I brushed my bangs out of my face and straightened my blouse for the millionth time that day. Looking at someone like Rosalie always made me do that, no matter how long we’d been friends. Something about her effortless beauty seemed to bring out an ironically concerted effort from everyone around her.
“Oh, I got the job alright. You won’t even believe what happened to me today…”
She swung a sheet of hair over her shoulder and leaned toward me excitedly. “Tell me!”
With a huge sigh, I recapped the whole story, sparing no detail or expense. From the bout of nausea in the taxi, to the girl crying in the restroom, to my unbelievable fib and the hero who helped me get away with it. Her eyes widened until they took up a ridiculously huge portion of her face, and by the time I recounted how I’d shunned the boss’ son before almost dousing some poor stranger in coffee, she was near tears of laughter.
“Well, just think of it this way,” she comforted, picking delicately at a piece of sashimi she’d pre-ordered in anticipation of me being late, “you can’t possibly get into any more mischief between lunch and this evening. Just keep your head down and don’t assume anyone else’s identify. If you feel the need to tell another outrageous lie…talk to your plant.”
I snorted with laughter and flooded my plate with soy sauce. Rose actually worked for Larchwood as well. She was a rising star in the PR department—something I couldn’t care less about, but they took just as seriously as us number crunchers did across the hall.
She dabbed her perfectly painted lips onto a napkin. “And as for the boss’ son, you could have canceled with me, you know. I wouldn’t have minded.”
I tossed a piece of rice at her. “He looks like the Greek god of employment termination notices. I am not going down that road.”
She giggled and held out her hand, completely oblivious, as a star-struck waiter handed her the check and then promptly walked into a wall. I rolled my eyes and returned to my food. Who was I kidding? Rose wasn’t exactly the best person to talk to in regards to ‘normal relationship advice.’ Let’s put it this way, each of my four older brothers had been in love with her at some point in their life. It wasn’t even her fault. She’d been blessed with a model’s face and a razor-sharp tongue—two things that served her well in a career of public relations. But when it came to keeping her head down and steering clear of potentially hazardous romantic entanglements, she didn’t have a clue.
“Wait a minute,” she said as she scribbled her name under the card, “which son? The older or the younger?”
“Younger,” I answered between bites. “Michael.”
She frowned thoughtfully. “Isn’t he the one who got banned from the Brakener’s Club after falling into the fountain with a host of Victoria’s Secret models?”
“He’s the one.”
She considered this for a moment. “On second thought—probably best you skipped the lunch. In fact, make it a point to skip all lunches.”
I grinned but shook my head. “And what if he keeps asking me? You should have seen him at the meeting and then in the lobby—he was so obvious. What if he keeps hounding me until the wrong people notice, and then I’m standing on the sidewalk, holding the contents of my desk in a little carton, thinking, ‘Actually, lunch wouldn’t have been so bad…?’”
She slipped her credit card back into her purse and looked at me calmly. “If he does anything to endanger your job, just let me know, and I’ll pay him a little visit.”
Somehow, despite the Larchwood name and the towering inferno in which they resided, I believed in her threat whole-heartedly. She may not have Michael Larchwood’s billions, but she was an equal force in her own right.
“In the meantime,” she poured me a cup of sake to match her own, “you have a job to do Miss Seventieth Floor.”
I clinked my cup against hers and braced myself for what was to come. “Once more into the brink…”
End of sample.