Woman in Hot Water [Wet and Willing 1] (Siren Publishing Ménage Amour) (2 page)

“That’s okay. I’m used to working hard,” Kendra said.

“Good luck then, honey.”

Quickly Kendra did her hair in a high twist then gathered together her possessions. Holding her spine straight, she walked out into the hallway and up to the entry to the building. The most luscious backside she’d ever seen was taping a notice to the glass door. Well, there was a man attached to the ass, but she was too busy salivating at his butt to notice the rest of him. When he straightened up and turned around though, she had to stop herself from drooling. The man was built. Broad shoulders, muscular arms, and a chest made for licking, stretching a tight T-shirt in the swimming pool colors, royal blue and gold. Wow. He could swim in her pool any time he liked.

Dragging her mind above her waist, Kendra put on her most professional smile. “I hear you’re looking for a new receptionist. I’m here to apply for the position. Can you please direct me to the manager’s office?”

“How did you hear? It only happened ten minutes ago.”

“Networking.” She smiled back at the scowling, but oh-so-yummy, male.

His gaze flicked down to the bag she held with her towel and things in it. “Change room gossip. Very well, follow me.”

She would have liked to watch his ass and thigh muscles as he walked ahead of her but forced herself to notice where they were going. After all, she wanted to be able to find her way back again. The man almost ran up a flight of stairs beside the gym then turned down a corridor. Hoping this wasn’t a fitness test, and also hoping she wasn’t going to end up panting, she raced after him.

He walked through what appeared to be a receptionist’s office and into an inner sanctum. There was a glass wall looking out over the main swimming pool, with the diving boards in the distance, the wave pool on the right, and the children’s pool on the left.

“What a spectacular view,” she said. Then realized Mr. Delicious Ass must be the manager. Oops. Likely this was the Osborne man the women were talking about. Yep, those shoulders were a swimmer’s shoulders. She could tell now she was using her brain instead of her hormones.

He sat behind a large desk piled high with papers and waved her to a chair. “So you’re a receptionist?” he asked.

“Yes,” she said. Then figured it was probably time to be slightly more factual. “I’ve done reception work in the past.”

“Well, what are you doing at the moment?”

Kendra figured “Talking to you” wasn’t the kind of answer he wanted to hear. “Most recently I’ve been working as a secret shopper for a marketing firm. But my face is becoming known, which means that the position is coming to an end.”

“Or has already come to an end,” he guessed shrewdly.

“Yes,” she sighed.

“Can you really do reception? Juggle a line of waiting customers, the phone calls, and staff rosters all at once?”

Kendra smiled. She knew she could. “Yes,” she said confidently.

“Okay, you can start right now on a week’s trial at eight dollars an hour. At the end of the week we’ll talk rates and superannuation and so on, if we’re happy with you.”

“Thank you.” Kendra’s heart was beating double time. She had a job! A job! Just like that. And she’d make damn sure she passed the trial week and kept it, too.

“I see you fired another receptionist. You’re going through them rather fast these days.”

“Oh, shit. I forgot to take the sign off the door.”

Jordan held the sign up. “I took it down myself after I met the new receptionist.” He jerked his head in the direction of the outer office.

Osborne smiled at his partner. Partner in the bedroom and in the office. Jordan was the financial brain behind the Aquatic Center. It was Jordan who made sure all the figures added up to a nice, fat, black balance sheet. Osborne had all the ideas. He knew what swimmers wanted, both those who swam for fun, and those who wanted to train professionally. He’d made good and sure his Aquatic Center had everything the professionals wanted onsite. They didn’t have to leave his building for anything. Physiotherapist, sports dietician, personal trainers, masseurs, they all worked from here and were all trained to know the differing needs of sprint swimmers, distance swimmers, and divers.

Then there was the fun stuff to ensure the families kept coming back again and again. The wave pool and diving boards for the teenagers. A fun pool for the little kids, and inflatable waterslides and jumping castles in the main pool from four to seven p.m. every night, and all day weekends and holidays. Plus his personal brainchild, the huge water tunnel that ran all around the building starting right up high under the roof, and gradually dipping down as it went around the walls, to splash down in a separate pool. It was called a waterslide, but it was completely enclosed so no kid could fall out of it, and it was constantly sloping down, so once a rider started on the journey, the angle, plus the water pouring through it, ensured they arrived safely at the end.

Osborne smiled at Jordan. God he loved this man. Tall, thin, and fair, Jordan was everything he wasn’t, and together they made the most amazing love. As well as the Aquatic Center of course.

“Tell me about the new chick,” asked Jordan.

“She used to be a receptionist. Has been working as a secret shopper. Asked for the job not ten minutes after I fired the previous one,” said Osborne.

“Do you fancy her?”

Osborne thought for a minute. He hadn’t spent any time thinking of her like that, but she did appeal to him. Especially after the previous woman who was lazy and argumentative. Of course, this one might turn out to be both those things, too. “She doesn’t turn me off. But let’s wait and see if she’s any good at the job. As you so thoughtfully pointed out, we’ve had rather a lot of receptionists in the past few months. If this one’s any good, I’d like to keep her.”

“Is that why you don’t bother to remember their names? Because you think they’ll be gone real soon.”

Was it? He’d never thought of it like that before. He supposed…Well, maybe…“Okay, I’ll ask her name and try to remember it.”

Jordan leaned over and kissed him, then patted his shoulder. “I’m off to crunch some numbers. I’ll see you for lunch at one then?”

“I’ll be looking forward to it.”

Osborne watched Jordan leave, then sat in his chair and thought. Did he really not learn people’s names because he didn’t care about them? If so, he needed to shape up. Surely he could remember this new woman’s name. Cathy? Katy? Carol? Something like that. It’d come to him. He pulled a pile of paperwork in front of him and concentrated on it.

* * * *

Kendra was going to have a huge bruise on her right thigh. She kept pinching herself to try to believe she had a real job at last. A. Real. Job. Where she sat at a desk, with a phone, and a computer, and everything.

Luckily for her the computer had already been booted up and the previous woman had logged in because no one had bothered to tell her the passwords, or even what to do. But thanks to “search” she’d found the booking schedule, which was the question she was most often asked. The phone calls all went, “Hi, this is Name. When am I rostered on for Activity?” After the first two or three, she kept a note of their e-mail addresses and promised to e-mail the new roster out to them each week.

By eight o’clock there was a continuous stream of people to her door all asking much the same question. She got them to write down their e-mail address while she looked up their shifts. Interspersed with these people were frantic comments from other staff saying, “We’re almost out of toilet paper. You’d better order more.” “I just opened the last packet of diving wristbands. You need to order more.” “The candy machine is broken. Can you phone the tech to fix it?”

Between phone calls and visitors, she used “search” a few more times and located the name of the tech, who promised to come out “today.” Then she found an order form template and a bunch of previous orders for various things, from which she managed to type and print off an order for everything she’d been asked for, except the toilet paper. Did they just get that from Walmart or something? If Mr. Osborne ever came out of his office, she’d get him to sign the orders so she could scan them and e-mail them to the suppliers and ask him about the toilet paper. Or should she maybe phone the orders through and send the pdfs when they were done? It would have been nice for him to tell her something about the way he liked things done. Oh, well, sooner or later he’d emerge to ask her to get him a coffee or something. Actually, he’d probably want an apple and a health drink. This was the Aquatic Center after all.

The very thought of an apple and a coffee made her stomach rumble. She hadn’t had breakfast since the gym-trial pass ran out, but her belly hadn’t gotten the message yet. It was after ten, and she was hungry. Hopefully around twelve or twelve thirty she could break for lunch. Her stomach would just have to shut up until then.

The constant stream of people eased off around eleven, and she typed in the staff e-mail addresses. Most of them were already in the system, and she made an e-mail group so she could send the rosters out to everyone in the group. Then she wondered if perhaps the rosters were secret, and she could only tell each person their own shifts. Dammit, she needed to speak to the boss.

Kendra wrote a list of the questions she need to ask, picked up the orders she’d prepared, and determinedly knocked on his door.

“What?”

It wasn’t exactly “Come in,” but she’d take what she could get. She opened the door and stood in the entry, waiting for him to look up and acknowledge her.

“Yes?” he asked impatiently.

She walked quickly over to his desk and placed the papers in front of him. “These are the things your staff need. I’ve written up orders for them. Should I phone through the orders now or wait until you’ve signed them, then scan them and e-mail the pdfs?”

He stared at her.
Now what’ve I done wrong?

She rushed on. “With the staff rosters, should I just e-mail people their own shifts, or is it fine to send the entire roster to everyone? And I couldn’t find out where you order the toilet paper from. Do I simply drive down to Walmart and buy some?”

“The roster is supposed to be pinned up in the break room, so it’s okay to send the whole thing to everyone. Someone should have thought of e-mailing it to the staff ages ago. The toilet paper comes from the same people who do paper towels and soap and stuff. You can phone the order through first for anything we ordinarily get. If it’s something new, ask me first.” He bent and scribbled his signature on the pile of papers, quickly glancing at the suppliers and quantities of items as he did.

“I’ll print out a roster and put it in the break room. Where is the break room? How long do I get for lunch, and at what time should I take it?”

“You get half an hour and need to be back at one, so you can answer the phone when I go for lunch. The break room is at the end of the hallway.”

He looked down at his own papers again, and Kendra figured that was dismissal, so she picked up the signed papers and left, shutting the door silently behind herself. She needed to get a move on if she was to have lunch and be back by one.

She printed off the roster, then grabbed some duct tape and hurried out to the break room. The roster on the wall there was two weeks old. No wonder everyone wanted to know their shifts. She glanced quickly around the room, noticing the microwave oven, a toaster oven, and a boiling water unit. Oh good. She’d be able to cook her evening meal here and eat something hot and cheap. Excellent. Even instant noodles sounded good after eating peanut butter sandwiches the past two evenings for her supper.

Just before one o’clock, the man who’d been in to visit with Mr. Osborne early that morning was back. Jordan, he’d said his name was. “Hi, Kendra,” he said and walked into the inner office.

He wasn’t bad-looking either. Mr. Osborne was tall, broad shouldered, and heavily muscled. Jordan was tall, too, but lean, wiry, and blond. He smiled and looked happy though. Mr. Osborne seemed a little on the grumpy side.

As long as she got paid, that was all she cared about. A week’s trial then she would have this job and could get an apartment. Only a few more days of sleeping in her car. Besides, now she was working here she wouldn’t have to pay the entry fee to use the showers, and with that saving, she could spend a little more of her carefully hoarded money on gas and food. Even having a place to legitimately leave her car all day long was wonderful. Up until now she’d had to remember to move it every three or four hours during the day. From the mall, to the cinema, to the sports stadium. Any large parking lot that didn’t require her to pay to park there.

Night time places to park were even harder to find. People would notice if she parked in a street with houses, and a lot of places drivers had to take a ticket and pay, which she really didn’t want to do. Like the airport. That would have been the perfect place to spend time with showers, electrical outlets, and all sorts of free activities. But the parking costs were wicked. She’d stay here late tonight, as late as she could, then drive to the farthest mall in the area. She’d avoided it for the past few days to save gas, so that would be the best place to sleep tonight. Then she’d come back here at six when they opened to have a swim and a shower before work. Maybe even try out the sauna and hot tub. On that thought she smiled at her cell phone, fully recharged for the first time in a week, courtesy of the electrical outlet beside her desk.