The 'cubes', or cubicles, were Shane's domain. There wasn't an ounce of office gossip he didn't know about first, which both amused and terrified Natalie. So far she'd done a pretty good job of hiding her unethical affair with one of Brighton Media's biggest clients. Shane liked to gossip, but never with malicious intent. She never once had the suspicion that he knew about what she was really doing on her lunch breaks. In fact she suspected that he believed she wasn't capable of doing anything that might be considered indiscreet.
"A shakeup? Restructuring? Chapter eleven? What?" she asked, leaning forward into the conversation in just as conspiratorially a fashion as her young assistant.
"Nothing scandalous. I think." He paused and looked as though he was questioning even himself. "The Secretary of Evil was rather vague about it."
Natalie glanced behind Shane to the interior windows of her office to make sure the woman herself - Jenifer, Graham Martin's secretary, and indeed an onerous woman - or anyone else with ears wasn't passing by the office to hear Shane's less than kind, if not completely untrue, words.
"So when is the meeting?"
"Little less than an hour from now so you should have time to finish your lunch."
Natalie smiled and double-checked through her calendar to see the newly scheduled meeting for herself. When she looked back at Shane a moment he was still staring at her and the half-eaten salad sitting in front of her on the desk. "Thank you for the coffee, by the way."
"You're welcome. You've been eating out a lot lately. I haven't seen you eating out of a recycled birthday or Christmas bag for at least a week."
Natalie smiled politely and tried not to let her mind wander to recent memories of straddling James in the back seat of his car. "There's been so much prep work to do for next week that I've sort of been forgetting to pack a lunch. Or buy groceries, now that I think about it." She had been ordering a lot of takeout for dinner lately, now that she really thought about it.
"Well I don't know where you get your salad from but you should keep going. You're glowing!"
She chuckled and felt her cheeks flush with heat. She had to change the subject. "Anything else added to the schedule last minute?"
"Not really. I'll let you know if I hear anything about this supposed shakeup!" And with a final swing of his hair Shane was out of her office and back in his own cubicle, gaily chatting away with Hunter from Human Resources.
A ping from Natalie's phone caught her attention, and when she picked up the device she saw a few messages from Quinn.
'Quinn: Want to get lunch?'
'Quinn: Why do you always look so refreshed after lunch?'
'Quinn: You're not going to Kate Sommerville without me, are you?'
'Quinn: Your dress is inside out.'
Natalie blanched at the newest text and immediately stood to look for the seams of her shift dress. The navy blue color made it difficult to see even underneath the bright incandescent lighting. She made a beeline for the nearest restroom and locked herself in a toilet stall, removing the dress and flipping it outside-in before shimmying back into the garment. When she opened the stall door Quinn was waiting for her, leaning against a sink as though she were a model posing in Vogue magazine. No one but Quinn could show up to work in a black leather tee shirt and rose print silk capris and still look professional.
"You must have had a fun lunch," she quipped.
"I left my apartment in such a hurry this morning I must have temporarily forgotten how to dress." She couldn't knowingly lie and look her friend in the face so she instead busied herself with washing and drying her hands.
"That. Or your lunch date failed to notice you'd put your dress back on inside-out." Quinn's smile was devilish and playful, two qualities Natalie had grown to love about her friend. If not for Quinn introducing Natalie to the world of secret clubs where gentlemen bid on candidates she would have never met James. And she was more than a little happy that Quinn and James had never previously crossed paths. "How is James by the way?"
Natalie's eyes widened and she immediately checked around in the adjacent stalls to make sure no one was listening in on their conversation. "Quinn!"
"What? There are literally millions of men named James. Honestly Natalie don't be so paranoid. I'm the only one who knows what's going on with you two."
Natalie thought of Shane and his impressive ability to know everything, most of it seemingly before it ever even happened. "He's fine," she relented once she was positive they were the only two present.
"Just fine?"
"Well, okay that part is always amazing. But otherwise, fine. Although we're both getting a bit tired of the cloak and dagger routine."
"So just quit your job already." Quinn swatted her hand through the air as though the concept of quitting a job to spend more time being a professional girlfriend was totally natural. "There are other jobs out there. Jobs where you don't have to hide who you're sleeping with."
"Jobs where I could work directly for the man I'm sleeping with..." Natalie trailed off, remembering James' ridiculous offer to have her come work for him. As if that was an idea she'd even so much as entertain the notion of.
She checked her cell phone for the time and excused herself from Quinn, promising details over drinks after work. One stop by her office to pick up a pen and notepad and she was on her way to the surprise 'restructuring' meeting.
"That was what the last minute meeting was for? New hires?" Quinn scoffed at the boring details of the hour long meeting that included video conferences with two employees from the San Francisco office who would be joining the Los Angeles office the following week.
Natalie stirred the olive around her half-empty martini glass. "Technically they're transfers. They were a bit overstaffed up there and since we've had so many new clients come in they decided to bring in the help internally instead of hiring from the outside."
"Anyone we know?" Quinn asked before sipping from her standard order: a glass of champagne.
"Ivy Whitcomb, a junior VP like me. And Joe Gallo, a project manager I think. Not a junior VP but apparently has a great rapport with all of his accounts."
"Joe Gallo?" Quinn asked, her eyebrows raised ever so slightly. "I met him at last year's company event."
"Oh yeah? What's he like?" Natalie casually asked.
Quinn licked her lips and smiled at some unspoken thought or memory. "Like a tree any woman would climb in a heartbeat."
Natalie nearly spit out her drink. "Does that mean what I think it means?"
Quinn side-eyed her. "You know, for someone who spends her lunch hours getting nooners you are kind of-" Quinn's hand swished in the air as though she were trying to churn the word she was looking for into existence. "Virginal," she settled.
Natalie shrugged. "At least I'm having nooners," she said with a wink.
By the time Natalie made it home from the bar the sky was dark and the Santa Anas were blowing a chilly air across her cheeks. She set her purse and phone down by the console at the front door and slipped her shoes off, immediately relishing the feel of plush carpeting beneath her tired feet and toes.
One glance inside the refrigerator reminded her she hadn't gone to the grocery store in... She couldn’t even remember how long. All she had were eggs, coffee creamer and a takeout container she could not remember the contents of.
'What I'd love is for you to come over to my place.'
Natalie sighed and glanced up at the time display on the microwave. It wasn't that late. She was starving. And he'd been taking up space in the back of her mind since leaving his car that afternoon.
We'll make it work.
Ignoring her aching feet, she slipped back into her shoes, picked up her phone and her purse, and walked out the door.
Thank you for reading SINFUL REUNION.
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Titles By Crystal Cierlak
THE BIDDEN SERIES
Candidate Four
Sinful Reunion
Secret Desires
THE ROMANCE OF NICK AND LAYLA (SERIES)
Walk Away
Sorry
White Flag
Damaged
Undone
Heartlines (coming soon)
ZOE THANATOS (SERIES)
Zoe Thanatos
Hydra Luna: A Zoe Thanatos Short Story
SPECIAL THANKS
Thank you again to Ann Hunter, whose enthusiasm for the characters of Natalie Harlow and James Fitzgerald has helped tell their stories. Thank you to those of you who read and enjoyed CANDIDATE FOUR, and especially to those of you who wrote reviews (which really touched my heart).
Sinful Reunion (Book Two of the Bidden Series) Page 10