Game Face

by Abby Knox

He stood to leave but his assistant, Dorothea interrupted him.

  “Actually, you have a meeting in ten minutes.”

  “Oh, I do? With who?”

  His assistant smiled graciously. “Well, honey, I’m retiring. You’re interviewing applicants today.”

  Shit. “Oh. Well, how many?”

  Dorothea passed him a blue folder across the conference table. “Five. Here are the resumes.”

  “Well, Dorothea. I surely have no idea what yardstick to use to decide who to hire for this job. Maybe you could handle it?”

  “Sir? This person is going to be your personal assistant. You can’t expect me to decide. This person has to mesh with you, not me. With all due respect.”

  Finally, somebody who spoke plainly.

  “Got it. Well, I honestly don’t mesh with most people so this should be fun.”

  She smiled with even more graciousness. “You’ll be fine, dear.”

  Well, he was now wishing Dorothea would stay, because she seemed like the most genuinely nice person here.

  “What can I pay you to not retire,” he said.

  “Well, after everything that’s gone on in the last few weeks after the police arrested your predecessor… police interviews, all of it. It’s just too much for me, so it’s time to move on.”

  “I understand,” said Devin.

  “One other thing,” Dorothea added, holding up one index finger. “Tonight is the lighting of the town Christmas tree on the square. You need to be there to do the honorary ceremonial lighting.”

  “I ain’t gonna have time for that,” he said with a laugh-snort.

  “It’s one of those things your sister always had made sure was on Pete’s agenda. It’s good for WX Genetics to be seen doing these little community things.”

  Devin shook his head in resignation. “Sure, fine. But it ain’t even Thanksgiving yet! It won’t take long, will it?”

  “Well dear, you have lived here all your life, surely you’ve been to the annual lighting of the tree. There’s a cookie baking contest, a ornament making station. There’s a cider stand to raise funds for one thing or another. I believe this year it’s to help replace the planters along the creekside walking path downtown. It’s very pretty. And then, of course, the unveiling of the Tree of Stars.”

  “What’s that?” He was utterly confused.

  “It’s the tree they put up by Mason’s General Store, where you choose a star that represents a local family in need. People adopt the families to provide Christmas gifts to the children. Tonight is the biggest night for it, because this is when most of the stars get chosen. Wait too long, and you get stuck with a family that has five or more kids who need coats.”

  Some of the workers chuckled and exchanged glances.

  This look was something he understood. “Our mama never picked up any of those stars, because she was usually the one with five or six foster kids in need of new coats and not enough money from the state to cover it. But she managed, with or without the help of people who didn’t want to give it.”

  A more awkward silence he could not have fashioned if he’d suddenly dropped his drawers and did a strip tease on the conference table.

  “Fine,” he said. “I’ll go but I ain’t staying for no ornament making or whatever.”

  Devin ended the meeting and Dorothea showed him into his office.

  And that his where he sat and had been thinking about kicking his boss — his big sister — Wynn right in the corn hole.

  He was absolutely the most wrong person he could think of to sit in an office.

  Ranch hand interviewing was pretty easy. There was no “what are your strengths and weaknesses?” It was mostly, “Can you pick up a shovel? Are you afraid of a charging bull? Can you dodge a kick? Are you able to sign this release form? If you answered yes to all these questions, you’re hired.”

  Ten minutes into his colossal boredom, the first assistant applicant walked into his office. And this particular applicant changed Devin’s entire opinion about working in an office by 180 degrees.

  “Hi, I’m Claire Davids.” The most intense green pair of female eyes was staring expectantly at him. Hair the color of the night sky intoxicated him. Speaking of 180 degrees, that would match his temperature as he took in the sight of this applicant’s body, her curves hugged in a tailored green dress suit more lovely than the hills he gazed at every morning from the back of his horse.

  A moment later — he didn’t know how long — she cocked her head and asked if he was all right. Devin quickly shook the cobwebs out of his head and realized he’d been staring dumbly while she had extended her hand. “Yes. Sorry, you are my new assistant?”

  She smiled, even more warmly and genuinely at him than Dorothea had. “Well, I hope so. But we haven’t done the interview yet.”

  Shit, he did not want to do any other interviews. “You’re hired. Have a seat.” He gestured to the chair across from his desk. Dorothea swiveled around and peaked inside the office door, and shook her head and mouthed the word, “No.” She held up her hand with five fingers. “Five,” she mouthed.

  He got her meaning. He had to give all five applicants a fair shot. Hiring the first hottie who waltzed in probably wouldn’t sit well with Dorothea. Or Wynn. Or Cora. Or any of these other pale office-type people. Too bad because this woman was so freakin’ hired, he wished he had a time machine to go back and hire her before Wynn had decided on Devin’s job transfer.

  Well, he’d just have to do his best to make it look fair.

  Claire sat down across from him and placed her resume on his desk. She smiled shyly and crossed her legs, and Devin spotted black tights and tall black boots, which would look incredibly sexy on the back of his horse.

  She wore a sparkly red brooch in the shape of a Christmas present.

  “I like your pin,” he said. God, what an idiot he was. She could see right through his attempts to buy time until he thought of an intelligent interview question. She had to know he didn’t belong here.

  “Thank you,” she said. She smiled and looked down and touched it. “My good luck charm. It was my mom’s.”

  “She give that to you for good luck?”

  “I inherited it. She died.”

  Truly, he was stepping in all of the shit this morning, with every female.

  “Oh my god. I am so sorry.”

  She shook her head. “Thank you for saying so. I’m fine. Tell me about the job.”

  But she was so obviously not fine. That much, Devin could tell. He was the last person to be considered an expert on women but she was most definitely the opposite of fine.

  “My mom died when I was 8,” he said. “I never knew my dad. I grew up a foster kid on a farm not far from here. I found out when I was a teenager that my dad died in prison.”

  She bit her lip. She was definitely holding more back. “My dad and mom both died. Together. A drunk driver hit them. They were on their way home from their 25th anniversary trip to the coast. At least my mom got to see the ocean before she died. That’s all she ever wanted besides us kids.”

  Devin’s heart went out to her. Well, here was somebody, like him, who talked about stuff even if it made other people feel uncomfortable.

  But she did not make him uncomfortable in the least.

  He felt nothing but a sweet affection for this open book of a female in the pretty green suit. She was sweet and honest. And drop dead beautiful.

  Had he not just said in the meeting earlier this morning that he didn’t mesh well with most people? Well all of a sudden, he felt that if there was such a thing as mesh made out of humans, she and he would be nicely meshed. He let his slightly dumber part of his brain wander into the thought of how gross that could be, if taken literally, and decided not to speak it out loud.

  He replied, “I am so sorry for your loss.”

  “Thank you. And yours too.”

  “Thanks.”

  And then, they just sat there, sharing a little quiet moment toge
ther that two strangers share when they realize they completely understand each other.

  Of course, that moment went on for too long, and eventually Devin had to go and ruin it by being a caveman. She must have caught his gaze wandering down to her chest, because she bit her lip again and looked down into her lap. Devin thought for a moment she was starting to blush. She self consciously brushed her har aside and he caught side of some sparkly red studs in her ears. He caught a whiff of her hair when she did that. She smelled really, really good.

  Then reality came crashing back down. “Sorry, I smell like bullshit,” he said.

  She laughed. “What?”

  “I mean I came here straight from the barns. I didn’t have time to wash up. So I smell like actual bullshit. Not figuratively. But hey, I might also smell like figurative bullshit, what do I know?”

  She laughed again, a sound that gave him an intense desire to to keep making her laugh. Instead he chose to attempt a professional question. “So, tell me why you want to come work for a redneck like me.”

  But instead of laughing, she seemed to tense up. Uh-oh, he thought. Were her people rednecks?

  “After everything that happened, I quit college to come home to take care of my siblings… and now I have to get a job. Im sure you know how hard it is to raise children.”

  She had assumed he had a family because he was a few years older than she was.

  “Oh no. I don’t have any kids. I’m single. Never married. Women hate me.”

  He had done it again somehow accidentally broken the tension and made her laugh again. “I’m sure that’s not true, you're adorable.” Then she blushed deeply and covered her mouth. “Oh god I should not have said that. That was totally unprofessional.”

  He smiled and leaned across the desk and lowered his voice conspiritorially. “I like unprofessional. And I’ll tell you another thing: I can’t stand this office job. My sister transferred me here to keep the investors calm and not bail out on us. But you know what? Sitting here talking to you is the most comfortable I’ve felt since I started this new job.”

  “Oh really?” she asked. “How long have you been working in this office?”

  He checked his wrist, which did not have a watch on it. “About 25 minutes,” he said. “When can you start?”

  Just then Dorothea knocked on his door and stepped in. “We have another candidate who has just arrived.”

  Devin waved her off and kept his eyes on Claire. “Tell her we’ve already filled the position.”

  Dorothea cleared her throat pointedly. “It’s a man, sir.”

  “OK, then tell him to go home.”

  “Sir.”

  Devin grunted. He gestured toward Dorothea and said to Claire, “she’s my handler, I gotta do what she says or Wynn will have my hide. Wynn, that’s my sister. She owns all of this. Started it herself. She gave me a job about ten years ago when nobody would hire me on account of I had just gotten out of rehab.”

  Claire’s eyes widened. He couldn’t tell if it was shock or judgment. She was certainly processing something about him.

  He stood and shook her hand again ash she prepared to leave. “I’ll be calling you.”

  She smiled, sincere but with less confidence in herself than he wished for her. “I’ll understand if you don’t. As you can tell by my by resume I’m not experienced in much of anything except writing term papers. But if you hire me, I will work hard to do ... whatever you need.”

  She hurried to leave, a little too quickly. But he had managed to shake her hand again. It was warm and soft and fit nicely in both of his. When she left, he instinctively sniffed his hand and smelled her lotion. Like he was a damn dog or something. She left the scent of fruity and spicy that reminded him of summer out on the range.

  After Claire left, Dorothea poked her head in. “One down, four to go!” she sang.

  Shit. It was going to be a long day.

  Also by Abby Knox

  Take Me Home

  Small Town Bachelor Romance, book one

  Some Basic Witch

  An excerpt from Take Me Home

  Book one of the Small Town Bachelor Romance series … released October 2017

  A bottle of Budweiser was opened and waiting for Jackson Clay before he hit his usual barstool. Carrie was behind the bar pouring drafts for a gaggle of community college guys who were gathered at the other end of the bar. Carrie was probably the best-looking woman in Middleburg at the moment. Her kinky red hair and small frame made her cute as a button, but she was well spoken for. Her husband and co-owner of the bar, Scotty, was serving a tour in Afghanistan at the moment.

  “How you doing tonight, hon?” she asked.

  He nodded and placed his hat on the bar next to his beer. “Very well, and how are you and the kids doing? How’s Scotty?”

  Carrie smiled and launched into a tale of weekly FaceTime chats with her long-distance husband, the boys being troopers at school by keeping their grades up and helping with chores at home, while her sister watched them so she could manage the bar. She seemed relieved to talk about it. Most likely she spent her nights listening to the woes of the local farmers, complaining about banks, complaining about massive hog feed lot factory farms encroaching on all sides, or watching community college students lurking around for somebody to catch their eye and distract them from their so-called boring lives.

  The way Jack saw things, life was only boring if you make it boring. Life could be just as full in rural Iowa as in New York City. And he supposed a person could be as bored, lonely and unfulfilled in New York City as here. It’s all a state of mind, the way he figured. A person accusing a place of being boring had only one place to look to solve that problem: inside himself.

  Jack had never desired to go to the big city. He’d lived in Iowa all his life, and though he might like to climb to the top of the Eiffel Tower one day to kiss his wife, he’d be thrilled to have his little farm to come home to, to his house, his bed, his truck, his bathrobe, his sheets, his wide open pastures, his animals, his dog and his woods. Because it was his, there was always something to do. A kid wants to complain about working two jobs and putting himself through community college? Then they should have chosen a different path. He never understood complainers and he never would.

  Besides, if anybody earned the right to complain, it was Carrie. She ran a business, helmed the PTA and ran two young boys ragged between school and wrestling practices, all with the specter of a foreign war and an absent husband looming over her head. But did she complain? No. Not ever. Scotty had himself a good woman.

  “Anyway, enough about me. What you up to tonight, young man?”

  It was sweet of her to say, but he was older than her by about ten years, most likely. Scotty and Carrie had married right out of high school and had babies almost immediately, as far as he could tell in the short time he’d been in Middleburg.

  “Oh, just shooting up the damn coyotes. Birthing baby goats. Fixing fences, digging wells, bush-hogging, baling, you name it, I do it.”

  “Sounds like you got it all working like a well-oiled machine.” She grinned, wiping the bar down with her microfiber towel. It was one of those home party things, for which she was also a distributor and had sold him a linen closet full of fancy bath sheets when he’d let the cat out of the bag about his luxury master bath project.

  “Yes, ma’am, it’s going pretty well… I got a contract with a small organic operation out of Sioux Falls to buy my goat’s milk, so that’s a start.”

  “Jack, that’s awesome. You know, you’re gonna need some extra hands around there pretty soon.”

  He shrugged, though he knew she was right.

  “Don’t go hiring one of these local dumbasses, please,” she said, nodding at the group of young beer-swillers from the college.

  “Shit, Carrie, those boys make twice as much money at a commercial farm than what I could afford to pay them.”

  “Well, I mean a pair of feminine hands. On a person who alre
ady knows how to do what needs to be done around your place. Maybe somebody from here, looking for work. And maybe needs a friend at the same time.”

  Jack was utterly confused at Carrie’s face, which seemed to be leading him in a specific direction with a wry smile and a wink.

  “That is very specific and highly unlikely to find in Middleburg. I was thinking about taking an ad out in the Des Moines Register.”

  She playfully whipped at him with the towel. “I’m talking about that one, right over here. Anybody getting crowded by Chet Easley definitely is gonna need a friend tonight.” She nodded to the far corner of the room.

  At the name of Chet Easley, Jack swiveled around in his chair and stood up. There he was. The slimy son of a bitch was sliding into a booth next to a woman. Whoever it was, he couldn’t see, but it was obvious they were not together, because Chet was using his singular come-on posture: leaning way in and blocking the woman from sight. Every female within four counties knew to stay away from Chet. He may have money, but it didn’t make him a nice guy.

  He left his beer at the bar and approached. The words came out before he could stop himself. “Ma’am, is this gentleman bothering you?”

  Chet had that usual smart-ass, shit-head grin. But Jack hardly noticed because as soon as he saw the female who Chet was bothering, everything else in the room became echoes and blurs.

  First, it was her hair. Thick, strawberry curls poured down past her shoulders, ending in pinkish tips. Her face was angelic, but also like a perfect sculpture. Her skin glowed even though she wore no makeup. Her piercing eyes were deep brown and her lashes long. Her cheekbones and jawline stood out as if she could use a couple of home-cooked chicken dinners, but her cheeks flushed as she stared back at Jack. Her outfit was nothing to write home about: a Hawkeye zipped hoodie and sweatpants. Probably a college student. Probably had a boyfriend back at school, Jack told his hardening manhood. But he couldn’t keep himself from noticing the zipper of her hoodie was open just enough to reveal a slight bit of cleavage. Not even cleavage. A shadow of cleavage. The letters “I-O-W-A” were stretched across her chest, which was blessed. There was definitely something magnificent to behold under those frumpy clothes, and that woman was making those frumpy clothes look downright sexy.