Working Desires: A Dirty Office Romance Boxset

by Hazel Keys

  Isabella gently picked up her phone, swiping her thumb across the screen so that she could bring up her dial pad. She pressed the one key, smiling softly as Amun’s name and phone number immediately popped up. She had set him as her first speed dial three months after they had started going out. They talked so much that it had just been easier to have his number ready. She sent him a quick message telling him exactly what Bella had told her to, biting her bottom lip as she set her phone back down on the table.

  “Hey, do you hear something?” Bella asked suddenly, her ear tilting toward the window.

  “What should I be hearing?” Isabella asked, looking over at her friend curiously.

  “It sounds like a guitar,” Bella said slowly, pulling her own cell phone out of her pocket and checking to make sure it wasn’t her ringtone. “It’s not my phone. Is it yours?”

  Isabella glanced over at where her phone still sat with a dark screen on the table, her head shaking slowly from side to side. “It doesn’t seem to be coming from mine.”

  Bella rose up slowly from where she had been sitting and walked over to the window, pulling it open. Immediately, the sound of a guitar being strummed could be heard emanating from the street in front of her house. Isabella looked incredulously over at Bella as she walked to the window beside her friend, sticking her head out so she could glance down towards the sidewalk below. She was only on the second floor, so she could clearly make out Amun’s facial features as he stood faced towards her building with a guitar strapped to the front of his body.

  She thought she could faintly recognize the melody that he was idly strumming on his instrument as he looked up at her, their eyes meeting right as he began to sing to her. Now, one thing that Isabella had come to know in the time that she knew Amun was that contrary to what she might have assumed, he had a great voice. It was somewhere right there between a baritone and a tenor, with a rich timbre that he seemed able to put into his voice on command. It was enough to make her heart beat quickly in her chest, even before she began to hear the words in Spanish that began to slip from between his lips.

  He spoke of regret for having hurt her, going into great detail about the fact that he hadn’t meant to make her feel bad about his words. She leaned against the windowsill, listening intently to his words with a small smile tugging at the corner of his lips. Despite how charismatic he was trying to sound with his singing, he obviously was making it up on the fly. Despite that fact, he was checking off all of the items on the list of reasons she had been mad at him, and she found herself struck with the desire to rush down to go talk to him.

  She felt Bella’s hand move to rest on her shoulder, pulling her head back to look at her friend. There was a restrained look on Bella’s face as if she was trying really hard not to laugh. It was kind of cheesy, even for Amun, but Isabella couldn’t help but think that it was also extremely romantic. She nodded silently and moved past her friend, pulling open the door to her apartment and heading towards the stairs. Her heart was racing as she made her way down, her bare feet tapping against each step on the way down.

  She pulled open the front door to her apartment complex, crossing her arms playfully in front of her chest as she stood on the top step. Her short jeans and white tank top were about as passive of dress as she could get, not exactly having planned to be confronted by him so soon. A bashful smile spread across her lips as she looked at him, slowly making her way down the steps towards him. “You know, for any other person this would be really embarrassing to have happened to them,” she said quietly, not looking him in the eye.

  “I do. However, I knew that you would appreciate it,” he said, stopping his fingers and pressing his hand gently against the strings of his guitar to stop them from vibrating. “I didn’t think that a normal apology would be good enough. I guess I said something that made you feel really bad, even though it was never my intention. It was the one secret that I thought would mean the most to you. I was rooting for you to win the award and said that I would agree if you won. I didn’t think that was so insulting, but if it was, then I really am sorry, baby.”

  “I’m sorry too. I think I might have overreacted the other day. I was just so worried about you getting into another bad mood over promotions that when you told me what happened I didn’t know how to take it. I guess I felt like you only did it because you thought I would be angry about you winning it, and you know I would never be angry about your success,” she said softly, her pale green eyes finally managing to look back at his face.

  “I’m sorry if it didn’t seem like I was fully supportive of you. I am genuinely happy that you won it, and I do genuinely believe that you deserved it. I hope you can believe me about that,” he murmured, moving his guitar behind him so that he could spread his arms in her direction.

  She could almost feel her body moving without thinking, finding herself soon enveloped in his arms. It was gratifying, her eyes closing as her own arms moved slowly to encircle him as well. Her hands rested on his back, pressing up against his guitar lightly as she moved onto her tip-toes so that she could kiss him on the lips. His lips felt soft and familiar, his arms holding her in the kind of loving embrace that she had grown used to. She let her head rest on his chest, relief flooding through her as she realized that their argument might finally be over.

  “I’ve missed you,” she whispered, gazing up at him with tears welling in her eyes.

  “I’ve missed you too. Not being able to talk to you was probably one of the worst things I have ever experienced,” he said gently, looking her in the eyes. “We need to work on our communication. I don’t want us having this kind of misunderstanding again.”

  “Neither do I. However, I don’t think that we have to worry about something like that anytime soon. I mean, at least until Bella and Tristan actually decide if they are going to accept that promotion or not,” she said, looking up at Amun hesitantly as she spoke.

  “Yeah, but we can deal with that when it comes. We’ll probably be so happy for them that we won’t even think twice about it,” Amun replied sagely, looking behind him.

  Isabella took the time to finally glance past her boyfriend, realizing for the first time that Tristan was standing behind him, leaning against the front tire of his vehicle with his arms folded in front of his chest. There was a wide grin on his face, and he seemed to be gazing past her at someone who was standing behind her. She glanced over her shoulder to find that Bella was standing there, quickly lowering her hand that had been flashing Tristan a thumbs up only a moment before. Isabella narrowed her eyes then, her glance returning to her boyfriend and the sheepish smile that was spread across his face.

  “Are you both in on this?” she asked, stepping back from Amun and moving up one of the front stairs of her apartment. “Did you both plan together to help Amun make up with me?”

  “I was just helping clear up a misunderstanding that was ruining what, to my knowledge, was a really good couple’s chances of continuing their relationship. You two get along so well, I couldn’t let you keep being angry with each other,” Tristan said suavely, running a hand through his dreadlocks.

  “Tristan told me what he was planning last night when we got home from work, and I admit that I thought that it was a good idea. You can be a little stubborn at times,” Bella said apologetically, looking at her friend solemnly.

  Isabella blushed brightly at that but couldn’t bring herself to argue. She knew that they were right, and it was sweet that her friends cared enough to do something like that. She took a deep breath and glanced at Bella and her husband once more, shaking her head slightly. “You guys are something else sometimes. I can’t say that I don’t appreciate you guys trying to help out, though. You guys are good friends,” she said sweetly, smiling towards them.

  “Glad we could help,” Tristan and Bella replied almost in unison, laughing together as Amun and Isabella kissed passionately in front of the apartment, a few of her neighbors glancing out of their windows to see what all th
e commotion was.

  Bella and Tristan didn’t stay much longer after that since it seemed obvious to them that their job was done. Isabella was grateful to have some private time with Amun, relief that their silly fight could be put behind them evident in her face as she lay with her head resting in his lap. She was surprised that she hadn’t burst into tears at this point, her hand reaching up to gently cup her boyfriend’s cheek. She felt terrible that a misunderstanding had caused the two of them so much grief, and despite him having spent the last half an hour encouraging her that it wasn’t a problem she still felt like she had hurt him badly.

  “I really am sorry about all this,” she said gently, her hand moving to stroke along his jaw, tracing it with her fingers.

  “It isn’t just your fault. I am just as much to blame as you are,” Amun said gently, his hand stroking through her long hair in a soothing manner.

  “Is there any way I can make it up to you?” she asked as she slowly sat up and turned so she could face towards him, smiling as she felt his hand gently take hold of hers.

  “I feel like if we just go out on a date tonight that I will feel just fine. Let’s spend some of the money from the award on taking us out again tonight, we’ll party it up the way that we should have done the night of our anniversary, and then when we come back I can give you the kind of loving you have never experienced before,” he said charismatically, pulling her up onto his lap and laughing when she let out a gentle giggle from the sudden sensation.

  “That sounds like a good plan to me. What did you specifically have in mind for us to go do for this date?” she asked, her eyes twinkling with sudden curiosity.

  “I figured that we could go drive and see if anything strikes our fancy. We have more than enough time to figure something out, and since tomorrow is Sunday, we can have plenty of time to figure something out. So long as I get to do it with you, it doesn’t matter. That much hasn’t changed,” he said, his teeth glinting in his mouth as he smiled cheekily at her.

  “It sure hasn’t,” she said, standing up from the couch and grabbing her laptop from her bedroom. She set it up on her lap and pulled it open, the two of them browsing through a list of different places that they could go for the night. It felt good for them to be talking again, the two of them chatting amicably, the last three days seeming like they hadn’t even happened.

  They eventually settled on finally following through on Amun’s request to schedule a day to go see her parents. He also surprised her by asking if she would want to go out to a club with him, which managed to take her completely by surprise. It was a welcome suggestion, and soon the two of them found themselves getting ready to go out.

  “I am glad that we managed to work things out,” Amun whispered lovingly as they made their way to his car.

  “Me too.”

  FISHING FOR COMPLIMENTS

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  Passions of the Caribbean

  Chapter 1: Seth

  “What this means,” I yelled for the third time, trying to make myself heard over the chattering row, “is that you’ll be putting three thousand people out of work! That’s three thousand families on welfare, three thousand homes going into foreclosure, and about six thousand kids going hungry!” I stared at Wainwright and the other board members, unable to keep my fists from clenching and unclenching.

  “Please sit down, Mr. Radisson,” sneered Wainwright as I walked towards my chair at the end of the huge, black boardroom table. Through the glass wall, I could see the junior office workers trying to pretend they couldn’t hear the shouting coming from within our closed meeting. “You’re exaggerating as usual, and you are missing a major point.”

  I looked over each of the other men that sat around Wainwright. All of them wore expensive suits and were either overweight from expensive and excessive living, gray- or white-haired from age, or both. Wainwright was both, and his face carried a repulsively arrogant look of scorn, a take away from years of almost always being the richest man in the room. He was part of the old guard. One of my father’s longest-standing partners, and we never saw eye to eye.

  I turned to the opposite end of the table, were the prey of these white-haired, dark-suited vultures sat. Mr. Clancy and his son, Robert, of boat builders Clancy & Son who, after not having their military contracts renewed, were now finding it hard to keep their business solvent in the current economic climate, building only luxury super-yachts. Mr. Clancy Sr. was well past retirement age and couldn’t hide it, yet he still wore a determined expression on his face and looked prepared to fight for the company he had spent his whole life building. Robert Clancy, on the other hand, was nearing forty and had the look of someone that could see his comfortable lifestyle disappearing down the tubes with every dollar that Clancy & Son went into the red. Both were also dressed in dark suits that, while still respectable, were worth nowhere near as much as those of my board members.

  I needed a second to collect myself. Shouting at Wainwright and the rest of the board only ever served to make them dig their heels in and convince them that I was just a jumped-up rich kid not fit to lick my father’s shoes, let alone fill them. I straightened my tie, ran my fingers through my hair and, just to piss them off, chose to remain standing. “Exactly what point am I missing, again, Mr. Wainwright?”

  “We are in this deal together,” he replied. “As the 51% shareholder in RHC, and the son of this firm’s founder, you are as much responsible for the job losses at Clancy & Son as anyone here.”

  I opened my mouth to start yelling again when George Osborne, sitting beside me, placed a soft, plump hand on my arm and stood as well. He was the polar opposite of me. Short, rotund, balding, and pudgy-faced, hiding his brown eyes behind thick-lensed spectacles. Despite appearances, we were both thirty-eight, and graduated from Yale together. However, I stayed in shape with a vigorous work-out regimen and a love of extreme sports, while George didn’t. He was still my closest friend, though, as well as my attorney and business adviser. I nodded in response to his calming touch and sat.

  “Remember, Seth,” he said, expertly managing to be loud enough for the board and I to hear, as well as quiet enough to be mostly unintelligible to the boat builders at the other end of the room, “selling off the assets and real estate that Mr. Clancy has managed to collect over the years should bring in just over a billion dollars right now. And they will most definitely be sold, whether it’s now, next year when the old man and his company go bankrupt, or the day after he dies and his son liquidates the entire concern. The only difference is that right now it will bring in five times more than next year, or whenever.”

  “I know,” I hissed, “but it’s still too many poor bastards out of work.”

  One of the less senior, but certainly fatter, members of the board made a predictable remark about making omelets and breaking eggs. I shot him a hateful look and he went silent. I’d like to see him try and actually make an omelet, that lazy asshole.

  “This is how it’s done, Seth,” insisted Wainwright, trying a more forgiving, paternal tone. “This is how we make our money, this is how your father made money...”

  “Don’t mention my father to me!” I yelled, on my feet again and rounding on him. Mr. Clancy and his son went wide-eyed at my outburst while, outside the office, RHC employees busied themselves faster, trying to not be seen eavesdropping. “I’ll be damned if I ever do business the way he did!” I saw Wainwright pale slightly and allowed myself a little smile of victory. A moment passed and I returned my voice to its more normal range. “George, tell the board about the plan we worked out.”

  George cleared his thr
oat and spoke to the whole room this time. “If RHC were to invest in Mr. Clancy’s business, instead of selling off the assets,” he began, “it would take around $100 million right now to increase the workforce and update his facilities to the point where they could be back in profit in three years. According to our projections, that’s a return for us of $50 million on top of our original investment in five years’ time.”

  “Meaning Mr. Clancy keeps his company and his workforce keeps their jobs. I’m sorry, Hector,” I smiled at Wainwright, “it’s a lot less than a billion.” Robert Clancy choked and coughed on the water he was drinking. “But it’s still profit for RHC, and I think both you and I can continue to survive without another billion dollars, don’t you?”

  Wainwright said nothing, his face locked in a pain-filled rictus of forced acquiescence. I walked down the table to Mr. Clancy, who slowly and carefully stood. We shook hands. “As the majority shareholder of RHC, I have the power to green light any major decisions all by my lonesome,” I smiled, “and I say we are going to be working together, Mr. Clancy, sir. What say you?”

  The old man’s voice was deep and rough. “I’d say you got a deal, Mr. Radisson.”

  Clancy Jr. piped up a protest, which his father quickly but kindly silenced, and there was some grumbling from the board. I ignored them. “Outstanding. Now, we’ve been trying to arrange this deal for six months; I think we all need a break.” I smiled over at George. “Do you think we ought to learn something about the superyacht business, old buddy?” He nodded back at me, enthusiastically. “I believe I have a 150ft boat moored off the coast of somewhere, don’t I?”

  “You do,” replied George, “but I’m afraid she’s in dry-dock, being refitted.”