“Are you sure? Are you sure this is what you want?”

“I’m sure.”

“Because if you aren’t, you can tell me to stop. You can tell me to stop any time and that’s exactly what I’ll do. I won’t want to, God knows that, but I’ll do it. I’ll do whatever you tell me to, Elsie. I would do anything in the whole world for you. All you’d need to do is ask.”

“Geez,” Elsie laughed in something that was also a gasp, “I don’t mean to hurt your feelings or anything , Caleb, but has anyone ever told you that you talk too much?”

“Oh yeah? You think so? Well, let me see if I can do something about that.”

Elsie started to laugh again, to laugh harder, but Caleb put an end to that jag of laughter very quickly indeed. He had been standing in front of her at the very beginning of this exchange, standing so close to her that she could feel the phantom touch of his body pressing up against hers. Normally she would resist such closeness because such resistance was in her nature, but Caleb had all but pinned her up against one of the walls of his office and there was nowhere for her to go. That fact allowed her to realize that she didn’t want to go anywhere. She couldn’t lie to herself anymore, not about this man. He was the hottest guy she’d ever seen, and as she’d learned more about him she’d come to realize that there was more depth there than either she or the general public had bothered to give him. She’d given in and because of it, now she was experiencing him with all of her senses.

As he leaned into her, closing what small gap still existed between the two of them, she felt the length of his body pressing into hers. It happened tentatively at first, allowing her one last chance to turn him away before he took them both past the point of no return. When she didn’t push him away, his body pressed against hers more urgently, and she could feel the physical heat pouring off of him and soaking into her already burning skin. Her head swam with his spicy scent, and when he bent to kiss her, she could feel the three-day-old scruff on his face scratching the side of her face. Then his lips were closing over her own, and there was no room inside of her screaming brain for her to think about anything else. Even the taste of him was unreal to her, clean and somehow seductive. If asked, she wouldn’t have been able to explain what the taste of him was because it was, in her humble opinion, undefinable, but she didn’t have to explain it. She only knew that it made her body tingle in a way that it had never done before, and there was no way she was going to stop him. He could have her; he could have all of her, and she was pretty sure he could have it for as long as he wanted. When she felt one of his hands slip stealthily beneath her flimsy shirt and begin to move up the length of her torso, she knew it to be a stone-cold fact.

“Beep beep beep! Beep beep beep!”

“What the—?”

“Beep beep beep! Beep beep beep!”

“Oh shit. You have got to be kidding me.”

Waking up had never before been as God-awful confusing as it was for Elsie the morning after her confrontation with Caleb’s mother. She’d gotten out of that office just as fast as her two legs could carry her, but not before inexplicably getting herself into the deepest heart to hearts of her life with Caleb Grant. She’d left like her legs were on fire, pressing the close button on the elevator frantically and completely sure that Caleb would pull a stunt straight out of the movies and shove his foot in the elevator door at the last moment and forcing her to have a conversation she wasn’t interested in having, not now and not ever. When she’d finally made it down to street level, she had actually breathed a sigh of relief, one so audible that the building’s doorman had given her an odd look that he then immediately tried to conceal. She’d burst out of the front door, her flirty little dress catching the rising wind and almost billowing up around her and giving the entire city a free show.

Joe had been parked out front and waiting for her, apparently called upon by Caleb as she’d made her descent, and he insisted that she get into the car. As many times as she attempted to apologize for things from the night before…which she couldn’t remember but was sure had been just truly terrible, he wouldn’t hear of it. He was so kind to her that it had made her want to cry, a feeling she carried with her even once inside the safety of her own cozy apartment with all of the locks done up tightly.

She did not leave for the rest of the night. She would not have done so for all of the world, and she wasn’t even willing to call in for takeout because she couldn’t stand the idea of having to talk to another person. She needed time to think, time to clear her head, and if that meant she ate cold pizza for dinner, that was exactly what she was going to do. When she fell asleep, it was on the couch with the television still on. She’d slept restlessly, fitfully, the strange middle of the night shows making their way into her dreams and coloring them with their own brand of weird.

None of those television influenced dreams could hold a candle to the one she’d just had about Caleb though. None of them even came close. The dream she’d just had about Caleb was what she thought her college psychology textbooks would have called a lucid dream. It had felt so real that her entire body was trembling when she woke up. It felt so real that when she woke up and found that she was alone, it felt like a profound loss, like she’d gained something important in her sleep only to have it yanked away from her again upon waking. What she couldn’t figure out, either couldn’t or didn’t want to figure out, was why she would have a dream like that about a man like Caleb. She wasn’t like, dead inside or anything like that, but Caleb Grant? He wasn’t her type, not even close! He was too handsome and arrogant and gave little-to-no consideration to the consequences of his actions. She knew these things; she had known them before she even met him, and part of her felt like that should be more than enough to keep up a strong dislike of the man for the duration of their time working together. On the other hand, however, now she knew other things about him, too. She had learned these things about him without even wanting to, and now she understood him to be a real person and not just some kind of a pop culture icon who spent a little bit too much time in the tabloids for his own good. She had seen a part of him she doubted very much many people got to see, and she had no idea how she was supposed to reconcile that part with the parts of him she had come into the job prepared to detest. To do that would mean she had to allow herself to recognize a changing of her heart so sudden and so unexpected she had no idea how to truly comprehend it, and that was something she just wasn’t prepared to do. Instead, and this was a decision she made quickly and without giving it any real thought, she needed to remove herself from the situation all together. It was something she had toyed around with from the very beginning, since before she even knew what her job was going to be, and now seemed like as good a time as any to go ahead and make her stand.

She got herself ready, again unconscious of the fact that even in her casual look, she was dressing herself and doing her makeup in the style that Caleb favored, and stormed out her front door. She half expected Joe to be sitting out there in his large black town car, just waiting for her to decide to go somewhere, but he was nowhere in sight. Although she felt an odd little pang of letdown, it was probably best that he wasn’t there. With the mood she was in, she was just as likely as not to bite his head off, and she didn’t want to do that. She liked Joe, and it certainly wasn’t his fault that his boss was causing her all of this trouble. She hailed a cab and set her face so stonily that the driver of said cab did not try to make conversation with her even once. She was on a mission, alright, and even a total stranger could see that.

***

“Jesus, look what the cat dragged in. Look at you! You don’t even look like yourself!”

“Seriously, Elsie, what the hell? I had no idea when I gave you a makeover that you were on your way to dating a famous person! That’s like, insane! You know that, right? It’s totally insane!”

“I know,” Elsie responded grimly, blowing past Clara and the rest of the stunned office, her mind set on one thing and one thing only. “It’s crazy, right? Now somebody tell me where Travis is.”

“Yikes, you may look different, but sounds like you’re still as bossy as ever.”

“Fine, somebody tell me where Travis is please.”

“He’s in his office, like always. But what—?”

She didn’t leave any time for the finishing of questions. She had no desire to answer any questions. None at all. She only wanted to get this thing over with, and the best way to do that was to insist that Travis let her beg off of the job. She blew into his office without bothering to knock, which was something he should have been used to by now, but seemed to frighten him a little nonetheless.

“What the hell?” he cried out, looking up from his computer and startling so badly that he knocked his cup of coffee over and dumped it into his lap. “What the hell are you doing, Elsie? Why are you even here?”

“I’m here because I need to talk to you.”

“If you need to talk to me, pick up the freaking phone, why don’t you? There’s no need for you to barge in her this way. You know that’s not proper protocol, right? I mean, you do know that, don’t you?”

“I don’t know that I really care at this point.”

“How charming,” Travis said in a sarcastic, angry voice, doing his best to wipe the coffee off of his lap and failing miserably. “Just another one of your more attractive qualities, the whole not caring thing.”

“I don’t really see how you can get upset about that when you’ve got me hired out like a hooker to some guy who managed to make such a mess of his company that he can’t keep people from leaking his clients’ information.”

That was enough to get Travis’ full and undivided attention. He looked up at her with wide, surprised eyes, stunned by her outburst. Even for her, that was pushing the envelope, and they both knew it. Elsie still felt the anger inside of her that had brought her to the office, but now she also felt weak and even a little bit afraid. This was probably the most out of control she had ever been in her life, and it gave her the same sensation as flying down the first drop of a rollercoaster gave a person. She was flying at breakneck speed, and the sensation was absolutely terrifying.

“Elsie, you need to watch the things you say, alright? You’re crossing a line. I think you know you’re crossing it, too.”

“No, actually, I don’t.”

“Well, if that’s the case, then by all means, let me explain it to you. First of all, you are nothing like a hooker, and you know it. Even if you say you don’t, you do. You get paid a substantial amount of money to do what you’re doing, and nobody is asking you to get on your back. Secondly, you better amend your way of thinking about the ‘stupidity’ of our clients real fast, or else you’re going to be looking for a different place to work.”

“But—”

“No,” Travis cut her off, his voice more forceful than it had ever been with her, “no, no interruptions. You need to hear this. It’s important, and even if you decided to go work somewhere else it would be important there, too. You have to stop thinking of yourself as being better than the people we help. Do you hear me?”

“Who said I think I’m better than them?”

“You didn’t have to come right out and say it. The way you talk about them does that for you, especially when it comes to Caleb Grant. Now I’m going to say something, and I want you to hear me. If you don’t like him, I don’t care. We don’t always like the things we do for work. What I do care about, is you getting the job done, and I want to make this very clear as well. Are you listening?”

“Yes, you know I am,” she answered in a sulky voice that made her feel very young and very silly.

“Good. Because I have a feeling you came here to ask me to be let off this job, and if that’s why you’re here, the answer is no. It’s not going to happen, Elsie, not unless you’re also putting in your notice. Because when you get a job, you finish it. No excuses, no changing your mind. Unless he’s abusing you, that is. Is he abusing you, Elsie?”

“No.”

“There you go. You got yourself into a little trouble last night, and it got splashed all over the media. So what? That was your fault, not his. He didn’t pour those drinks down your throat. From the look of the pictures, I saw he was actually trying to stop you there at the end. You don’t like the way working on this job makes you feel, then change it. But if you came to ask me to put someone else on the job, the answer is no. You’re going to have to find a way to deal with Caleb Grant, or you’re going to have to quit.”

“Fine.”

“Fine what? Fine in which direction?”

“Fine, I’ll finish the job. And don’t you dare smile at me, Travis. If you do that I’m going to completely lose my shit.”

He smiled at her anyway, and Elsie stormed out of the office. She was trapped, bested, and she knew it. As if to add insult to injury, her phone began to ring the moment she stepped out onto the street. She knew who it was going to be before she even glanced at its face, but that didn’t stop her stomach from doing a funny little dance when she saw his name. Caleb Grant. Caleb Grant was calling her, and she was not allowed to ignore it.