My phone buzzed. “Ms. Anna Cook is here to see you.”
“Okay, I’ll be right out.”
“I already sent her your direction,” Zelda said and then hung up.
I didn’t want to be alone in my office with Anna, especially after our last encounter on the trampoline. Anna had a way of getting what she wanted, and if she wanted me, I doubted I’d be able to resist.
I threw open my door in an effort to catch her in the sitting area outside my office, but instead, I was face to face with Anna. Her aqua blue eyes dazzled as she smiled at me, and I couldn’t help smiling back.
“Well, hello there, stranger,” she said and stuck her hand out to shake mine. “I’m Anna Cook, your new personal assistant.”
“Hi Anna, it’s nice to see you again.”
“Thank you for giving me this opportunity. I really appreciate it, and I won’t let you down.”
“Okay, great. I’m glad I could help.”
“I’m going to be applying to college soon, and I’d like to get some business experience under my belt.”
“Ah, okay, that makes sense. Do you know what you’ll be majoring in?”
“Right now, I like the idea of getting an MBA, but who knows, maybe I’ll really hate it here and decide against the whole college thing.” She laughed. Her laugh was soft, and yet it radiated through my body. Her head tilted up slightly, and I took a quick glance at how her silk pink blouse fit her body like perfection. I only looked for a moment before her eyes caught me, and I quickly looked away.
“That sounds like a good plan,” I mumbled. “Okay, well you can sit at this desk here, and I’ll have Zelda show you around the office. She’s the secretary for the floor and does most of the office work, but I’ll have some specific projects I’ll need you to do. Are you familiar with Microsoft Office?”
“Yes.”
“This is how you reach me, and then this button calls Zelda,” I pressed the button to ring Zelda even though she was only on the other side of the hallway. “Zelda, can you take Anna around the office and give her a quick tour?”
“No, sorry, I’m helping Kevin with a project right now.”
“Oh, okay. I can do it,” I said reluctantly. “I’ll just give you a quick run through for now.”
“Sounds good,” Anna said. “Can I leave my bag here?”
She had a small pink bag in her hand, much smaller than the bags of other women who came into the office. All the other women carried huge satchels that seemed to have everything in them from tennis shoes to curling irons.
“Yes, it should be safe under your desk.”
I stepped toward the middle of the hallway to give Anna some room to put her bag down. I wasn’t at all prepared for the jolt of excitement that shot through my body as she leaned over and her ass pressed toward me. Even fully clothed, I could still see the perfection of her body and instantly longed to have my hands wrapped around her and grabbing that incredible ass of hers.
As she stood back up, I quickly looked away and then started walking down the hallway for her to catch up with me. I was going to have to stay a step ahead just to ensure I could focus and wouldn’t be distracted watching the sway of her hips as she walked.
“So, tell me a little more about what you’ll be needing from me? Am I your secretary or assistant or what will you call me?” Anna asked as we approached the small meeting room at the west end of the floor.
“I consider you my assistant, but if you prefer to be called something else, I’m open.”
“Hmm, I’m fine with assistant,” she said as she smiled, and her eyes moved down my body and quickly away.
“This is our small conference room. I meet with Kevin and some of our other staff in here. Sometimes we meet in the big conference room even when there aren’t many of us, though.”
“Okay, this is a nice table,” she said and pressed her full body weight on it.
I couldn’t help it, my body got hard as she leaned slightly over the table. She could have innocently been commenting on the table, but all I could think about was how delightful her body would look bent over that wood table as I took her from behind.
We quickly moved out of that room and toured the rest of the offices and break room on that side of the floor. I introduced her to the other employees that worked with us and made sure I stayed at least one step ahead of her to prevent my bodily reactions to her ass.
“Kevin, this is Anna, my new assistant,” I said as I opened the door to his office and found him sitting at his desk with glasses on.
Kevin didn’t even wear glasses, but he had them on, and his hair was all messed up. He barely looked up at us and waved while mumbling something and then putting his head back down to work.
“It’s nice to meet you,” Anna said as she strolled right into his office and put her hand out to shake his.”
Anna had done something similar with each of the people I’d introduced her to, but as she approached Kevin, I saw panic wash over his face. His eyes latched onto her breasts, and he stared at her blankly as she held her hand out. Finally, he shook her hand and then went back to work without saying another word.
“Sorry, he’s not all that friendly,” I said as Anna came out of the room, and I shrugged my shoulder at Kevin. He clearly had been trying to avoid having to talk with Anna, and it was really funny to watch.
As we approached the final room on the far end of the floor, I almost didn’t take her in there. I knew she was going to love the conference room just as much as I did. The long wooden table was amazing, and something to admire. “That’s the large conference room, nothing too exciting in there,” I said as I opened the door and then tried to quickly close it.
“Oh, my gosh that table is amazing,” Anna said as she pushed past me and touched the table. “Hmmm, this wood, it’s so smooth. Have you ever felt this wood?”
“Yeah, it’s really nice. I love it,” I said. I stood in the doorway and did my best not to look at Anna as she admired the wood, but it was utterly impossible. She leaned over the table and let her hands glide outward and then back toward her as they caressed the shiny, hard table. She was letting out soft moans of delight as her fingers moved down the table, and I could hardly stand it another second.
My primal instincts took over, and I took a few steps toward Anna, leaned next to her and let my hands glide up and back on the table. “Yeah, it’s amazing wood.”
“It’s so smooth. I love that feeling under my fingers, don’t you?” she said as she turned around and we were face to face.
The conference room door had closed behind me, and every part of my body wanted to throw Anna onto the table and just take her right then and there. That was what she wanted. That was why she had asked to be my assistant. I could give her exactly what she wanted at that moment even though that was a bad idea. “Anna,” I said softly as I moved a few inches closer.
“Oh, I’m sorry,” she said and took a step back. “I’m going to be professional here. I understand you went out on a limb to hire me, and I appreciate it. I promise I’ll behave.”
I laughed out loud at the notion that Anna could behave herself. It wasn’t as if she had ever been a bad person; she was a wonderful girl, and her naughtiness was endearing and seemed more like part of her personality than something she was doing maliciously. “Well, since you brought it up,” I said as I smiled at her. “We do need to keep things professional while we are working together. And maybe no more wet trampoline time?”
“Oh, of course. I’ve actually moved out and into my own place, so I won’t even be around the house much anymore.”
“You moved out?”
“Yeah, I’ve got a place with a friend. You know, it’s time to move on with life.”
“That’s got to be exciting.”
“It is, and terrifying.” She laughed. “But there’s a lot of change going on all at once.”
“I hope you will like it here; I think now that we have some ground rules, things will
be great. I already know we get along,” I said as we made our way back toward my office. “And you know me and my family well, so I’d feel comfortable with you helping with Clyde if there was an emergency.”
“Oh, yes, please let me help with that cutie. I can’t even handle his smile. You know he’s going to be a lot of trouble when he gets older. Like when he becomes a teenager, girls are going to be after him like crazy.”
I couldn’t imagine Clyde as a teenager. My sweet little five—year—old was still so innocent and adorable. But the truth was, the next ten years were going to fly by, and he’d be a full—fledged teenager, and I wouldn’t be that cool dad anymore. Instead, I’d be the guy he makes fun of with his friends when I can’t figure out some new technology gadget. “That will be wild. I can’t even imagine it.”
“Okay, so what would you like me to take care of today? Do you have dry cleaning? Word processing? I’m ready, so give me what you’ve got.”
“Actually, this is going to sound like a totally horrible task, but I desperately need it done,” I said as I winced at the idea of asking her to do it.
“What is it? Anything, I’m game.”
“So, you know we are working with your father’s company, and I have this huge file that shows all their previous projects, the budgets, and the final costs. I really need them organized so we can analyze everything better.”
“I’m on it. Do I have an official email? Send it to me, and I’ll get started.”
“I’ll get an email going for you today, but for now, I can give you the disc with the files on it. Actually, there are ten disks total.”
“Wow, okay, so do you want me to make you a spreadsheet?”
“That would be great. The files came over as scanned copies of their bids. I’d love to have that information transferred into a working spreadsheet. That would be amazing.”
“Then consider it done,” Anna said as she walked with me into my office, and I grabbed her the stack of disks.
“It might take you a few weeks, and that’s fine. I’ll probably have other jobs I’ll need help with, and you can just work on this in the background.”
“I’ll get to it,” she said and quickly turned toward the door. “Thanks again for the job. I appreciate it.”
“You’re welcome.”
As she took a seat at her new desk, I felt relief that we had straightened things out between us. She was on the same page as me about keeping things professional. It was such a huge weight off my shoulders. I was still going to be thinking about her and that day on her trampoline, but I was pretty sure I could behave myself if she behaved herself.
***
Our first week together had gone off amazingly well. Anna was working diligently on the file I’d asked her to put together, and I was avoiding looking at her ass as much as humanly possible. I was extremely grateful that she was dressing modestly and hadn’t been flirting with me too much, but I still went home at night with dirty thoughts of Anna filling my mind.
As Friday rolled around, I had to meet with Anna’s father, Edward about a pretty delicate topic, and I knew he wasn’t going to be happy about it. Kevin and I had gone through the preliminary numbers, and we were going to have to let about a half dozen people go from Cook, Sparser, and Conner Buildings. They were redundant midlevel employees and really served no purpose that the higher-level managers couldn’t take care of.
In general, Kevin and I weren’t a fan of midlevel management anyways, and in this case, we also weren’t a fan of the million dollars in salary these employees were eating up from the bottom line. A million dollars a year, plus health benefits and retirement was a hell of a lot of money for a company to be throwing away when they were already sinking fast.
Logic was where Kevin and I came from, but Edward and his team weren’t going to see this logically at all. It was going to be emotional for them. Highly emotional, and we might not even get them to agree to our plan. Since our relationship was so new, I’d probably have to suck it up and not fire the employees for the time being, but I had to give Edward a try and see if he’d agree.
“You look nervous,” Anna said to me as I was pacing back and forth in my office.
“I’ve got to suggest to your father that he fire six people that work for his company. I’m not looking forward to it. Your father scares me.”
“He scares me too.”
“Oh, come on. I know you’ve got him wrapped around your little finger.”
Anna laughed because she knew it was the truth. Her father would do absolutely anything for her. He adored her. Perhaps he even adored her so much that he wouldn’t flip out if she were in the room when I had to tell him the news about the people we needed to let go?
“I do a little bit,” she said laughing.
“How would you like to sit in on our meeting?”
“With my father? No way!” she exclaimed. “I don’t want any part of that.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t know… it would be weird. I’ll help you with anything you need, but please don’t make me sit in on a meeting with him.” There was genuine fear in her voice as she begged me not to make her sit in on the meeting.
No matter how much I thought it might help me out, I couldn’t bring myself to ask it of her. “Okay, if you really don’t want to. That’s perfectly fine. It’s going to be an uncomfortable meeting anyways.”
“Yeah, it is.” She laughed and shook her head. “I’ve seen him angry like twice in my life. I’m not about to purposely put myself in that situation again.”
“I got it. Well, how about you head out early tonight then? I’m going to meet with Edward, and then I’ll be done here.”
“Thanks. I am going out with my friends later, it would be nice to take a shower and freshen up first,” she said as she looked at her computer and then back toward me. “But I should stay the whole day and work on the spreadsheet. It took me awhile to figure it all out, and I’m just getting going.”
I’d walked past her desk a few times throughout the week and seen her working on the spreadsheet. I had zero doubts that she’d be able to finish it in a timely manner. Taking off a few hours early on a Friday night wasn’t going to be a very big deal. “Go ahead and take off for the night. You did great this week. I’ll see you next week,” I said firmly.
“Really?” Anna said as she started to get excited. “Are you sure?”
“Yep, I’m sure. It might be best if you got going now before your father arrived.”
“Okay, I’m going then. Call me if you need anything, and I’ll come back. Thank you so much for letting me off, though. I’m so tired. You don’t know how hard it is to wake up at seven o’clock every…” she trailed off and then giggled a little. “Well, I guess you do know. Okay, thank you. And have a good weekend.”
“You too.”
Anna grabbed her small purse and hurried to the elevator. She was clearly very excited to be taking off early. It was cute to see her nearly jumping up and down with excitement as she got on the elevator and made her way downstairs.
About twenty minutes later, Edward arrived to talk about the staffing issues. I’d asked Kevin to do the talk originally, but one of his children were sick, and his wife couldn’t get them to the doctor. So, I was left alone to have this difficult conversation. Deep down, I held out hope that everything would go smoothly, and Edward would understand where we were coming from. I secretly thought he might understand the financials of the situation and agree with me about letting these six people go.
“Edward, it’s so nice to see you,” I said with a huge fake smile as I leaned in to shake his hand.
“Man, I’ve got to thank you a million times over. This has been the best week of my life.” Edward pulled me toward him and hugged me. His big arms held onto me for at least three seconds, and I wasn’t sure what the hell was going on. The standoff guy I’d dealt with at the signing of the papers was totally gone, and instead, there was this uber-friendly man who I ha
dn’t seen in months. He reminded me of what Edward had been like before he knew the business I was in, and we were just friendly neighbors.
“Really?”
“Yes, I have a huge load of anxiety lifted because you guys are in on the company. Plus, my daughter who normally spends all my money is actually out of the house and thinking about her future. This has been one epic week.”
“That’s good to hear,” I said cautiously. “I really hope the news I have today doesn’t ruin your weekend, though.”
I’d never been the sort of businessman to beat around the bush. I couldn’t pretend like everything was fine when I knew Edward was going to be upset by the news I needed to discuss with him. Honesty was still the best way of doing business.
“Shit, don’t ruin my weekend.” Edward laughed as we sat down in my small office.
“Well, we could talk about it on Monday if you’d like.”
“No, let’s get it over with. Let me guess, we do need to get rid of some staff?”
“Did Anna talk to you?” I asked totally shocked at how blunt he was and the pure fact that he knew what needed to happen.
“No, I’ve been hearing it from my own HR department for a while. Who do you want to let go?”
I slid the list of names over to Edward and waited for a minute as he looked them over. He certainly didn’t seem happy about what had to happen, but he didn’t seem enraged either, and that was a huge relief.
“Hey guys, sorry I’m late,” Kevin said as he burst into the office. “How are things going?”
“Well, your man here wants to fire six of my best employees, but other than that we are fine.” Edward had a stern tone to his voice, and he wasn’t making much eye contact with either of us. The only good thing I could think of was that at least he wasn’t yelling at us.
“Sir, I know it will be difficult to let these people go, but we did crunch the numbers and even with a sizable severance package, you’ll still save tons. It’s necessary no matter how much is saved, but you will save their salary at the very least.”
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