Serious Ink (4 page)

“They’re not going to shut it off, are they?” Britney asked.

“No. We still have a week to pay.” It was doable, but Zoe still wanted to kick her own ass. On top of the mounting nursing home debt and their freshly-raised rent, the last thing they needed was to waste money on something like a late fee for a bill that could’ve been paid on time. She hadn’t meant to let the water bill slip through the cracks; the past week had just been hectic, what with the start of her new job and all.

Paul plucked the bill from her hands. “I’ll take care of it – write a check tonight and send it out in the morning. Don’t worry about it.”

“Thanks.” Zoe sat the rest of the mail down – staring at the sky-high nursing facility bills wouldn’t diminish them by a single a penny. She might as well focus on starting her new job the next day, since that was the only realistic thing she could do to lessen the debt.

 “I’m going to head to bed, you guys,” Zoe said. “See you tomorrow.” She cast a glance over her shoulder as she stepped out of the room, but Paul and Britney didn’t seem to have heard.

And no wonder – they were both standing in front of the sink, hips touching as they scrubbed dishes together. Britney’s messy ponytail flip-flopped as she tipped her head to the side, letting it rest against Paul’s shoulder. Her voice was quiet, but Zoe caught the words “Philly” and “better soon”.

The conversation snippets drove home a poignant truth: Paul and Britney had been engaged for a year, and the only reason they weren’t married already was because they couldn’t afford to be. Or at least, they couldn’t afford a ceremony – not with the outstanding nursing home bills. And then there was the fact that they more or less had to live with Zoe. The three of them living together allowed them each to contribute more money toward Paul and Zoe’s father’s care.

And that was what mattered most to each of them – including Britney, who might as well have married into the family already – even if the arrangement was awkward, at times. Sometimes Zoe dreamed of independence – escaping to her own space and leaving Paul and Britney to their love nest – but more often, she dreamed of what life might’ve been like if everything hadn’t fallen apart for the Ramsey family in the first place.

Noah almost choked on his coffee when Zoe walked into the Elite East building at nine am sharp on Saturday morning. She wore a black pencil skirt, matching pumps and a white blouse that he wanted to personally rip each and every button off of. All in all, it was a far cry from the jeans and t-shirt she’d worn at Hot Ink, or the panda ears they’d forced on her at the yogurt place. “You look great,” he said, gaping at her over the rim of his coffee cup.

“Thanks.” She smoothed the front of her skirt after shrugging out of an unbuttoned black coat. “I guess this is okay then – I’m not dressed too casually?”

He blinked, giving her another slow up and down. “I don’t see what’s casual about what you’re wearing.”

“I’m not wearing a jacket. A blazer, I mean. I wasn’t completely sure what to wear – you look so nice in your suits and that was the only thing I had to go off of when trying to determine the dress code around here. I don’t have a lot of business casual things anyway – it’s not like I need that kind of wardrobe for Hot Ink.”

“You could’ve worn jeans and I wouldn’t have cared,” he said. “I’m only wearing a suit because I’ve got the press conference today.”

But oh, how glad he was that she’d opted for the pencil skirt and heels… Shifting his weight from one foot to the other, he did his best to keep his eyes on hers, even as his cock hardened.

“In the future, wear whatever makes you comfortable.” He swept a hand through the air, gesturing at the mostly empty space on the mostly empty floor they’d signed the lease on just a week ago. “I picked up a desk for you, but it’s still in the box it came in. I don’t think I have any right to complain about appearances.”

She seemed to relax a little, her shoulders easing down the tiniest bit, the motion drawing his attention to her breasts. She’d buttoned her blouse up to her collarbones, but her clothing emphasized her figure, drawing his eye to every feminine curve. God, she was beautiful, no matter what she wore. He’d been thinking about her in her simple t-shirt since the night before, and now he knew he had no hope of ever getting her out of his head.

“So how do you want me to start?” she asked. “Is there a phone you want me to, uh, answer? Any filing that needs to be done…” She glanced around at the open space, which was conspicuously lacking in the furniture department, a little dent appearing in her lower lip.

“Yeah, we’ve got a phone.” They had that, a coffee maker and a few chairs. “To be honest, we’re just getting set up here. I know it doesn’t look like much. I’ll get started on assembling your desk right now. Meanwhile, why don’t you have a cup of coffee? The phone is over in that corner—” he pointed to where it sat on the carpet, its wire running into the bare wall “—and if it rings, it’d be great if you could answer it. I don’t expect you to hunker down on the floor beside it or anything, though.”

As she made her way toward the coffee maker, he retreated to the corner where he’d deposited the box containing her desk – or rather, the pieces of it. Assembly turned out to be more complicated than he’d hoped. After twenty minutes of swearing under his breath, he’d produced something vaguely rectangular, and most of the pieces were still spread out across the floor.

“Want some help?” Zoe appeared at the edge of the disaster area, a cup of coffee in hand.

Holy hell – from where he knelt on the floor, he could almost see up her skirt.

“Don’t worry about it,” he said, forcing himself to divert his gaze back to ‘Piece E’, which as far as he could tell, had no identifiable purpose. “I’m the one who picked out this desk – I made my own bed, now I’ll lie in it.”

“I feel bad just standing around and sipping coffee while I watch the VP of Marketing and Communications swear at a pile of nuts and bolts.”

“You’re the company’s fifth employee,” he said. Hell, at the moment, she was the only employee besides him present in the building – a fact that he tried hard to keep a professional perspective on. “We’re not big enough for me to get out of doing stuff like this. Not yet.”

She knelt beside him, mercifully removing the temptation of knowing he could gaze up her skirt. Sort of. To just above the knee, anyway – not exactly scandalous by normal standards, but with a woman as beautiful as her, a glimpse of thigh was nothing to scoff at.

“Then we’re not big enough for me to stand aside, either.” She picked up the instruction booklet and began to study it, her dark, finely-shaped brows knitting together. “Besides, I’m used to doing stuff like this – I have a brother, but he’s horrible at reading directions.”

He didn’t protest – mostly because he was rapidly approaching the point where simply throwing all the pieces out the window seemed like a viable idea.

“I think that piece needs to connect with ‘K’.” She set down the booklet after a few moments. “No, at the other end.”

As it turned out, ‘Piece E’ had a purpose after all. And with Zoe’s help, he managed to transform the heap of junk into a frame vaguely resembling a desk. “Looks like I made a smart choice, hiring you,” he said.

“You wouldn’t have had to assemble this in the first place if it wasn’t for me.”

He shrugged. “If not for you, we would’ve had to hire someone else. We had a couple other employees back in Buffalo, but not everyone was interested in relocating.”

“When will I get to meet the rest of the company?”

“Everyone will be at the press conference today – I’ll introduce you then.”

“Really – I get to be at the press conference?”

He shot her a look of mock surprise. “I’m the VP of Marketing and Communications, aren’t I? How could I face such a major event without an assistant?”

She smiled. “Well I’d love to be here for it, if you think I’ll be useful.”

“Great. It’s at eleven – the others will be meeting us here at a quarter ‘till. Until then…” He stared at the mostly finished desk, wondering how sturdy it was and trying not to imagine all the things that could be done on top of it. “I’ll move the phone over here. And set you up with a computer – just a laptop, for now. We’ve got some software on there you might want to take some time to familiarize yourself with.”

“Okay.”

After they finished the desk, he wheeled a chair over and hooked up the laptop and phone. With that done, the space looked a little more like an actual office. “Tell you what – on Monday, I’ll get some filing cabinets in here. Maybe even a candy dish. Real office stuff.”

“What about a printer?” she asked.

“Now you’re dreaming.” He grinned. “Next thing I know, you’ll be asking for a copier.”

“It might be useful, if you plan on having me make any copies.”

“All right. Why don’t you go online and browse copiers – find a good deal and tell me how much it’s going to hurt. Meanwhile, I’m going to head out on an important executive mission. I’ll be back in fifteen minutes.”

He left on a bagel run. On his first day in the new office space, he’d discovered that there was a great bagel place just around the corner. He’d been back every day since, and figured he could surprise Zoe.

He was almost there when he remembered – she couldn’t eat gluten, which meant no wheat. Which definitely meant no bagels. That revelation took the spring right out of his step, and for a moment he just stood there on the sidewalk like an idiot. What now?

He cast his glance around and eventually strode into a café. They had to have
something
she could eat.

He was no expert on gluten-free dining, but the display case crammed full of pastries and cookies was obviously a big fat no. There was a little basket of fruit on the counter, but he would’ve felt lame returning with a banana. Beside the fruit, there was a rack of overpriced gourmet chocolates.

Perfect. Or at least, better – and a lot less creepy – than shoving a banana in his pocket and expecting her to want to eat it when he returned to the office.

He paid for a box of truffles and walked back to the building, finding her perched behind her new desk on the second floor.

She looked up at him as he entered, her dark eyes searing him from beneath even darker lashes. “How did the executive mission go?”

“You tell me.” He approached her desk and presented her with the box. “These are safe for you to eat, right?”

She stared for a moment, then reached out, taking the box and flipping it over. “Yeah,” she said after scanning the ingredients, “I can eat them. Are they for me?”

“Yes. Well, I thought we could share.”

She blinked up at him, and her lips cracked the tiniest bit. He died a little inside as she traced the inside of her glossed lower lip with the tip of her tongue, apparently deep in thought. “Okay.”

“My big executive mission started out as a bagel run,” he admitted, afraid he’d weirded her out. “Then I remembered you can’t eat bagels. So I improvised.”

She laughed. “And here I thought you were trying to romance me with fancy chocolates.”

He arched a brow. “Is it working?”

She smiled as she slid a hot pink nail under the edge of the box, breaking its seal. “Of course it is. It’s not like I’m the one woman on the face of the planet who can resist a man in a suit bearing a box of truffles.”

She was obviously teasing him, but his dick hardened a little anyway. God, it was going to be hard to leave her alone long enough to let her do her job. It’d only been an hour since she’d started, and already he was wondering just how he was going to keep from making an ass out of himself. He easily could’ve spent the day hovering around her desk, finding stupid little reasons to keep talking to her.

By the time the other three guys arrived, he and Zoe had decimated the entire box of truffles.

“Maybe I shouldn’t have had so much chocolate,” she said. “Or coffee. I feel like a live wire. How many people are going to be at this press conference, anyway?”

“Just us and a handful of reporters. You don’t have anything to be nervous about. Here, I’ll introduce you to everyone.”

He introduced her to Jay, Darrin and Andy – Eastern Elite’s other co-owner, finance manager and event coordinator, respectively. They were a small crew, and none of them had objected when Noah had told them the night before that he’d found a part-time receptionist.

Everyone was polite, but Noah couldn’t help but notice the admiring – even curious – looks Zoe garnered. Jealousy sprang up inside him, instant and surprisingly strong. He hadn’t mentioned that Zoe had been his date the night before. He
would
mention it, later, when Zoe wasn’t around – he wouldn’t want to embarrass her.

He wouldn’t want any of the other guys to get any ideas, either – he may have just met Zoe, but he was sure about one thing: he wanted to do more than assemble desks and eat fancy chocolates with her. A lot more.

* * * * *

Three o’clock on a Saturday afternoon was prime visiting time at the Azalea Hall Care Center, which made it a depressing time to be there. Way too many of the residents were just as alone as ever, lingering in their rooms or in the halls, drifting through the day with no company to relieve the monotony. It broke Zoe’s heart every time.

“Hey, Herb,” she said, waving to an elderly man who sat outside his room in a wheelchair, bundled in a thick blue terrycloth robe.

Herb didn’t say anything, but he did raise a hand in acknowledgement. One corner of his mouth lifted in what might’ve been a smile, or only a tremor.

“Nice robe,” Zoe said. “Is it new?”

Several moments ticked by in utter silence. “My granddaughter sent it,” Herb eventually said, voice rasping. “For my birthday.”

“You had a birthday – when?”