with himself as a matter of fact and if he knew, he'd make sure to whisper something filthy in my ear while we waited for our orders at the café in his office building—the café that served breakfast sandwiches so scrumptious I'd taken to ordering two and saving one for my midday snack.
Ash was helpful as ever in this matter, terming it desk eggs. He couldn't understand why I didn't return to the café at ten or eleven, when my snack needs activated, and get a fresh sandwich. This, from the man who scheduled his work down to six-minute increments.
Besides the morning sex and needlessly controversial sandwiches, there was a mountain of work to move at Ash's office. In a surprising show of restraint, he actually handed over several mid-level tasks to me and did it without an hours-long explainer or buzzing around my desk to "supervise" and "help."
Even better for my mountain-moving purposes, I was alone in the office today since Ash was scheduled to participate in a daylong strategic planning meeting with a corporate board of directors. I didn't know the specifics aside from him billing them for five full days on account of all the preparation this event required.
This was the perfect timing for getting him out of the office since I couldn't put my plan into action with him looking over my shoulder.
That sounded terribly sinister. It wasn't. Hell, I didn't even know how to be sinister. Regardless, Ash's staffing situation needed a quick solution and I was prepared to deliver—assuming his meeting didn't end early.
The meeting ended early.
Of course it did.
Ash froze at the conference room door, his eyes flashing confusion as he took in the candidates gathered there. He shook his head. "Zelda…what is this?"
I skirted the table and met him at the threshold, my hands shooing him back. He was supposed to be at that meeting another hour or two. He was supposed to be there because I needed that time to wrap up these interviews. "Let's chat in your office."
"Or right here."
I kept shooing. "Nope. Office."
He glared at me for a moment and then strode to the next room. Instead of waiting for me to close the door, he immediately started in with, "What the hell are you doing?"
"Save the new age shit for another day," he snapped. "Explain to me why you have ten people—"
"Actually, it's only eight."
"—in my conference room and handling confidential documents," he said. "Do you have any idea of the ramifications of sharing NDA-secured information?"
I held up my hands and lowered my voice as he paced the wall of windows overlooking the city. It was a remarkable view when not bisected by a furious man. "First off, they aren't handling any confidential—"
"I know what I saw," he yelled.
Oh, wonderful. Let's introduce everyone to Ash's tyranny right off the bat.
I cleared my throat. "The identifying information is blacked out. I redacted everything before preparing those performance tasks."
This did nothing to assuage his anger. "Why are they doing performance tasks with redacted client files, may I ask? And who are they and where did they come from? Or are these questions I'm not allowed to ask now that you've decided you run the joint?"
"Don't be belligerent." I crossed my arms, watching while he continued pacing. "You told me to close your job postings. I did—and I selected a handful of applicants for on-site interviews and brief work samples to get a true sense of their skill level."
He stopped pacing, peered at me, then rubbed his temples. "Since when are you qualified to evaluate that?"
An acidic laugh sounded in my throat.
It was funny how those words would've leveled me before leaving Denver. Funny in the way I'd allowed others to distill the value of my contributions down to tiny nuggets of nothing. Funny that I'd believed it, I'd bought into it, I'd sold my hopes of geeking out over pre-Columbia North American burial traditions down the river over it. Funny in the way it wasn't funny at all but if I didn't yank a bitter, burning laugh up from my depths, I'd cry.
And there was no way in hell I was going to cry. Not over this.
"You're right, boss," I said. "I can't evaluate the nuances of accounting work well enough to spot the tiny errors that make all the difference. But you know what I can do? I can cull through the applications and line the bench with viable candidates. Then I