Elsie, who had no idea what was happening with Caleb and the Grant Corporation, woke up early on that same morning that Caleb slept in with a feeling of hot, leaden dread sitting in the pit of her stomach. This was it, the last couple of free minutes she had before selling herself and her soul to the millionaire playboy extraordinaire. To put it mildly, this was not her idea of a perfect morning. For starters, Elsie was not a girl who was used to succumbing to the angry will of her alarm clock. She could count the number of times she’d had to wake up to that jarring, blaring sound in the last five years on one hand. She almost never had to stick to that specific of a schedule in her day-to-day life, which was exactly how she liked it to be. And this wasn’t some gentle foray into a life enslaved to the alarm, either. It was eight o’clock in the morning, a time she never, ever saw unless she was still up from the night before.

“You’ve got to be joking!”

She groaned, then rolled over and stuffed her pillow over her head. Never in her life had she been so glad to have blackout curtains pinned up in her room, which was still mercifully black and cool, just like her own private sleeping cave. Screw the job. She knew how important it was, and if it was later in the day, she wouldn’t have said a thing like that, but at eight in the morning? Screw the job and long live sleep.

Beep beep beep! Beep beep beep!

“What the—?”

Elsie threw off her covers angrily, practically flinging them across the room in her extreme aggravation, and looked at her alarm in absolute astonishment. It wasn’t the thing making the noise. She hadn’t put it on snooze or anything like that; she had turned it off. She had turned it off, and it was still off, which meant that the sound was coming from a different alarm. The only problem with that was that she didn’t have another alarm. She had no idea where in the hell that sound was coming from, which meant she was going to have to get up to turn it off. As it turned out, this alarm was hidden in a potted plant in her hallway, tucked beneath its palm branches so neatly that she would never have found it if it hadn’t gone off. Totally flabbergasted, she bent and turned it off, only to hear another one going off from somewhere else in her apartment. She found that one tucked under a couch cushion, and then she found another one in one of her kitchen cabinets. By the time she had found each and every wayward alarm in her apartment, she was more wide awake than she had been in quite some time. She sat down on her couch with a hard plop, looking around her apartment as if she’d never seen it before. She picked up her phone, not sure whom she was planning on calling but feeling the need to call somebody and tell them about the truly bizarre thing that had just happened, and she saw that there was a text message waiting for her from Travis. It only took a quick glance to see that said text message contained an explanation for the mysterious alarms.

“You son of a... I should have known it was you. Jeez, Travis, couldn’t have figured out a subtler way of handling this?”

His text explained that he knew how she was about getting up in the mornings and that he couldn’t have her just blowing Mr. Grant off. He’d planted the alarms when he’d come over with Clara to oversee the grand makeover. He’d set them for different times and put them far enough apart from each other so that she would be awake by the time she’d gotten them all turned off. He then ended the text by telling her that he’d sent her an email with further instructions.

Further instructions? Further Instructions? What the hell was this, a James Bond flick? Were the further instructions going to self-destruct after a certain amount of time? She felt like she was the butt of some bullshit joke, that’s how she felt, and it was with a whole slew of profanity that she opened up her email. Said profanity only got worse when she started reading the email he’d left. It was too insulting, almost too much for her to tolerate without going completely nuclear. In the email, in bullet-point format, he had listed all of the instructions she might need in order to get herself ready to go out and play Caleb Grant’s girlfriend. It was like he’d taken down notes when Clara had done her makeover and then transferred them all to a document for her to peruse. After that, there were tips and tricks about how to pair together the various articles of clothing and accessories left for her. It was basically idiot proof, which in turn meant he actually thought she was an idiot. It was insulting! Sure, she wasn’t the most glamorous girl in the world, she was aware of that, but it didn’t mean she was one-hundred-percent clueless. She’d looked through the fashion magazines when she was younger, and she was highly perceptive, probably more so than most people walking around on the face of the earth. She was aware of what looked good together and what didn’t. She had just chosen to ignore those things up until this point.

“You want to see glamorous?” She hissed under her breath, talking through gritted teeth and with a scowl on her face that an observer would undoubtedly have found comical. “Fine. You’ve got it. I’m going to be the most glamorous girl any of you have ever seen before. And I’m going to do it without your help.”

Elsie was competitive, like, seriously competitive, and Travis’s lack of faith in her had brought that out in a big, big way. Before, she had seriously been considering just showing up to the Grant Corporation in her customary sweats and t-shirt, and that was if she showed up at all. But now? Now she was going. She was going, and nobody on the planet was going to stop her from doing it and doing it like a pro. With this stubbornness driving her, Elsie set to the task of getting ready. It would have been lovely if the whole thing had gone swimmingly and she’d discovered that she was actually some kind of a savant when it came to all of that girly stuff, but that was sadly not the case. It wasn’t even close to the case. By the time Elsie had made the decision to make herself as glamorous as humanly possible, it was almost nine o’clock in the morning. By the time she was ready to walk out her front door, it was fifteen past one in the afternoon. Four hours. It had taken her just over four hours to get herself together—and that had been with her really trying to be efficient. The whole process had involved not one, but three showers, not because she wasn’t clean, but because she found that taking a shower was the only way for her to push the reset button on the mess she’d made of herself. The first shower was the customary early morning shower, but the other two? The other two were the kind that involved scrubbing off terribly applied makeup and washing out terrible amounts of hairspray just so she could start the whole thing over again. By the time the third shower had passed and she’d done herself up for the third freaking time, Elsie was almost afraid to look at herself full on in the mirror. When she did, it was with one eye still closed and the other opening as little as possible.

“Oh, thank God. Finally.”

It had taken four hours. So what? It wouldn’t take that long every time she had to get ready, and four hours or not, the end product looked sort of...awesome. No sense in being bashful when it was only herself she was dealing with. She looked at least as good as she had when Clara had come over to work on her, if not better. She nodded to herself, sucked in a shaky, nervous breath that she kind of hated herself for but couldn’t help, and grabbed her bag.

“No time like the present, right? God help me.”

***

Later, Elsie would wonder what on God’s green earth had made her think she was ready for what the day would have in store for her. She didn’t know what had made her think that she was even halfway ready. Nothing—in all of her varied and admittedly strange life experiences—had prepared her for playing arm candy to one of the country’s wealthiest men. She had zero frame of reference, and yet she somehow managed to convince herself that she had everything in the bag…right up until the moment when her car pulled up to the front of Grant Corporation. She should have known, she chastised herself, when she was met with a town car upon walking out her front door. She’d been pretty flummoxed by the sight, considering she hadn’t even called a cab, let alone a town car, and she had almost had herself convinced that it wasn’t there for her at all when a large, friendly looking driver got out of the driver’s side door and called her by name.

He explained to her that he’d been instructed to arrive at her place by eight o’clock in the morning and to stay put until she was ready to go. Understandably, Elsie had been more than a little bit horrified. The driver, whose name turned out to be Joe, assured her that it was no problem and that it had been one of the easiest mornings of his life, but she’d felt like shit about it nonetheless. She tried to tell him that she didn’t need a driver, that she could take a cab from that moment on, but at that suggestion Joe had only laughed.

“You and Mr. Grant must just be starting out! Am I right, Miss?”

“What? Starting out? What do you mean?”

“Why, together! That’s what I mean. The two of you are a couple now, am I right? Or did I get that part wrong?”

“Oh! Oh, no,” she answered with a weak laugh, her heart jackhammering in her throat with how close to blowing her cover she had come on her very first day. “I’m sorry about that. You’re not wrong. I guess it’s just still so new that it doesn’t feel quite real. It feels strange to be calling myself his girlfriend. Sort of surreal. I know that must sound terribly silly to you.”

“Nah, it don’t sound silly. Your driver Joe here is a sucker for love, I can tell you that. Now I see your face blanching, and I get the two of you ain’t at the love place, not just yet, but what’s a relationship without at least the hope that love might be in the cards some day? That’s what I think, although why you’d want to listen to Joe the driver is beyond me.”

“No,” she said softly, feeling surprisingly touched by this total stranger’s affirmation of love in all of its hopeful forms. “Actually I think it’s a really lovely thing to say. I like that, Joe. I like it a lot.”

“Well, good! And you should count yourself lucky, Miss, if you don’t mind my saying so.”

“I don’t mind it at all, just so long as you don’t mind me asking how come.”

“Well, because I’ve been driving for Mr. Grant for a good number of years now and I’ve seen my share of his ladies.”

“Have you now? I can’t say I’m exactly surprised by that.”

“You seem like a smart lady, so I’m guessing you ain’t surprised, but I’d be mighty appreciative if you didn’t tell him I told you this, all the same. Something tells me he wouldn’t like it.”

“Of course not, Joe. I won’t say a word. Just so long as you promise not to tell him if I do something a little bit unladylike. I do that sometimes.”

“Do you now?” Joe said in a big belly shaking laugh, the kind that reminded her of Santa Clause even though she was far too old to believe in things like that. “Well, that’s alright by me. I think the two of us are gonna get along just fine.”

“I think so too. Now, you were telling me about all of Caleb’s lady friends?”

“Oh! Right. Well, the thing is, I’ve seen more than a couple ladies, but this is the first time I’ve ever been sent to pick one up. Usually my job is to take the ladies to their homes again. To their homes or someplace else, just so long as they ain’t hanging out at his place anymore.”

Elsie’s eyes bulged out in surprise, as did Joe’s. For a moment, it was as if neither one of them could believe he’d actually said that to her. Then they both burst out into laughter, and Joe ushered her into the back of the car. She wasn’t a fan of the idea of having her own personal driver for the duration of her work with Caleb, but if it was something she had to have, she was glad to have it be someone like him. The only thing she really regretted about it was the fact that she had to lie. She wanted to tell him that there wasn’t really anything special about her, not at all. The only thing that made her appealing enough for Caleb to send a car was that she was able to do something for him he couldn’t do for himself. She felt bad about the lie for the entire drive to Grant Corporation, and she might have eventually caved and spilled the beans if her arrival at the corporation hadn’t shut her up so completely.

When she looked up at all of that glass and metal, she felt her throat close up and her eyes well with tears. Although she didn’t want to admit it to herself, she couldn’t avoid it; she was terrified. Being called into a fancy set of offices like these was so far from what she was used to that even the idea of it made her want to run all the way back home and hide underneath her bed until it was all over. She wanted to hide from the monsters that frightened her until somebody, who was an actual adult, came to turn on her light and show her there was never anything to be afraid of to begin with. The problem was, there was nobody out there to do the job. She was the one who was supposed to be the adult, and the only one who could slay the beast was her.

“Aw honey, you ain’t never been here before, have you?”

“No, I can’t say that I have. Is it really that obvious?”

“Nah,” he answered in a jovial voice, looking up at the building right along with her and making sure not to look at her face. (It was an act of consideration that made him all the more endearing to her.) “It’s not obvious at all. The only thing that gives it away is that look of terror in your eyes. That, and the fact that you look a little bit like you might throw up whatever you had for breakfast.”

“Oh Christ. I don’t know if I can do this.”

“Whatcha talking about, Miss? Of course, you can do this! Just one step at a time, right? All you gotta do first is open the door. Shoot, if you want I’ll get out and open it for ya. It’s what I’m really supposed to be doing anyway.”

“No, please, you don’t need to do that. I can open my own door.”

“See? There you go! That’s one step already figured out. And after that? All you gotta do is put one foot in front of the other, though how you manage it with those crazy shoes on your feet I’ll never understand.”

“Takes practice,” she answered grimly, wishing she could tell him that the shoes were most definitely not her idea.

“So…all you gotta do is put one foot in front of the other until you get into the elevator, then push the button for the fortieth floor. Think of it as a kind of a ride, alright? Just like you were in a theme park or something. Then, once those doors open, you’ll be where you’re supposed to be. Mr. Grant’ll make sure he takes care of you from there. “

“You sure about that?”

“Course I’m sure. He’s a lucky man, finding you. Something in my gut tells me that. But that don’t mean you aren’t just as lucky to have him. Because I hope you hear me when I say that you are. He’s a good man, Mr. Grant is. He’s a much better man than people know him to be. He’d give you the shirt right off his back if you needed it and not even ask how come. You two be good to each other, that’s my little piece of unwanted advice. Now go on, get on up there and do your thing. I’ll be waiting for you when you’re ready to go home again.”

With that, Joe hefted himself back into the car again, his weight causing the spacious black town car to dip a little when his weight was bearing down again. Elsie turned to the building and looked up at the top, feeling a serious sense of vertigo when she did so. The funny thing was, she was pretty sure she would have that same feeling even if she’d only been looking down at her own feet. The things Joe the driver had said were beyond confusing, and they had shaken her something fierce. She felt like she had unwittingly walked into an episode of the Twilight Zone and something told her things wouldn’t go back to normal for quite some time.