"I'm not Catholic and David wasn't a dork. He was a very nice person."
He chuckled. "He was a dork. He only wanted two things from you and when he got the first, he ran screaming for his mama."
"Raven," Elise snapped. "I still haven't forgiven you for introducing David to Dad."
"Me? Wyndemere wanted to meet him. I didn't do anything, but introduce them."
"You know very well what you did." Elise played along and clicked her tongue in annoyance. "Telling Dad that David was writing a book with me as the heroine—"
Raven laughed. "Not just any heroine, mind you."
Elise's frown bordered on a smile. "How could I forget? I was to be Sasha, the sex crazed, man-slaying nymph."
Raven cleared his throat pointedly. "You know that dork wasn't good enough for you. I did you a favor by getting rid of him."
Elise glanced at the six-inch stack of folders Luc had dropped on her desk before lunch and her mood soured. "How about getting rid of Luc? He's drowning me in paperwork." She pulled out her desk drawer and scanned it for potential weapons. "I'll hold him down for you and we'll tag team him. I've got… eight rubber bands. We'll put his hands behind his back and… we can smother him in Post-it notes."
"And then what will we do? Paper clip him to death? Oh, no, I've got it. We'll use the stapler and—"
"Yeah, that's it. I'll lock him in his office and guard the door. You can take him, Raven. I know you can. He's no match for you and your mad ninja fighting skills. He left me with a mountain of revisions for his big meeting and…
please
, Raven. I'm begging you."
Her brother laughed. "Forget it, Elise. I've seen your boss. Rubber bands won't hold him long enough for me to load the stapler. Now, if it had been the dork, rubber bands would have sufficed." He paused. "Besides, I'd rather waste my time mixing herbs for Moonbeam's super-duper, whammy of a money spell." Raven sighed. "Do what you have to, Elise. If you come up with an idea before the end of the week, let me know. Ken's bringing over the check on Friday."
"I will. I'll call you when I get home tonight. If it's not too late by the time I get out of here."
"Make sure someone walks you out to the car. I don't want to have to worry about you, too."
"Luc always does. Later, Raven, and try not to cry too much."
Raven grunted and disconnected.
Elise hung up the phone and toyed with the pen cap in her hand. If the state of the pen cap was any indication, then she was doomed to break out her special reserve pen caps and spend the rest of the day distracting herself with what Luc had informed her was a serious oral fixation.
If only her pen cap addiction were
just
an oral fixation. The truth was it was her mechanism with coping with the stress. Something that she'd picked up at a young age when she first realized just how
not
normal her mother was.
There was a flash of light quickly followed by the boom of thunder. Rain pelted the roof and the windows shook with the thunder.
Elise ignored the storm and looked back at the phone. Her eyes glazed over as she replayed her conversation with Raven in her mind. The longer she thought about it, the angrier she became.
It just wasn't fair. Raven shouldn't have to do this. He shouldn't be the one who had to continually go behind their mother and clean up her messes. But for as long as Elise had been alive, it was what Raven had done. Tossing down the semi mutilated cap in her hand, Elise yanked open her desk drawer and dug out a fresh one. "This bites big wankerdoodle. What was she thinking not to pay her taxes?"
From over the cube farm wall, she heard her co-worker, Donna, ask, "Elise, did you say something?"
"No. Just talking to myself. Again." Elise his gold in her special stash and grabbed a blue pen cap. Two seconds later, it was clamped between her teeth and she was happily gnawing it to death.
Donna chuckled. "Just as long as you don't answer yourself."
Elise harrumphed and picked up a folder from the top of the stack she had to muddle through before clocking out, then arranged the papers on the tray next to the monitor. "I'll tell you what she was thinking. 'Government, I don't need no stinking government.'," she told the computer monitor in a hushed whisper.
Elise shoved the thumb drive that contained the master document for Luc's project, into the computer, then moved the mouse and copied it to her hard drive. "Ha! It's all that nonsense preached about at The Guiding Light of Gaia which has brought the tax police down on her." Elise clicked to open Luc's master document from her hard drive. "Well, Moonbeam, let's see Gaia get you out of this one."
A bright burst of lightning flashed outside the window and the lights in the building died as a resounding explosion rocked the corporate office. From somewhere in the middle of the cubicle farm, a co-worker's blunt, explicit curse reverberated between the walls.
There was a loud hiss, then a pop and the acrid smell of fried electronics filled her cube. The overhead lights flickered and she heard the air conditioner groan back to life. Elise's jaw dropped and she forgot all about her oral fixation as a tuft of smoke unfurled from her computer "Ohmigoodness. No.
Please, no.
"
"Elise, do you smell smoke?"
Elise ignored Donna's question and looked straight up at the white tile ceiling. "I didn't mean it, Gaia. Honest I didn't. I'll never say another bad thing again. Just let me keep the hard drive.
Please.
" The papers in the tray shifted and one by one slid down, down, down until they pooled in her lap. "Please, Gaia, I'm begging you. I was so close to being finished," she finished in a weak whisper.
"Elise," Luc called from behind her. "How are you doing with the revisions?"
"
Oh no
," Elise whimpered. Luc was back from lunch and, more than likely, ready to dictate more changes to his plan for the financial reconstruction of Andersen Corporation.
She swiveled in her chair and gazed up into his clean-shaven face. The fear she felt must have been written all over her expression, because his blue-green, grayish eyes moved, looking over her shoulder to crackling and popping computer. She cringed as his relaxed appearance transformed into his patented Lucifer look. His attention fastened on her face and his jaw tensed, along with his shoulders, his hands, and in all likelihood the rest of his tall, lean body.
"Tell me it's not as bad as it looks," he ground out.
She lifted her shoulders hesitantly and picked up the papers in her lap, holding them with a white knuckled grip. "It's not as bad as it looks. We've still got the hard copies."
There was a loud crack, then a hiss behind her.
"It's gonna blow," Donna cried.
Luc lunged forward and grabbed Elise, yanking her bodily out of the chair. "Someone get a fire extinguisher before the sprinklers go off," he ordered as the first flame flickered to life. Luc snatched up the folders from the desk and thrust them into Elise's arms. "Tell me you still have the thumb drive," he said. "Please."
"
Well
," she hedged. "Technically we still have it, but…." She pointed to the computer. "It was sort of in there when…," she trailed off on a whimper.
Elise stared at Luc as he ran a hand through his chestnut brown hair and cursed. As she watched and listened to him orchestrating the salvation of her toasty computer, she considered the top five reasons why it sucked to be her right now.
Her mother owed a hundred thousand dollars or more to the government.
Her brother was selling his motorcycle.
Her computer was on fire.
Luc was mad at her.
And she had lost six months' worth of work on a project that Luc had informed her yesterday would be completed within a few days.
Her knees started to shake and, on a whimper, Elise clutched the folders in her hands to her stomach, then sank to the ground.
Life couldn't get much worse than this.
* * *
I hope you enjoyed this peek into Lucien's book!
Lucien
is slated to be available for purchase at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Smashwords, and All Romance eBooks by mid-September, 2011.
For more information on any of my titles, please visit my website at: