It had been almost two weeks since Travis’s weird introduction of their new owner, Jack Wallace, and Finnley still couldn’t get over how weird everything felt at the office. That first day she had been sure she would quit. She had almost done so at least a hundred times. She still wasn’t sure what had stopped her from marching into Travis’s office and giving him her notice, aside from the fact of her sheer stubbornness and the knowledge that she had been there first. She had been there first, and no way was she going to let stupid Jack Wallace or his ridiculously handsome, sneaky, lying son run her out of a job that had belonged to her before either of them had even heard of the company Cubed.

It had been more than just a job to her; it had been a place of refuge, a place that made her feel at home even when home was a place she was far away from. And home was an important place to Finnley, although it wasn’t something she was ready and willing to admit to just anyone who walked through the door. She may not have grown up in an orphanage amongst severe, austere nuns the way that Clara had; she may not have grown up with overly protective adoptive parents who didn’t understand her the way that Elsie had, either, but that didn’t mean that everything had been easy.

Finnley had grown up in a lower middle-class family that had quickly slid into lower class and then downright impoverished. She had both a mother and a father in the home, but had understood from a very young age that it would have been better for everyone involved if her parents had just washed their hands of the marriage and taken it down to a single-parent home. It wasn’t like it would have reduced the amount of money coming into the home. Finnley had been told that her father had been a truck driver at one time, but from her earliest memories he’d done no sort of work at all. Her father had contributed nothing, electing to lay on the couch all day and drink enormous amounts of beer they couldn’t really afford to buy. This was something her mom and dad had fought about all of the time. Not just some of the time, not just those occasional tiffs parents were likely to get into, but all-of-the-time fighting that more likely than not resulted in physical repercussions. In short, her dad had beat her mom consistently and made no apologies about it. He’d never hit her, but he’d been fond of reminding her that he could start doing so at any moment, should the mood strike him. It had been a terrible environment to grow up in, and Finnley had been more than a little bit pleased to remove herself from it. She had worked hard in school, hard enough to earn herself a scholarship to a college far away from the tiny little Texas town of her birth.  In school, she had been something of a rock star, working two jobs to keep herself afloat while making straight As all four years.  She had worked to remove herself from a bad situation, and she had managed to succeed, but the result was a feeling of emptiness inside she was sure she would never quite be rid of. It was part of why Clara and Elsie had been so important to her almost from the beginning.  Finnley had never considered herself to be the sort of girl to form fast attachments to people, not men nor women either, but when she had found her friends she had found a home unlike any she had ever expected.  It was the memory of that home that made it feel impossible for her to pick up and leave—despite the change of leadership at Cubed.  It was the memory of the life she'd made for herself, the life she felt slipping away, that kept her sense of stubbornness going strong and ensured that she would stay with Cubed until they either forced her out or closed their doors for good. Still, going into the office day-in-and-day-out had been something of a struggle, far more so than she would have expected.  Most of the people she was used to working with seemed to have made the decision that they couldn't work under the new regime after all, which left her with only Brad and Liz as company.  For her part, Liz seemed to have developed a fairly substantial crush on Brad, and for whatever reason had decided that Finnley was the thing standing in between her and true happiness. Although she was sickeningly sweet to Finnley's face whenever Brad was there, the moment the poor schmuck walked away to do something other than flirt with his two girls, Liz gave the most caustic looks Finnley had ever seen. She almost felt like congratulating the girl, telling her job well done and that that sort of tenacity would get her far. All in all, things were not going her way and the fact that she had to work alongside Garrett all-day, everyday didn't make matters any better.

Finnley had sworn to herself the moment she saw Garrett standing there in front of the office, that shit-eating smile on his face, the sort of which only management had the ability to put on their faces, that she would have nothing more to do with him. No man was good looking enough to tolerate the sort of lies she felt she'd been told. It was true that Garrett had never outright lied to her, but her interactions with him was something she felt both humiliated and angered by, and something she wasn't about to forgive. Although, speaking of forgiveness, it wasn't exactly like Garrett had asked her for forgiveness. He'd really done almost no speaking to her whatsoever, electing to shoot her looks from across rooms instead, oftentimes accompanied by sly smiles suggesting that the memory of the kisses the two of them had shared together had not been forgotten by him anymore than they had been by her. If she was being honest with herself, Garrett was both the reason she wanted to leave and the reason she wanted to stay. He was the most interesting thing that it happened to her personally in quite some time. Sure, there had been the mess with Clara, and before that, the mess with Elsie, but this was the first time in a long time that anything had happened to her. In short, she was completely torn between the part of her that wanted to rip the new boss a new one and walk out of Cubed for good in a fantastic blaze of glory and the part of her that wanted to return his flirtatious smiles and see just how far they would take them.

“Ms. Row! You’re just the person I’ve been looking for.”

“Sorry, I’m terribly busy,” Finnley answered the voice of Garrett coming from somewhere behind her, fully aware that she actually had nothing much to do at all and not caring one bit. “See if you can find somebody else to help you.”

She started to walk away, completely convinced that he would let her go and say nothing about it, when she heard him clear his throat decidedly. She stopped short in the hallway, waiting with a body full of tension to see what would come next. There is something in that throat-clearing, a certain sound that made it obvious to her that he was not going to let her go so easily. Then there was the fact that her response had been straight-up insubordination; there was no forgetting that small fact.

She was like an angsty teenager trying to test the limits of an authority figure, something she had rarely done when she had even been a teenager. It was like there was some part of her that wanted him to yell, that wanted him to admonish her for her behavior and tell her not to do it again. It was like some part of her was trying to give herself an out, so that she wouldn't actually have to quit but instead could just get fired and be done with it. This was so true so that when Garrett spoke next, she both jumped at the heightened volume of his voice and smiled to herself at the same time. Maybe this would be it, then. Maybe after almost two weeks of skirting his requests to see her and attempts at polite conversation he had finally had enough of dealing with her and would send her along on her merry way.

“Ms. Row! I’m sorry, you must have been confused. I wasn’t really requesting something of you. That was what we in upper-management like to call a direct order. Perhaps you haven’t had many of those in your life up to this point, but I can assure you, if you stay with this company, it’s something you’ll have to get used to, and quickly. That is if you’re given the opportunity to stay with the company, which remains to be seen.”

“Right,” she answered through gritted teeth, aware that everyone else in the building had stopped what they were doing to watch the little show unfolding right before their eyes. “Got it.”

“Got it? That’s it?”

“No, got it, and I apologize. Now may I go?”

“No, you may not. Believe it or not, I didn’t initially call for you to teach you a lesson in manners. I actually had a reason for looking for you.”

“Alright,” she answered, not turning around and hardly daring to speak above a whisper for fear of losing control of herself completely. “What can I do for you?”

“I think it’s best we take this to my office, don’t you? From the looks of it, this conversation has not escaped the attention of your coworkers, and I’d prefer not to disrupt their work anymore than we already have. Please, if you’ll follow me.”

Her fists clenched so tightly by her side she was sure they would hurt for hours and hours to come, Finnley turned and followed Garrett, who had been standing several feet behind her in the hallway for the duration of this confrontation. She followed him with her head down, feet shuffling, feeling very much like a child being shuttled off to the principal's office for some wrongdoing she would finally have to confront. She didn't want this feeling, hated this feeling if she was telling the truth, but there was something else underneath that hate that bothered her even more than everything else combined. Although she had been the one to talk back, something she had known he would have to chastise her for right then and there, there was a part of her that couldn't stand the idea that he was this angry with her. There was a part of her that wanted to go back to right before this conversation had even started when all there was between them was the memory of those sultry kisses and the coy little smiles she couldn't help but shoot him despite her anger over his ultimate deception.

Her head felt like it was going to explode with the effort of containing these two warring parts of herself, and she seriously considered throwing in the towel right then and there. She could quit, take back all of the power, and then call Clara and see if she and Weston thought they might need a little extra help once they got their new business endeavor up and running. Instead, she kept walking, doing her best to ignore the comments and stares of her fellow employees as she went. It wasn’t until she was actually inside of Garrett’s office that either of them spoke again, and when he did so, she felt her heart leap into her throat.

“Shut the door, please.”

She turned and did so, feeling a bit like she was locking herself inside of her very own prison when she did it. Even once the doors were shut, she didn't turn around. There was a fairly large part of her that felt sure that if she did turn around she might actually start to cry, and there was no way she was going to let that happen. If she didn't start crying, there was an equally large possibility that she would start yelling, and that would only give her fellow workers more of a show than they'd already received. For that day at least, Finnley was done being the center of attention. As far as she was concerned, she could go for the rest of her life without ever being the office topic of gossip and that would be perfectly all right by her. More than all right, she thought to herself grimly, it would be ideal.

“Jesus, Finnley, was that totally necessary?”

“I’m sorry?” she asked in a voice too full of shock to be anything but sincere. “Are you calling me by my first name now?”

“Well, yeah, at least I’d like to. It’s your name, right? Don’t people want to be called by their names?”

“Sure, but about five seconds ago I was Ms. Row, so you can see where my confusion might come in.”

“What do you want from me, Finnley? You were trying to pick a fight in front of the entire office, and I’m supposed to be one of the authority figures around here. I can’t just let you do whatever you want. And while we’re on that subject could you please turn around and look at me? It’s bugging the crap out of me to be talking to your back.”

Finnley turned slowly to face Garrett, who was sitting behind a truly extravagant-looking desk he must have had brought in specifically for him. This was the office that had at one time belonged to Travis, and she briefly considered asking him what he’d done with her old boss, but she was suddenly just too tired to keep on fighting with him. Too tired and too confused on top of it. She’d come into this office fully expecting to be rid of the flirtatious side of Garrett, having forced his true dictatorial colors out of him with her insubordination. Now she found that wasn’t exactly true. She could tell that Garrett was definitely still annoyed at her behavior, but she could also sense a sheepishness, a desire to keep things friendly. It was this hint of apology in him that helped her to remember her anger and to approach his desk with her head held high.

“What do you want, Mr. Wallace? You said you needed me for something, so what is it?”

“God, don’t call me that, okay? Please? Just call me Garrett.”

“But you’re my boss. Something you failed to mention when we met at Posh, by the way. You know, just in case you forgot about that.”

“Are you kidding me? In case I forgot? Of course, I didn’t forget! Why do you think I asked you to come in here?”

“Um, I’m sorry, but were you seriously thinking you could call me into your office and then do whatever you wanted with me? Because if that’s the case—”

“No, Finnley,” Garrett answered with a quiet exasperation that almost made Finnley regret making the admittedly childish and petty comment in the first place. “That’s not what I thought. But I did think we could maybe talk about it some.”

“What for? I mean, what’s the point? It happened; it’s done. You felt like lying to me was a good idea, and I guess that’s your prerogative.”

“But I didn’t lie to you, Finnley, not really.”

“Why, because you didn’t tell me who your daddy was?”

“Yes, actually,” Garrett answered hotly, shifting uncomfortably in his seat at the mention of his father. “I think that plays into it.”

“Fine, if you want to be technical, you didn’t exactly lie. Not exactly, but you should have told me who you really were. You let me tell you all about why I was there, and you never once mentioned that you were part of the company coming into take over Cubed. You didn’t even let on that you knew what Cubed was!”

“Can you honestly blame me?”

“Honestly? Yes, Garrett, yes, I think I can.”

Garrett stood then and began to walk towards Finnley, his face dark and stormy with something she couldn’t pretend to understand. If it weren’t for the same stubbornness that had kept her from walking out on Cubed altogether, she would have undoubtedly backed away from him, but instead she stood her ground. She stood her ground even when his hands found her shoulders, pulling her in closer to him so that she could smell the spiciness of his cologne. She felt her breath catch in her chest and felt his heat radiating off of him. It was something that could only be described as intoxicating.

She knew that she should pull away from him; she knew that it was the only thing that made any sense, but she simply couldn’t make herself do it. She was caught in whatever spell he’d begun to cast over her in the dark of the bar, caught whether or not she was sure that she wanted to be.

“What are you doing?” she asked weakly, not wanting to look up at him but finding it impossible to look anywhere else. “What do you think you’re doing?”

“I’m trying to make you understand. I’m trying to make you understand that I wasn’t trying to be an asshole, Finnley. I just...I wanted you, alright? I wanted you, and I wanted my dad not to be a factor. I should have told you who I was, and I know it. I fucked up by not doing it, but you can’t keep holding it against me.”

“Can’t I?”

“You’re driving me crazy, Finnley! Don’t you know how crazy you’re driving me?”

And then, before she had a time to think up an answer, let alone speak one out loud, his lips were on hers again and she felt that same sensation of falling. She wanted to push him off of her, to tell him that his kiss wasn’t enough to make everything okay, except that for the moment it was. Whether or not it should have been, it just was, and she would have gone on kissing him there for the rest of the day if she hadn’t heard the door behind her open, followed by a sinister sounding little laugh.

“Oh, excuse me. Ms. Row, is it? I had no idea my son was showing you his brand of hospitality.”

“Oh!”

Finnley pulled away from Garrett, completely appalled to have been caught by Cubed’s new owner in a lip lock with his son. She glanced at Garrett, waiting to see what he would do to make the situation even a modicum better, and she was shocked all over again by what she found. It was like looking at a totally different person. The eyes that had only moments before been so full of longing for her were now hooded and stony, not bothering to look at her at all. His entire body was rigid and leaning away from her as if she was all of the sudden the most repulsive thing in the world to him. She wanted to ask him what the hell was going on, but of course she couldn’t, not with his father standing there. She was dealing with a genuine Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde situation, and she wanted nothing more than to remove herself from it entirely.

“I’m going to go,” she said in a shaky voice, not sure which Wallace man she was less interested in looking at. “I’m going to go and let the two of you discuss...whatever it is you need to talk about.”

“No,” Mr. Wallace answered languidly, clearly enjoying the drama unfolding before him. “By all means stay and talk to us. I’m sure you’re at least as qualified as my son here to tell me how things have been over the last two weeks.”

“No,” Garrett interrupted, still refusing to look at her at all. “You should go, Ms. Row. You should go now, and close the door on your way out.”