To Whom it May Concern (The Hart Duet Book 1)

by J. S. Cooper

  To Whom It May Concern

  J. S. Cooper

  Blurb

  To Whom It May Concern,

  I would like to request more information about the assistant job I saw advertised in Sunday’s newspaper with the high six-figure starting salary. I have a bachelor's degree in English with many years of work experience, and I think I would be a suitable fit for the job. My questions are as follows:

  1. What is the exact nature of the job?

  2. Is it a strict requirement that I live with the boss? If so, can I have friends and others over?

  3. The ad states there is a uniform. May I ask what sort of uniform? And why?

  Also, in lieu of sending a photograph, I’ve sent a picture of my friendly dog that would also join me if I were to get the job.

  Yours sincerely,

  Savannah Carter

  Ms. Carter,

  How do you know you’ll be a suitable fit for the job if you do not know the nature of the work? My ad specifically stated I am looking for an MBA grad, not an English grad who knows nothing about the actual world.

  1. I would discuss this in the interview.

  2. Yes, you would live with me. And I allow no guests.

  3. The uniform would be provided on your first day. You don’t need to know why.

  The job advertisement asked for a personal photo; is this your way of telling me you look like a dog?

  Today must be your lucky day because you’re the only person who responded to my ad. Are you available for a phone interview tomorrow?

  The Wade Hart

  Copyright © 2020 by J. S. Cooper

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Edited by Sarah at Aeroplane Media.

  Proofread by My Brother’s Editor.

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Acknowledgments

  To The Rude Guy in Apartment Five Teaser

  Connect With J. S. Cooper

  Also by J. S. Cooper

  Dedicated to my uncle Gordon Albert Case, who passed away on July 9th, 2020, from COVID-19 complications. Thank you for always being a shining light. May your creative genius live on in your son, Jean Louis. I pray your soul rests in peace.

  Chapter 1

  “Ten billion jobs in New York City, and I’m not qualified for any of them,” I grumbled at my best friend, Lucy, and chewed down harder on the black pen in my mouth. “I’m so screwed.”

  Black ink seeped onto my lower lip and I pulled the pen out of my mouth quickly before I poisoned myself. Which would be just my luck the way my life was going.

  “There are loads of jobs you could get, Savannah.” Lucy walked over and sat next to me on our old white Ikea couch that looked more yellow than white now that it was five years old. “You have a degree. That alone qualifies you for, like, one billion jobs.”

  “You would think so, right?” I handed her the newspaper that was in my hands. “I’ve not seen one ad looking for recent college grads with degrees in English.”

  Why hadn’t anyone told me that getting a degree in English was like flushing $100,000 down the toilet? Well, more like $150,000 by the time I’d finished paying off my student loans. It would have been nice if someone had told me. Maybe I could have taken the money and gone traveling around the world instead. Not that I thought the government would have loaned me the money for that.

  “What about being a teacher?” Lucy said helpfully, a hopeful smile on her face. “You could be an English teacher.”

  “I would need to have a certificate of accreditation to teach in an elementary or high school.” I flopped back in the seat and sighed dramatically, shaking my long brown ponytail and running my fingers through the tendrils that had escaped at the front. “I have no certificates, and I looked at the test online yesterday and it looked hard as hell.”

  “What about a nursery school, then?”

  “Are you joking?” I raised an eyebrow at her. “I did not go to college for four years to read kids' books to little brats.”

  “Yeah, well, with that attitude, you wouldn’t get the job, anyway.” Lucy grinned at me, and I laughed despite myself. “Savannah, you have to be flexible. There are many jobs you can get.”

  “I don’t want to work at McDonald’s again.” I shuddered at the memory. “I already told you how that went for me before. I lasted three weeks, and I gained fifteen pounds. Fifteen pounds in three weeks. How is that even possible?”

  “Well, you’re not in high school anymore. You have more self-control. No need to eat all the fries that you can fit in your mouth just because they’re free.”

  “They weren’t even free.” I sighed. “I had a discount.”

  “Well, we digress.” Lucy looked over the ads in the paper in front of her. “I’m not telling you to go back to fast food, but a paycheck is a paycheck, and you know we’ve got bills coming up soon.” Her voice trailed off as she glanced up at me and chewed her lip nervously. Lucy had been my best friend since we’d met four years ago at a poetry slam contest in Brooklyn. We’d both been new to the city, starting our first year in college and excited to explore the city. She’d been at NYU in Greenwich Village renting a small apartment in St. Marks Place, and I’d been all the way up in Morningside Heights, near Harlem at Columbia University, sharing a dorm room with a girl from Germany. After the first two years, we’d rented a small one-bedroom in the Upper West Side, with Lucy’s dad paying the rent and me paying the bills. It had worked out well, but now that we’d graduated, Lucy’s dad had said he would no longer pay the rent, and I couldn’t use student loans to pay the bills anymore, so we were up a creek without a paddle. I had three hundred dollars in the bank and needed a job quickly.

  “We’re screwed,” I whined. My scruffy black and gray terrier, Jolene, ran up to me. She jumped on the couch, her big brown eyes staring at my face in concern as she sniffed the air, hoping she’d get lucky and find some random pieces of food. “How are we going to pay the rent?”

  I rubbed Jolene between the ears as she snuggled up on my lap and tried to think of a way to come up with $5000 in the next couple of weeks. Not only did I have rent coming up, but my first student loan payment was due and it was more than I’d thought it would be.

  “Let’s not panic.” Lucy’s eyes continued scanning the newspaper. “There has to be something you can do.” She looked up at me. “You know if I had any extra money, I would totally help you.”

  “I know.” I smiled at her gratefully. Lucy was a generous person, but her internship at a minor publishing house barely paid her enough to cover her half of the rent and bills. She was lucky that she didn’t have student loans, or she’d be in just as bad a position as I was. “And thanks for asking your boss if they had another position available for me, but maybe it’s for the best that they didn’t. Could you imagine us living and working together?”

  “No.” She shook her head vehemently. “I couldn’t deal with your mess in the office and at home. Sorry.”

  “Hey, no fair! It was your t
urn to do the dishes last night, and they're still in the sink.”

  “That’s because you burned almost every pot we own trying to make that chili dish you read about online.” She pursed her lips. “I do not understand how you ruined chili. You know that’s a dish you can make in a crockpot.”

  “Hey, no need to show off just because you nearly got on Top Chef.”

  “As an assistant to one of the producers, not as one of the chefs. My cooking skills are no better than yours.” Lucy winked at me. “I just don’t lie to myself and pretend I’m a Michelin star chef.”

  “I don’t think I’m a Michelin star chef. I would like to think that I can whip up some excellent food, though.”

  “You can whip up an awesome grilled cheese.” Lucy’s face froze, and she turned to me looking excited. “What if you got a job in that grilled cheese restaurant on the Lower East Side?”

  “You have got to be joking, right?”

  “No, but wait a second. Look at this.” She held the newspaper up and grabbed the pink highlighter that was lying on the side of the couch. She circled an ad in the paper and brought it over to me. “This sounds promising.”

  “What does it say? High-paying job for English grad that loves doing poetry readings at small coffee shops?”

  “Hey, I enjoy doing poetry readings as well, and my degree is in filmmaking.”

  “At least you were smart enough to double major in economics. My dumb ass was too busy reading Shakespeare and Chaucer.”

  “An old English man would love you. Or maybe a priest.”

  “Why would a priest love me?”

  “The Canterbury Tales was one of your favorites, right? Wasn’t that about a pilgrimage?”

  “Lucy, sometimes I swear if you weren’t my best friend, I would kill you. Me reading a collection of stories written in Middle English doesn’t qualify me to work in a church.”

  “Before you kill me, check out this job. “Wanted: college grad with outstanding personality. High-paying job in sales. No experience necessary. Need people to start now.”

  “Hmm,” I grabbed the newspaper from her. “I am a college grad and I do have an outstanding personality.” I beamed my ten-thousand-dollar smile at her and shook my long brown hair with the too expensive honey-blonde highlights so I could feel it hitting my back. “I don’t really know what the job is.”

  “Sales. It says right there.”

  “But what am I selling?”

  “How am I supposed to know? Call them and ask.”

  “Yeah, I guess so.” I read the ad again, and then my eyes hit another ad a little bit below it. “Listen to this one: Do you want to earn high six-figures? Seeking professional for a unique job. Prefer MBA grad. Applicant would have to live in and wear a uniform. To apply, send resume and photograph to ...”

  “I saw that, but it seems a bit off. Why do you have to live in and what sort of uniform?”

  “Girl, who cares? High six-figures?” My brain was going into overdrive at the thought of making so much money. “I’d be a frigging maid for high six-figures. That means like over a hundred grand or something.”

  “Yeah, I would even say higher than that. A hundred grand would be low six-figures.” Lucy looked thoughtful. “It seems like it would be close to a million dollars.”

  “Whoa, could you imagine if I made a million dollars?” I chewed on my lower lip. “I could pay off all my debt and we could move to a two-bedroom apartment and then maybe I could take some time off to concentrate on my poetry book.”

  “Girl, you don’t have an MBA and you’re not a professional, plus who knows what the job is ...” Lucy made a face as she shook her head. “It sounds super shady. Plus, you would have to live there.”

  “You mean you wouldn’t like this apartment to yourself for a little bit?”

  “Not really.” She giggled. “Maybe if I had a boyfriend and was looking to get laid. But I have no boyfriend and haven’t been laid in ...” She paused. “Well, you know.”

  “I know, ugh.” I leaned back again and tried not to think of our awful dating situation. For two pretty girls in their early twenties, we had terrible luck with men. Neither one of us had had a serious relationship since we’d been in New York, and seeing as we’d both moved to New York right after high school, it was fair to say that neither one of us had ever had a serious relationship. “Do you think we’re the only two twenty-two-year-old virgins in New York City?”

  “Yes,” she answered immediately and emphatically. “And if you didn’t hear me the first time, yes. Even the Mormon girls on their year off come to the city and get laid.”

  “How is it even possible we don’t have boyfriends?” I threw the newspaper on the couch and stood up. Jolene glanced up at me as if to say, Uh oh, here we go again. “We’re both pretty. I mean, you’re gorgeous, I’m pretty, and we both have awesome personalities. What’s going on here?”

  “Maybe it has to do with the fact that we were literary and film nerds in college. And that we frequented poetry slams.” She shrugged. “We didn’t exactly meet many guys outside of the classroom.”

  “Yeah.” I looked over at her. “Any luck at work? Any hotties?”

  “Meh.” She shook her head. “No one I’m interested in losing my virginity to.”

  “Give it some time, you’ve only been there a week.”

  “Trust me, girl. I knew the first day.” She laughed. “There are no potentials. Plus, all I’m doing is getting coffees and lunch orders right now. I’m the lowest of the low. No one is looking at me.”

  “I refuse to believe that.” Lucy was one of the most gorgeous women I knew. With her long, naturally light blonde hair and dazzling green eyes, she had a face that was universally considered beautiful. Sometimes I was envious of the way she seemed to glow so naturally, while I had to use fake tan and bronzer to glow even a little. Even then, I sometimes ended up looking a little orange.

  “Savannah, you’re just as gorgeous as I am.” She beamed at me. “And we’re in the same boat, so it’s got nothing to do with our looks.”

  “When I get a job, we’re going out and painting the town red.” I could already picture us out at the clubs, looking sexy and making men pant as we walked by. Okay, maybe not pant. Dogs panted, and the last thing I wanted was to be with a man who was a dog. I’d already dated a few of them. “And we will go to high-end, exclusive clubs and restaurants.”

  “Oh, yeah?” She laughed. “So, I take it you’re getting a superb job then because I can’t even afford to go to Shake Shack more than once a month right now.”

  “Don’t worry. We have to have a positive mental attitude. This time next year, we will both be in awesome relationships, making a lot of money, and having the best sex of our lives.”

  “Well, it won’t take much for us to have the best sex of our lives, considering our current status.”

  “Lucy, you overthink things too much.”

  I headed to our compact kitchen which was right next to the living room. In fact, some people might say that the kitchen and the living room were one and the same, seeing as they were both in the same room. On one side of the room, there was a small oven, a small fridge, a sink, two cupboards, and a little island separating the kitchen from the living room, which held our couch, a small coffee table, and two bookshelves filled with books and DVDs. The coffee table was pushed against the wall and also held a fairly large TV. I opened the fridge and grabbed a chocolate pudding and then a spoon. I pulled the top of the pudding off and licked the top before dropping it into the trash can and heading back to the couch. Jolene looked at me hopefully as I dipped my spoon into the pudding and then gave me a dirty look as I shook my head. I loved my dog, but even I had to admit she was the greediest dog I’d ever met in my life.

  Lucy crossed her arms. “Well, are you going to email and call about those jobs? I’m looking forward to this life of riches and excitement that you’ve promised me.”

  “Fine.” I nodded. “Will you make so
me pasta for dinner?”

  “But the pots?” She glanced at me and sighed. “Fine, I'll wash the dishes and make the dinner. You find yourself a job.”

  “Thanks, girl.” I handed her my empty pudding container and spoon, and she rolled her eyes. I blew her a kiss, grabbed my laptop from the floor, and opened it up. I clicked on my email account and then grabbed the newspaper. I would email the six-figure job first and then I would call the other one. I much preferred to type than to talk. Even at poetry slams, I was always a little nervous speaking in public, and that was something I was good at. “Should I write a poem about why I’m good for the job?”

  “Savannah Carter, shut the front door and get the hell out of town, are you joking me right now? No way, Jose! Do not write a poem for a job you’re inquiring about!”

  “Okay, okay!” I laughed, knowing that while I was smart, I still lacked what my mother called common sense and street smarts. Sometimes, I had such harebrained ideas that even I wondered what I was thinking. I stared at the ad again for the high six-figures job.

  Do you want to earn high six-figures? Seeking professional for a unique job. Prefer MBA grad. Applicant would have to live in and wear a uniform. To apply, send resume and photograph to thewade@wadehart.com.

  Hmmm, I scratched a sudden itch on my back as I read the ad again. Why did they want a photograph? And what kind of job required a uniform? As much as I was interested in making a lot of money, I didn’t want to do anything illegal or crazy. Well, not too crazy. I wouldn’t dress up as a dominatrix and whip a man. Or would I? Would it really be that bad?