“Well my, my, my! What have we here? I don’t think I’ve seen you around the office before. What about you, Randy? Have you seen this pretty young thing wandering our halls?”

“Why no, Chad, I don’t believe I have.”

“Forget I said ‘don’t believe.’ I know she hasn’t been here. This is exactly the kind of female I would remember. I can tell you that for sure. I’d bet a hell of a lot of money just to drive that point home.”

The difference between the warm, familiar feeling Joe the driver had given Elsie and the feeling of being hunted that the two men in the elevator gave her could not have been more different. She had almost run into those men as she exited the elevator, and her initial instinct was to flee, to just turn around and head right back down in the direction from which she had just come. She would knock on Joe’s window and tell him everything and beg him to let her into the car again so that she could just go home. Elsie was a girl who usually followed her instincts, too. They very rarely led her astray and choosing now to ignore them completely went against everything inside of her. Honestly, the thing that made her actually get out of the elevator and onto the fortieth floor of the Grant Corporation was Travis’s face. She could see it in her mind’s eye. She could see how disappointed he would look if he were with her and watched her just run away from her latest challenge. He would be more than disappointed, too. He would be worried, afraid, even— since her behavior would affect the reputation of Cubed. That little company was his baby. He’d put his blood, sweat, and tears into helping it thrive and the idea that she would even consider doing something to jeopardize that was shameful. She owed him, she reminded herself, she owed him and there was no way she was going to let him down when he’d put so much trust in her to do what she had been asked. Besides, was she actually considering letting two punk guys in suits scare her off like a little bunny rabbit? Was she really? Since when had she become that kind of a girl? She hadn’t. And so she threw her shoulders back and stepped out of the elevator before the double doors could shut on her and make her embarrassment all the greater. Unbelievably, she was almost glad to have the massive heels on, just this one time. It made her just a little bit taller than the two men harassing her, and she was willing to take every advantage she could get.

“No, I haven’t been here before. I—”

“Let me guess,” the one called Chad interrupted, shooting her a smile she was sure he believed to be charming but that actually made her want to punch him in the throat, “you’re here to apply for a position as a secretary. Or wait, no. Not applying, no way. You must have already gotten the job. Something tells me you aren’t the kind of girl who has to work very hard to get the jobs you want. You’ve got your own unique set of qualifications, am I right?”

“No way,” Randy interrupted, earning himself a devilish look from his good buddy Chad, which he neatly chose to ignore. “No way is this girl here to be a secretary.”

“Alright, wise guy, then what? If you’re so sure she’s not here for that, which is a perfectly respectable job, by the way, a perfectly respectable job, then you tell me what your great idea is? She didn’t just wander up here looking for some good shopping, you know? I mean, she’s hot, but that doesn’t mean she has to be a complete and utter moron. This looks like a chick who knows her way around the fancy Manhattan shops.”

“Well, no shit,” Randy said in an indignant voice, so offended by Chad’s suggestion that Elsie almost burst out into a fit of laughter she knew with absolute certainty she would not be able to control once started. “I wasn’t saying anything like that. All I meant was that she’s clearly too good looking to be here for a position like that. She’s too done up, you know?”

“Fine, then tell me. Like I said, go ahead and tell me what she’s doing here, if you’re so smart.”

“I’m thinking model. She’s here for one of the ad jobs, see? She’s a model.”

Chad’s face blanched and then turned an unappealing shade of red. Elsie had a pretty good idea that this was the way Mr. Chad Whoever-the-hell-he-was looked when he was contradicted and shown up, which only made her want to laugh harder. He seemed like the kind of guy who didn’t have to contemplate the idea of being wrong all that often, and because of that, struggled not to throw tantrums when the unthinkable actually happened. If Elsie had to peg him down as a particular kind of person, she would have said that he was the kind of guy who took himself much too seriously. Elsie considered telling the poor bastard that she thought they were both full of shit, if it made him feel any better, but she was smart enough to know that this was one of those times when she needed to keep her mouth shut. She wasn’t back at Cubed, back with the guys she could easily tell off and then go about her business. She didn’t know these men at all. She didn’t know if they were the kind of men who couldn’t handle a woman with ideas, or if they could be dangerous when they felt cornered. As if to drive that point home, Chad, who was still bright red and starting to sweat a little bit on top of it, took several steps closer to her and slung an arm around her. It was a proprietary gesture, one that was meant to convey the point that he could make her belong to him if he wanted to and there wasn’t a damn thing she could do about it. She looked at Randy, stupidly expecting him to say something to his friend about how inappropriate he was being, but instead what she saw was just another good ole boy, laughing stupidly at his dominant friend’s antics. 

“Is that what it is, sweetheart?” Chad asked softly, so close to her now that she could smell the Listerine on his breath and beneath it, something that smelled a little too much like whiskey not to be. “Is that why you’re here? Are you one of the models on the new ad campaign? Because that would be great. That would be just fantastic, if you want to know the truth.”

“Oh yeah?” she asked uncomfortably, trying to squirm her way out from underneath Chad’s arm and failing miserably. “And why’s that?”

“Because, beautiful, if you’re one of the models you’ll be around for a while. That means we can get to know each other better, doesn’t it? Who knows? We might get ourselves nice and close.”

Randy laughed again, which was the first time that Elsie started to feel really and truly uneasy. It wasn’t that she hadn’t been hit on in sort of disgusting ways before, because she had. What she hadn’t done before was deal with being hit on by guys like this when she felt so completely unlike herself. Everything about the look she was projecting was different than her usual ball-busting, get-the-hell-out-of-my-way self, and it was that way for a reason. She had a part to play here and screwing it up meant screwing up the job, which she had already decided she would not allow herself to do. That was all well and good, but what she hadn’t considered was what she would do when the people at Grant Corporation treated her like she was an entirely different species than the one she had been before. Because of the way she was made up and the way she was dressed, she had attracted the attention of these two jackasses. Because of the sort of girl she was supposed to be now, the sort of girl who Caleb Grant would be willing to give up his womanizing ways for, she couldn’t just elbow Chad in the gut and tell him to go fuck himself the way she wanted to. And where did that leave her? Helpless. It left her feeling completely helpless, and maybe even a little bit afraid. She looked around quickly, hoping to see some kind of sisterly solidarity, but what she found delivered an even bigger shock than she had already had.

There weren’t many women in the office, that was the first thing Elsie saw. The second thing she saw was that the women who were in the office didn’t look like they were even considering stepping in to lend a helping hand. Instead, they were looking at her with disdain. Their eyes moved slowly up and down the length of her, stopping on her face to sneer a little bit before moving to someplace else. Now this, this really was a first for Elsie. She had always been pretty, beautiful even, but she hadn’t ever been flashy, and therefore she had never been subjected to the cruelty of other women’s jealousy. Feeling it now was like taking a knife to the gut. All of the ideas she had about how women were all pretty much willing to look out for each other flew out the window, leaving her feeling queasy and sort of dizzy. It might have been an overreaction, at least according to some people, but it was the way she felt, and if asked, she would have said it was with good reason, too. Because these women hated her. They didn’t even know her, not in the slightest, and it didn’t matter at all. They hated her because she was beautiful and because she looked like she was asking for attention. Because of that hate, not a one of them would lift a finger to get Chad and Ricky off of her back. It was sickening, and just like any predator worth his salt, Chad could smell her unease all over her.    

“Come on, sweetheart.”

“Elsie,” she managed to get out in a croak, wishing more than anything that she could sound even a smidge more confident than she did. “My name is Elsie, not sweetheart.”

“Elsie, huh? Well, looks like you’ve got a little bit of spunk, Elsie. That’s good. We like spunk around here. The guys on the new ad will like it, too. Speaking of which, why don’t you let the two of us show you around a little bit? We were headed out to lunch, but I can tell this is going to be a hell of a lot more fun than picking up a burger. Come on, walk with me.”

Chad’s arm tightened around her shoulders, so tight it felt like he was trying to hurt her now, and Elsie felt the panic inside of her begin to rise. She had to get away from this douchebag; she had to get away from him, but she had no idea how to do that without making a scene. She felt stuck, stuck in the same way she’d always felt stuck right after her father had died, and it had just been her all alone with a mother who didn’t understand her and didn’t have any desire to.

“Boys! Who wants to tell me what’s going on over here?”

Chad’s arm around her shoulder stiffened, then loosened. She was grateful for that, but in a way, it almost made things feel worse. She was closer to being free, but she wasn’t there yet, and if she didn’t get him off of her soon, she felt like she was going to lose her shit completely.

“Mr. Grant!” she heard Randy, who was currently behind her and the man trying to claim her for his own, say in a voice that cracked with what she very much hoped was fear. “Good to see you, sir! I’d heard that you weren’t coming in today.”

“Did you? And who did you hear that from, may I ask?”

“I-I don’t know.”

“You don’t know? Well now, that doesn’t make sense, does it?”

“No. What I meant to say is that I can’t remember. Somebody was saying it earlier, a lot earlier. I guess I wasn’t paying much attention.”

“That’s not a bad thing. Maybe next time you’ll make the decision not to listen to the gossip at all, which would be even better.”

“Yes, sir,” Randy answered hastily, really up against the rails now and sounding desperate to get as far away from Caleb Grant as his asshole legs could carry him. “Totally right. It’s a bad habit, I know.”

“Definitely not a great one. Chad!”

Chad’s arm flinched again, loosened again, and Elsie took her opportunity. She ducked gracefully, much more gracefully than she would have given herself credit for in the four and a half inch heels, and slid to the right. She was still a whole lot closer to Chad than she wanted to be, but at least he wasn’t touching her anymore, so there was that. Before he could get the chance to claim her again, she took several steps backwards, which took her past the cowardly Randy and straight into Caleb. She knew it was him without even seeing him, and although she hated being touched by people most of the time, she found that she was seriously grateful to have his arms catching her instead of Chad’s arms pawing at her again. She knew it was him by his smell, a scent that managed to be both clean and spicy at the same time, and by the sound of his voice when he next spoke. She knew his voice by the sound and felt it reverberating in his strong chest. A sudden shiver moved up her spine at that feeling, and she struggled to stabilize herself as quickly as possible so that she wouldn’t need his help anymore. At least the presence of the boss had made everyone stop staring. She had no doubt that they were still listening and that anyone who felt brave enough was taking little sideways glances at the scene unfolding in front of the elevators whenever they thought they could get away with it, but at the moment, she didn’t care. All she cared about was that Caleb had shown up exactly when she needed him, just like a knight out of one of those stupid fairytales, and she would think about the rest of it later. She looked at Chad and Randy, feeling something she could almost qualify as hatred surging through her as she did so, and then she looked to Caleb to see what he might do next. Although he didn’t return her look, she could feel that what he was about to do was for her benefit. An involuntary buzz of excitement shot through her, just the adrenaline she needed after being made to feel so disgustingly helpless.

“Tell me, Chad, where were you taking the young lady?”

“Oh! I thought I would just give her a little tour of the facilities, Mr. Grant. Seems like the right thing to do for all of the new girls.”

“For all of the new girls, huh?”

“Exactly! Just because they’re models doesn’t mean they don’t deserve the royal treatment, am I right?”

“Interesting. Tell me, which ad is she going to be modeling for?”

“Which ad?” Chad asked slowly, stalling for time and looking at Randy, from whom he not receiving a single stitch of help. “I guess I don’t know the answer to that.”

“Don’t know the answer? But how can that be, Chad?”

“I don’t know,” he answered, his face going whiter with each word, his puffed-up demeanor diminishing until he reminded Elsie of a teenager in trouble instead of an overconfident, testosterone-filled dude. Elsie wasn’t sure exactly what was going on, not yet, but she could see enough to tell that Chad had walked himself into some kind of a trap. She, for one, couldn't wait to see the outcome—of whatever sin he’d committed and then tried to cover up—might be.  

“Tell me this, Chad, and please, do your best to tell me succinctly. I’m a very busy man today and I’m afraid I don’t have the time or patience to go through a whole song and dance.”

“Of course, sir,” poor pitiful Chad answered quickly, so quickly it was clear that it was now him who was feeling desperate and trapped.

“Good. That’s good. See, what I want you to remind me of is, what we do with any new person that walks into our lobby.”

“The receptionist—”

“No. No, Chad, wrong. What did we just say? We just said you were going to answer me truthfully and quickly. So far, I’m not impressed. Why don’t you try again? And Chad? Don’t make me ask you a third time.”

“We’re supposed to ask them what brings them here. Before we do anything else, we’re supposed to ask them what brings them here to make sure we help them in the best way possible.”

“And did you do that, Chad?”

“No, sir.”

“No?”

“No.”

“That’s right, you didn’t. Would you like to know how I know?”

“Yes sir,” Chad whispered, really looking sickly now and making no effort to hide it.

“The reason I know that you didn’t ask her why she was here, is that if you had, you would know she’s here to see me.”

“I’m sorry.”

“I’m sorry, too, Chad. Honestly, I am. I’m not sure how we’re going to handle this, not yet. I have to give that a bit of a think. In the meantime, allow me to introduce you to Elsie Morrow. My girlfriend. Try to remember that next time, before you put your arm around her and try to give her a tour. Shall you?”

Without allowing Chad the smallest opportunity to redeem himself, Caleb turned to Elsie with his arm extended so that she could take it. She wasn’t used to being treated like that. She was not used to having car doors opened or jackets slung around her shoulders just in case she got chilly, but in this instance, there was nothing she would have rather done then fold her arm over his. In all of her life, she couldn’t think of a single time when she’d been a part of such an awesome, mic drop of a situation. It was one for the books and a story she would most definitely be telling once she got back to the safety of her own office.