to cry. But she couldn’t stop. She cried harder and harder, oblivious to the people passing her in the parking garage. Just as she was worried she could never stop the tears, she got a text from EM asking what the hell was taking so long to get her lunch. She hopped into her car, furiously trying to wipe the wetness from her face and squirting windshield washer fluid until the letters ran like blood.

He wasn’t used to Hannah being behind schedule. She was chronically on time every day since he had hired her. So when she had been missing for over a half an hour, he had snapped and sent her a snippy text. A text he immediately regretted when he saw her burst into his office with his, hopefully still warm, lunch.

She had been crying. From the puffyness of her eyes to the long red streaks on her cheeks from tears- he assumed it had been for a while. She hadn’t gone to get his lunch because she was crying.

Elliott felt a strange sensation in his stomach, something like worry. Or sadness. And under that, concern. What was going on with her? If at all possible, she looked even thinner than she had the week before. Her smudges under her eyes were darker. She was getting worse.

He was going to have to talk to her.

The idea sprang into his mind and his entire body felt overcome with dread. He wasn’t the kind of man who was good at talking. That was for Tad. And James. Even with the best of intentions, his words often rushed out of him and sounded cruel and judgemental. And that wasn’t something he could afford with someone who was obviously already in a fragile state.