“Thank you.” She plucked up my resume and set it beside the paper she was already reading. After several agonizing moments, she asked, as she finally lifted her gaze, “Could you please summarize your work experience?”
“Sure.” I took a deep breath, and, with nerves jangling, I rattled off my work history, starting with my most recent job. The one I’d lost suddenly. With absolutely no advance notice.
As she pretended to listen, she looked completely disinterested in what I was saying. Most of the time her focus was directed down, to the pages on her desktop. She rarely glanced up at me. She didn’t respond to a word I said. And her expression was one of absolute boredom. I wondered why I’d been called for an interview.
And then I answered my own question.
She had absolutely no intention of hiring me. She was merely going through the motions to satisfy someone. A certain someone, who had probably pulled a few dozen strings to get me this interview.
It had to be him. Shane Trant. Professional string puller.
At the end of my spiel, the unimpressed woman pasted on a smile so fake it made a certain celebrity’s boobs look natural, briskly thanked me for coming in, and motioned toward the door.
There was absolutely no way I was going to be receiving a job offer today. The trip had been pointless. A complete waste of time.
I waited until I was out in my car before I dialed Shane’s phone number. Then, as the phone’s ring tone sounded in my ear, I started my car and steered it toward the road.
Shane is my boyfriend.
He is my lover.
And he is my master.
We have a complicated relationship, and a unique one. I’ve known him for a long time, since I was a kid. But recently we took things to a very new and much more intimate level. And it seems, because I’ve been sharing a bed with him on and off for a little while, that he’s decided to poke his nose into my personal business.
I have mixed feelings about that. Extremely mixed.
“Hello, Bristol,” he answered on the second ring.
“Hello, Shane. What did you do?” I asked, figuring there was no need to beat around the bush.
I hit my turn signal and eased into the right lane. The freeway entry was ahead. After that horrific interview, all I wanted to do was go home, change into some pajamas and vegetate on my couch. It was a short drive home. I would be safe and cozy in my place, soothing my wounded pride with massive quantities of fattening food within minutes.
“What did I do about what?” he responded.
“The interview didn’t go very well. I got the impression I had been called in for an interview only because someone had forced the issue. I wonder who that someone might be?”
“Really? It didn’t go well? Why?” He sounded shocked. He sounded a little angry too.
He didn’t sound apologetic.
I steered my car around the cloverleaf curve and hit the gas, merging with the traffic barreling down southbound I-275. “The woman who interviewed me barely looked at me. She was too busy reading someone else’s resume to care what I had to say.”
“Who was that? What was the woman’s name?” His voice was clipped, sharp.
“Don’t bother. It isn’t worth it. You couldn’t pay me enough to take a job there.” I sucked in a deep breath and let it out in one long, drawn out sigh. “You win. I’ll come and work for you.”
“It isn’t a matter of me winning, Bristol. I care about you. I want to help. ”
“I know,” I said.
“Is it such a bad thing? I’ll pay you well. You’ll have health insurance, disability, paid vacation and profit sharing.”
“No. I suppose it wouldn’t be such a bad thing. I’m just being stubborn.”
“I understand you want to maintain your independence. The fact that you are so determined to succeed on your own is one of the things I respect most about you. I don’t want to change you or take that away from you.”
“I know,” I said. I really did not know anything. A part of me was totally uncomfortable with him swooping in and saving the day. If I worked for his company, I didn’t know how I would be treated by my coworkers. Would people find out I was sleeping with him? How long would it take for the rumors to begin?
And, of course, since we weren’t married, I also couldn’t help thinking about what might happen if our complicated and unusual relationship ended. If we broke up but I had to see him every day at work it would be pure hell.
“I promise nobody will know anything about our private lives. I can make sure that you are working for a division that I have very little personal involvement in. That way it will be even less likely that anyone would guess that we are personally involved.”
“I suppose if you can do all that, it might be okay,” I said.
“It’ll be better than okay. Trust me.”
Trust him.
He’d asked me to do that more than once. And each time things had turned out okay. Trust was the foundation of our relationship, both romantically as well as sexually.
“I trust you,” I told him.
“Good. You’ll come in tomorrow for an interview. I’ll make the arrangements right now. Then, I’ll be over later to pick you up. We can talk about the details over dinner.”
“Sounds wonderful.” I hit my turn signal, letting the car behind me--the one riding my butt-- know I was getting off at the next exit. “See you later.”
“Four o’clock. Bye, minx.”
A little shudder swept through me at the dark and sexy tone in his voice. I loved it when he called me that, minx.
“Bye, master.”
So much for my plans of lying on the couch and licking my wounds. But that was probably for the best anyway. I wasn’t big on wallowing in self-pity. Besides, with the promise I heard in that low husky voice, I would probably forget all my problems the instant I saw him tonight. I dropped my phone into my purse
As my car zoomed around the exit ramp’s curve, I checked the clock. I had two hours before Shane came over. That didn’t give me a lot of time. Whenever I saw Shane, I liked to look my best. Looking my best took some work, and time.
Ten minutes later, one hour and fifty minutes before Shane was due to pick me up, I hurried inside my condo building. In the lobby, I grabbed my mail. Greeting me was a stack of envelopes, most of them with little windows on them.
Past due notices.
I tossed the sales circulars and other junk mail directly in the trash and headed into my condo. I put the bills on top of the huge stack already collected on the table next to my door, and kicked off my shoes.