“Come on, come on,” I mumbled to myself as I hastily typed words that did not exist in the English dictionary. In any dictionary, for that matter. Pressing the backspace tab, I deleted more than I intended to and had to type the sentence again. I was trying to get the summary finished and printed so I wouldn’t be late.

Glancing at the bottom right hand corner of the computer screen, I noticed the time. Fifteen minutes to four. I’d worked through my lunch so I could leave work an hour early. Although my boss had approved my leaving before five, he had handed me a report to summarize for him just half an hour ago. While Gregory Halliday wasn’t the easiest man in the world to work with, he paid well but expected his employees to work for every penny. Working as his assistant for the past two years could have been worse, but I was making the most of it.

My fingers flew over the keys, my eyes trained on the computer screen. I re-read the one-page summary quickly, of some sort of bid I didn’t understand. A company which had filed for bankruptcy was being auctioned in a sealed bid. While the bidders could see who their competitors were, they weren’t able to see the amount each person had offered.

The report had been long, and I had to read every page and highlighted the important parts for the summary. Mr. Halliday, or Greg as he insisted his employees call him, couldn’t be bothered to read the bulk of information and had pawned it off on me to whittle it down for him.

At the end of proofreading, I saved the document and sent it to the printer, which would take a few minutes to spit out the paper, considering I hadn’t used it in the past hour. In the meantime, I headed to the bathroom to tinkle before leaving work. The Tacoma International Airport was approximately twenty minutes away from the office in downtown Seattle, which meant I would arrive on time for my sister’s flight at 4:30.

I walked back to my station and retrieved the paper from the machine. Slipping the summary plus the original report into a paper file jacket, I hastened to Greg’s office. My desk was situated only a few feet away from the office engraved with the name and title, Gregory Halliday, CEO.

I knocked and waited patiently for him to summon me inside. Since I walked in on him with one of my co-workers, a pretty blonde from downstairs, I’d started waiting after the knock. An embarrassed Caitlyn had begged me not to tell anyone, which, of course, she didn’t even have to ask. I couldn’t care less what Greg did and with whom. I just felt bad for her that she was allowing herself to be used. Everyone in the office knew Greg wasn’t ready for a serious relationship and would flirt with a broom stick if it had on a skirt. With three kids already and living on a receptionist’s salary, I thought Caitlyn should have known better.

“Enter.”

At his permission, I turned the door knob and pushed the door open. I entered the office, leaving the door half-open behind me. I didn’t intend to stay long.

“I’ve the summary you asked for,” I told him, approaching his desk to hand over the file.

“Good girl,” he stated with a lascivious grin, eliciting a frown from me. The problem with men like Greg was that they knew it was sexual harassment to flirt with their employees, but their good looks often meant they did so without consequence. Once the other women let them get away with it, they thought they could do the same thing with everyone.

“If that’s all you want, I-”

“That’s not nearly half of what I want,” he commented, staring with open admiration at me. I had good genes, and both my sister and I took after our mother, who had modeled in her youth. With lustrous dark brown hair, which I wore long, and a slender but curvy body, I attracted my fair of attention from the male sex. And, unfortunately, most of those were from unsuitable men like Greg.

“I’m off now,” I said, switching back to the topic at hand. “Thanks again for letting me leave early.”

“Hot date tonight?” he inquired.

If I walked away in mid-conversation, it would be rude of me, so I paused. Even a conversation, which was clear from the expression on my face, that I didn’t want to have.

“Actually, I’m picking up my sister from the airport,” I enlightened him, pushing my hair back from my face. “She’s coming out here to live with me for a while.”

“Younger sister?”

“Yes, she is younger,” I replied as I turned to leave. “Well, I-”

“You must bring her around sometime,” he offered. “You know we are a family-oriented place of business.”

“We’ll see,” I answered. “I’ve-”

“So, no boyfriend in your life?” he fished for information. “I find that hard to believe.”

“I’d rather not comment on that,” I remarked. My boyfriend, William, had died after a horrific skiing accident had left him disfigured. He hadn’t been able to live with his new face and being a paraplegic, and his mother, who was now serving prison time, had helped him commit suicide. My heart went out to her because I knew she thought she was doing the right thing to ease his suffering, but I would have liked it if he had chosen to live and fight. I hadn’t loved him any less after the accident. After three years, my heart still ached when I thought about him.

“A woman of secrets,” he commented with a smirk. “That’s good. A man likes a mystery, likes the challenge.”

I studied him, wondering about the women in his past who had helped shape him into the man he was today: an egotistical jerk with no sense of humility. He was handsome, drop-dead gorgeous even. His face was one people would walk by billboards intentionally every day just to see. God had unleashed a serious test for women when he’d made Greg Sandy’s brown hair, which always looked tousled as though he was just getting out of bed, and piercing blue eyes. His body was well-built, a little on the slender side but athletic with well-defined muscles evident in the form-fitting shirts he always wore about the office.

“I’m sorry, but I really do have to get going,” I advised him and started walking backwards. “Enjoy the rest of the day.” And now that I was gone, he could bring whomever he wanted to his office to make out. But that wasn’t my problem.

“You too, Robyn,” he responded.

At the office door, I turned to remind him of the meeting he had tomorrow at 9:00 and found him staring intently at my round ass, biting his bottom lip. On second thought, I decided not to remind him and closed the door on the heat in his eyes.

“Jerk,” I mumbled in a low tone so he couldn’t hear me through the door.

At my desk, I powered off the computer and shoved my purse and phone from my drawer into my bag. Since some belongings of my co-workers had started going missing, I kept my valuables –what little I had– locked in the bottom drawer of my desk at all times while I was at work.

Glancing at the slim silver watch on my slender wrist, I noticed that I was going to be late for the airport if I didn’t hurry. I prayed there was no traffic as I took the elevator to the first floor.

The traffic on the interstate was heavy, and an accident caused by an impatient driver who ran into the back of another car didn’t help. What should have been at most a twenty-minute drive took me fifty. I parked in the designated area and grabbed my phone, hurrying into the huge airport through the arrival section. I checked the screens for the flight information and groaned when I realized Kelly’s plane had landed early.

Dialing her number, I rang her over and over without a response. Following the signs to the baggage claim area, I noted which carousel would be used for her flight and tried to ring my mother. Unlike my sister, my mother picked up on the second ring.

“Hi, Robyn. Did she get there okay?”

My mother, Julia, had raised us single-handedly when my father had died shortly after Kelly’s birth. Everything had gone well for us until Kelly turned fourteen and started acting out. My mother just couldn’t handle her anymore and had sent her to live with me, hoping a change of environment would be good for her. I hoped so, too, because seeing my baby sister’s behavior spiral out of control worried me. At eighteen, she’d already been sentenced to a juvenile detention center twice for larceny and disorderly conduct, and had also been ordered by a juvenile court to a ranch for alcoholic offenses.

When she had returned home from the ranch, we saw a change in her behavior, but the change didn’t last. My mother had barely been able to cope with her behavioral problems throughout her high school years, and I’d volunteered to let her come stay with me in Seattle as soon as she graduated. We didn’t have a bad relationship, but I couldn’t relate to her or understand why she acted out. We were raised under similar circumstances and with the same mother, and while not the brightest, I’d performed fairly well in high school. She, on the other hand, was a bright but misguided young woman.

“I got here late,” I explained to my mom. “I’m trying to find her, but she isn’t anywhere around.”

“Did you try calling her cell phone?”

“I did, but she’s not answering.”

My mother cursed, something she had never done until she started having these problems with Kelly. “That damn girl never listens!” she cried out in frustration. “Are you sure you’ll be able to deal with her, because if you can’t, put her ass back on a plane. You don’t need this in your life. It’s about time you had a family of your own with a nice husband.”

“Mom, it’s no problem for her to stay with me,” I reassured her, skimming the faces around the baggage area to try to locate my sister. “I just hope coming here will help her find the motivation to start over. At least she’s away from that Thomas guy.”

“Thomas, Rod, Jeremy, Carlos,” Mom reeled off. “It wasn’t just one. Thank God she has some idea about birth control or I’d be a grandmother to several kids already.”

I frowned and continued my search of the baggage claims area, walking so I could check the iron benches. I didn’t like the idea of Kelly running around with so many different guys. I wasn’t going to act like the saint who had waited until after high school to have sex, but at least Will and I had been together all through high school and after as well. I hadn’t slept with anyone else after his death.

“I think I see her!” I exclaimed to my mother, but my eyes widened in shock. I’d almost missed her because my sister was locking lips with a man on one of the benches to the side. “I’ll call you when we get home, Mom.”

“Okay, and good luck. You’re going to need it.”

I stared at the couple in confusion. Was the guy she was with the owner of one of the names my mother had thrown at me? Nobody had said anything to me about her bringing a friend. The small house I rented in Charleston was a two-bedroom house with a shared bathroom. Even if I had another room, I wasn’t going to harbor a strange man in my house.

When it was obvious they weren’t going to come up for air any time soon, I sucked in a deep breath and strode towards them. Stopping a few feet away, I decided this was a good enough distance to get their attention.

“Kelly!” I had to call her name several times before she slowly released the guy’s lips.

“What?” she glared at me. “Can’t you see I’m busy?”

“It’s okay, I’ve got to get going anyway,” the guy said as he rose to his feet.

I was ignored as she wrapped her arms around the guy’s neck. “You promise you’re gonna call me?”

“Didn’t I put you on my speed dial?” the guy asked her, and they kissed again, taking their sweet time about it. Their kiss was quite carnal, and I looked away uncomfortably. I would never be comfortable with the idea of my baby sister and the opposite sex. Knowing her, there were probably a whole lot of things she had done that I hadn’t.

“See you around.” Her male friend walked away and disappeared into the crowd, wheeling his suitcase with him.

“Friend of yours?” I asked her, raising an eyebrow skeptically.

“We met on the plane,” she answered, flashing her rainbow-colored hair over one shoulder. Though loud, I had to admit to myself that the style suited her and looked cool. Not something I would go for, but for her, definitely worth a second glance.

She was worth a second glance. She was more beautiful than me and attracted way more attention. Her blue eyes were heavily lined with mascara and adorned with fake lashes. She sported an industrial piercing of a bow and arrow in one ear and the other had multiple stud earrings. Other than what was in her ears, she had a nose, tongue, and belly button piercing, and I didn’t particularly want to know if there were others.

Dressed in high-waisted jeans with ripped knees and a hot pink cropped top, I could understand how she had picked up a man on the plane. Good Lord, just what am I getting myself into?

“Let’s go home,” I told her with a forced smile.