by Karina Halle
“Now, I take it you two know each other,” Desiree says, looking back and forth between us with a gentle smile on her lips, obviously clueless. “So we don’t have to get into the introductions. But perhaps you should get me caught up.” She looks at me. “Kessler, Mike spoke very highly of you and insisted you were the best person to take over his job.”
Only because he’s a huge hockey fan, I think. But of course I wouldn’t dare tell them that.
“Considering our circumstances, we didn’t have a lot of time to figure this out,” she continues. “Of course we would take Mike’s word and recommendation but there’s a lot we need to work out, hence why this position is just for three months. Already I really appreciate the fact that you were able to pack up and move here on such an unbelievably short notice, especially when you have a son.”
“You have a son?” Nova squeaks, brows raised to the ceiling. It’s the first thing she’s said to me and I can’t blame her for looking so shocked. When we were having our affair, I was very adamant how against marriage and children I was.
Times, do they fucking change.
“I was happy for the opportunity,” I tell Desiree, ignoring Nova because I’m not about to open that can of worms right here. “And Hunter is very adaptable.”
Nova’s eyes go wider, as if the mention of his name made him real. She folds her arms and sits forward, eyes focused on the wall. She’s done acknowledging me.
“That’s excellent,” Desiree says. “But of course, you ended up leaving Kahuna Hotels in Palm Desert not too long after Nova did. You went to work with the Rockstar Collection, which, as you know, are our competitors. What prompted that change?”
I shrug, feeling a trickle of sweat at the back of my neck. “I wanted to challenge myself.”
Desiree goes on, prompting me to talk more about my role over there, what I did, what I wanted for myself. I answer her questions but I’m incredibly aware that Nova is sitting next to me this whole time, making my answers sound a bit stiff and formal.
I’m starting to wonder why she’s in this meeting at all when Desiree says, “Nova reported to Mike when he was here, so in this situation she’ll be doing the same to you, Kessler. I assume that won’t be a problem. It was like that back in Palm Desert, wasn’t it?”
“No,” Nova says quickly, her tone sharp and steady. “Kessler and I were equals.”
“Ah,” Desiree says, and I do the same inside my head.
Ah.
I think I know why Nova still hates me so much, and it might not have anything to do with our little tryst back in the day or me breaking it off because of my commitment issues.
I think I might have just stolen her potential job out from under her.
I turn my head and give Nova an apologetic smile, realizing that if I don’t try and smooth things out now and really empathize with her, the next three months might just be a living hell.
But she takes one look at my smile, then another look at the sweat on my forehead, and her eyes narrow into a look I know all too well.
The look that tells me I’m dead to her.
Okay. So it looks like the next three months are going to be a living hell after all.
It’s definitely fucking hot enough.
CHAPTER THREE
NOVA
“OKAY, we’re out of ear-shot now,” Kate says, looking over her shoulder as we hurry down the street. “Can you please tell me what the fuck is going on with you?”
I look behind us as well, as if I expect to see Kessler or Desiree, or, hell, Roger, following me. There’s so much going on right now in my head I’m not even sure what to process.
But no, it’s Kessler Fucking Rocha taking up the most space in my frontal cortex.
“I don’t even know where to begin,” I mutter as we take a right down the street toward Lucky Belly. “Do I tell you about how Roger slept with a hooker while we were in Vegas?”
She gasps and slaps me across the shoulder, her dark hair flying. “Shut. Up!”
“Suffice to say, we broke up. But then I find out that not only did my beloved boss quit on me, leaving me totally unmoored, but that I’m not getting his position.”
“Oh fuck nuts,” she swears. “I’m sorry, I totally thought you were going to get it.”
“Uh-huh. And there’s more fuck nuts to come. That tall, burly sweaty dude you saw in reception? He’s the guy who stole my promotion.”
“I knew he was too sweaty for his own good,” she says, squinting. “Though if he invited me to have a naked sweat session with him, I definitely wouldn’t turn him down. If you know what I mean.”
“I always know what you mean, Kate. And you might take that back in a few minutes…actually, no, it’s you, you never take anything back.”
“No takesies backsies,” she says with a nod, opening the door to the restaurant for me. “Whatever I give, the world is free to keep.”
“Right,” I say, stepping inside. As usual, there is a huge lineup for lunch. Originally I was just going to get George’s ramen to go and get something along with it, but I’m in no hurry to go back to the office. “We’re eating here now, by the way.”
Kate shrugs. Linda, the office manager, handles the phones while Kate is at lunch and Kate has no problems coming back late. She says Linda always takes two pieces of cake during any office birthday celebration and apparently Kate considers that to mean war.
“So is that all?” she asks as we’re seated at a booth.
“No.” I sigh noisily and rest my head down on the menu, closing my eyes. “That tall sweaty burly man…” I pause. “Is…”
“What?”
“My…”
“Yes?”
“Ex-boyfriend.”
“What?!” she screeches.
I sit right up. “Calm down.”
She frowns at me. “I’ll calm down when you remove that noodle from your forehead.”
I swipe away at my forehead until a noodle dislodges and plops back on the table. I swipe it away onto the floor.
“He’s your ex-boyfriend?” she says, and her voice is still so high that only dogs can hear her now.
“He’s my ex…whatever we were,” I tell her, pressing my hands into the table as I lean forward to look her in the eye. “You have to promise me, you can’t tell a soul.”
Kate looks like I slapped her. “Why? Why would you do this to me? You know I can’t keep a secret. At all.”
“You’re going to have to try,” I plead. “It’s only going to make things worse if people know, especially since he’s my fucking boss now. Argh!”
“You need some fucking alcohol, stat,” she says, after watching me for a moment. She flags down the waitress and puts in an order for a mai tai for me and a beer for her.
“A mai tai? Really?” I ask.
“You love them and there’s no shame in it. Plus all that booze will only make things better. So, before we discuss the whole Roger and the hooker thing, you’re going to have to take me back further and explain…just how the hell Mr. Almond Roca was your boyfriend?”
I flinch. “Don’t act like he’s out of my league.”
She rolls her eyes. “Come on, hot stuff. No one is ever out of your league. Was he always that sweaty?”
“It was a dry heat in Palm Desert.”
“Okay, so you worked with him?”
I nod, take in a deep breath, and then launch into it.
“I was fresh out of an internship at a hotel in Seattle. I’d just gotten hired, I was green, I was eager, I was happy to move down to California for a million reasons. About a year after I started work as a marketing assistant, Kessler came on board. At first he was an assistant to the executives, then he moved to the marketing team. He pissed me off right from the get-go.”
“Because he’s so handsome and you hate that?”
I roll my eyes, though she’s kind of right. “He didn’t have any experience.” I practically spit the words out. “You know, my dad had a motel growing up, we lived th
ere. I grew up knowing how to run one. I went to school for it. I worked my ass off. Then he just shows up with no degree and no experience, looking to get into the hotel business because he’s bored or something and within no time he has the same job as me.”
The waitress stops by with our drinks and while Kate orders our food, I’m sucking back that mai tai through the metal straw, as if the booze will obliterate all memories of Kessler immediately. I barely take a breath to place my order for George’s soup to-go and a chicken karage sandwich for myself.
“That’s men for you,” Kate mutters. “We do all the work, they take all the credit.”
“Well that’s Kessler, especially. And really it’s all because he was in the NHL.”
If she had ears on the top of her head, they’d be perking up right now. “Really?”
“He doesn’t look all big and burly by accident. He’s straight from the Yukon, forged of ice and maple syrup, with legs like Douglas firs.”
“Are his legs the only thing in the shape of a Douglas fir?” she asks, before sipping coquettishly on her drink.
I raise my hand. “I don’t want to get into it.”
She grins at me. “You don’t have to. You’re blushing.”
“I do not blush.”
“You do and you are and okay so now we know that Kessler has a penis that belongs in an old growth forest. What else can you tell me? Was he good in bed?” Before I can even give her a dirty look, she goes on. “It could go either way, you know, it’s either he’s never had to work for pussy a day in life and he has this massive dick, so he doesn’t know shit about pleasing a woman. Or, because he’s so blessed in the looks department, both above and below, he’s found it his calling in life to make women come, much like Mozart was called to the piano.”
“You are the worst,” I tell her, feeling the rum start to swirl through me. I don’t make it a habit of drinking during my lunch hour, and now with Kessler here I really should be sharp and clear-headed, but fuck it.
“Guilty,” she says. “I just don’t get what being an NHL star has to do with the hotel business.”
“It doesn’t have anything to do with it, it just buys interest and favors from the CEOs and what not. Anyway, so Kessler and I pretty much worked together for a good few years.”
“When did he start impaling you with his tree trunk?”
“It took a while. I mean, I was only twenty-four.”
“Only twenty-four? That’s the prime hook-up stage of your life. If you’re not getting laid, you’re doing something wrong.”
“Says you. Anyway, I was getting laid and it was wrong.”
“Yes all that good sex with the sweaty big-dick beast must have been terrible.”
The thing that I don’t want to admit to Kate, because as much as I like her and trust her, she’s not exactly emotionally vulnerable, is that I used to be head over heels in love with Kessler.
I was from the moment we started working together.
I knew I shouldn’t have been so easily charmed by his looks and his effervescent humor and the way he made me feel, but I was swept off my feet. By the time he made a move on me at our Christmas office party, I would have done anything he said. I was completely his in heart and soul, and soon my body belonged to him. We had a passionate and secret affair for three months and during those three months I had fallen deeper in love with him than I had with anyone before, deeper than I had ever thought possible.
And then, one day, he wanted to call it off. Didn’t want us getting too serious. Said he didn’t want to complicate things at work, didn’t want a girlfriend at the moment, didn’t really believe in marriage, never wanted children. Just a whole mess of things thrown at me, as if they’d all make it easier to fall out of love with him.
I never told him how I felt and that’s my greatest possession. He never knew just what he did to me, the way he broke my heart. He never knew what he meant to me, and that’s something I hope he never finds out.
Which is why I can’t tell Kate. I am sure at some point our security guard, Bradah Ed, will know that Kessler and I were an item back in the day so I sure as hell won’t let her know the truth.
Kessler was the man I never quite got over.
My level-ten heartbreaker.
And he’s now my motherfucking boss.
“It’s going to be okay,” Kate says, reading whatever horrid expression I have on my face. She puts her hand on top of mine and then winces as she picks a noodle up. “Do they not wipe down these booths?”
“How is it going to be okay?” I ask her, as she flicks the noodle onto the floor where it lands with the other noodle. “I thought I escaped him. I moved all the way here, I transferred jobs. I’ve been happy for the last five years, moving toward something and suddenly I discover there is no something. I’ve had the wool over my eyes, Kate. And now, now he’s here and he’s taken what’s mine. I can’t let this happen.”
“I hate to be all adult and responsible because believe me, I’m usually down for inter-office espionage, but maybe you should have a talk with Desiree about it. Tell her what happened with you guys. Let her know you’re not comfortable.”
I sigh just as the waitress comes by with my sandwich and Kate’s soup. My appetite is suddenly gone so I order another mai tai. “I don’t want to do that. It’s not over yet. The job might still be mine and I’m not about to show any vulnerability, not now. I can tell Desiree isn’t one-hundred-percent sold on him. She’s still super pissed abut Mike. Hence why he’s here on a three-month probation.”
“Hmmm.” She slurps her soup noisily. “It’s a gamble to move all the way here for three months when you might not even get the job in the long run.”
“Especially since he has a son.”
She stops, dead slurp, noodle dangling from her mouth. Slowly she sucks it in. “I’m sorry, you said he has a son? Oh my god, it’s not yours is it?”
I frown. “What? No, Kate. No. That’s not how things work. I never knew he had a son until today.”
“So he’s married,” she says. “Bummer.”
“Not a bummer, and I don’t know if he’s married or not. The point is—”
“He’s a DILFOAH,” she says, poking a mushroom in her vegan soup with a chopstick. “Daddy I’d Like to Fuck Often and Hard. And Sweaty. With Your Tree Trunk Dick.” I can tell she’s trying to make the abbreviation in her head. “Mr. Almond Roca.”
I’m about to tell her to stop when something, maybe instinct, brings my attention to the front door of the restaurant.
Kessler has just walked in, and he’s scanning the restaurant like he’s the T-1000.
“Oh shit,” I swear under my breath.
The waitress took my menu away, so I have no way to hide unless I hold up my chicken sandwich.
Before I even know what I’m doing, I’m ducking down and sinking under the table.
“What are you doing?” Kate hisses, as I’m on my hands and knees underneath, the top of my head bumping against the bottom of the table.
“He’s here,” I whisper harshly up at her.
“Who?”
“Who do you think? Pretend I’m not here. God, it’s so fucking gross under here!”
“Damn, hot stuff, it’s like you’re acting out one of my fantasies right now,” Kate says.
“Are you talking to me or him?”
“You of course,” she says, and then I see a pair of male legs stop right beside our table.
“You’re the receptionist, right?” Kessler’s voice booms. He’s always had an obnoxiously sexy voice, that kind of gravelly low sex voice that ignites you in seconds flat.
Thank god I’m surrounded by used noodles and who knows what, so he doesn’t have that effect on me anymore. I focus on his shoes, shiny, expensive Italian ones and then his dark grey-blue tailored pants and I hate that even his style has improved over the years.
“That would be correct. And you’re Mr. Almond Roca,” Kate says, and I delight in how absolute
ly bored she sounds.
“Can’t say I haven’t heard that before.”
“It’s a popular candy around the holidays,” she says dryly.
“Yes. I know. It’s actually Portuguese.”
“Almond Roca is Portuguese?”
“No. My last name is.”
“Oh.”
“What’s your last name?”
Oh god. Really Kess? This is your small talk now?
She sighs and nearly kicks me under the table as she uncrosses her legs. “It’s Kim.”
“Kate Kim?”
“Yeah, it’s Korean.”
“Are you from Korea?”
“I’m from San Francisco,” she says with an edge to her voice.
“Well, so am I.”
“Oh no. Does that mean we have to be best friends now?”
“Uh, no…”
“You’re from the Yukon, anyway.”
“How did you know that?”
Long pause. I don’t even have to see their faces to know their expressions.
“HR file,” Kate says smoothly. “As receptionist, it’s my job to know everything. And I do mean everything.”
Kessler’s feet pivot in my direction. “Listen, I’m not interrupting anything am I? Seems like you’re not dining alone. Someone must really love mai tais.”
“Those are my mai tais.”
“And the beer?”
“Being a receptionist is stressful.”
“And you have both the soup and the sandwich?”
“I like to eat. Don’t food shame me.”
At that she crosses her legs and manages to kick me right in the jaw.
“Ahhhh,” I cry out, cupping my chin in pain.
Fucking shit, Kate and her killer feet.
“What the hell?” Kessler says and the next thing I know he’s bending down to look at me under the table. “Nova? Is that you? What are you doing under there?”
There’s only one way out of this. In a panic, I pretend to be looking for something “Ahhh, here it is,” I say, trying to blend it in with my cry of pain. I quickly pop up the other end of the table and get to my feet, holding a noodle.
“I was looking for this,” I say, smiling and waving the noodle at him. “Here you go, Kate.”