Dirty Headlines

“I’ll drop them off in half an hour. Just give me their address,” I said.

“N-no. He demands that you stay at the dry cleaners and watch them clean his clothes.”

What?

“You mean make sure to take the receipt?” Maybe he had a favorite person cleaning his clothes. What a diva. Rich people had ridiculous whims. In Célian’s case, he was picky about who cleaned his suits, but was perfectly content with eating a stranger’s ass.

Brianna hiccupped again. “No, I mean he makes me sit there and look at them as they do it.”

“Why?” I gasped.

“Because they sometimes steal his clothes.”

“Why are you still working here?” I would have stabbed him in the face through the power of telepathy by now had he done that to me.

“Because he’s smart, pays well, and…I mean…” She downed the entire drink. I heard her gulping it. “He’s seriously handsome. But of course, I know he’d never look at me. He once said my legs are awfully short because I need to run to catch up with his pace. He probably thinks I look like the Pillsbury Doughboy.”

I’d had enough.

Enough of him treating Brianna like a pest.

Enough of him allowing everyone else in the newsroom to overlook me. (I hadn’t been introduced to one person. The associate producer, Kate, asked me once where my parents were.)

Enough of sneaking to the fifth floor every lunch break to spend time with Grayson and Ava, because Célian invited everyone in the newsroom to the conference room to eat lunch every day. Every. One. But. Me.

I darted out of the restroom. My eyes found him like that’s what they’d been trained to do. He was in his office, the door thrown open, typing away and ignoring the hustle and bustle in the hallway. I knocked on his door loudly, my anger climbing up my throat and balling into a scream. I walked in without permission.

“Yes?” he said without looking up.

“I need to talk to you.” I was surprised at how heated and cross my voice sounded, like liquid lava slithering between my lips.

“I beg to fucking differ. You’re reporting to Steve, Jessica, and Kate. In that order. Think of this place as a church, Judith. When you make a confession, you go to a priest. You don’t have a direct line to God.”

Did he just…? Surely, he didn’t…

“Did you just compare yourself to God?” I tried to wrap my head around this.

But of course he did. He had his PA monitoring his dry cleaners. The guy was obviously more bananas than a tropical island.

And he was still typing away and staring at the screen. I slammed the door behind me to get his attention. Finally, he looked up. I swallowed the saliva pooling in my mouth. His crisp white dress shirt rolled up his elbows, his tan and muscular forearms with the veins snaking down to his big hands, and the carved, severe expression on his face—so sharp it could nick and make me bleed to death with a glare alone.

“You’re making Brianna sit at your dry cleaner’s for hours on end and watch them clean your clothes?” I seethed.

A toxic grin spread over his face. “I’m guessing by your reaction that you inherited the vexing task.”

“A task I will not do.”

“A task you will do, unless you want to get fired, gray or not.”

“Huh?” I seethed.

His eyes dropped to my Chucks. He noticed.

“Just because you’re in a shitty mood doesn’t mean you get to boss your boss around. Learn your place, Chucks.”

“Chucks?”

His eyes traveled down to my feet, and he raised one lonely eyebrow.

Whatever. I stomped my foot, seething. “You’re being unreasonable! You need to stop walking so fast, too. Brianna is running after you, and her feet are all banged up.”

“Miss Humphry, hell will freeze over before you dictate my movements, in or out of my newsroom.”

I threw my hands up. “I give up. Please transfer me back to Couture. Making news was my life’s ambition, but self-fulfillment is not worth working with you.”

What was I saying? Why was I saying that? I didn’t want to go back to Couture. I loved Ava and Gray, but I wanted to stay here and make news. I just wanted him not to treat me like I didn’t exist and cut Brianna some slack.

“You like the news? Here’s a newsflash for you: you don’t always get what you want. Are we done here?”

No. We were definitely not done. But I couldn’t jeopardize my job, so I turned around and was about to storm straight to Grayson’s office when I crashed into something hard. I looked up. It was Mathias Laurent, and he was smiling back at me like a cunning cat who’d just eaten a canary, a few yellow feathers still sticking out of his mouth.

“Hello,” he said in the same French accent Célian had faked the other day.

Unease slinked down my spine. “Sir.” I nodded, making way for him to enter his son’s office. In my periphery, I caught Célian perking up, drinking the two of us in.

“Mathias Laurent. Please, call me Matt.”

He offered his hand. I shook it. Well, at least Laurent Senior wasn’t a douchebag. I gave him my name, and he took a step toward me, still at the threshold.

“We didn’t get to properly meet last week, Miss Humphry, but I always try my best to get to know everyone in the LBC family, no matter the position.”