The Secrets of Seduction - Elizabeth Lennox Page 0,70

those lashes and Sloane felt a wave of something alarming hit her.

But she wouldn’t back down! Not this time! She’d endured the icy cold rain of her mother’s funeral, dropping out of high school, living in a shelter, and working twenty hours a day for the past six months! No way was she letting yet another man intimidate her! Not this time!

“You can barely type and you don’t know dictation. You seem to be barely out of high school…why the hell should I hire you?” he demanded. “Do you have any skills at all?”

Oh, that was so unfair! Sloane glared at the man, ignoring the danger signals in his “pretty” green eyes. She was sick of men treating her like dirt! Her landlord had kicked them out of their apartment illegally, her boss thought it was okay to grope her whenever he passed by, and her father had ignored her from the moment of conception. Men were…bastards!

“What can I give you? Well, let me see!” She stood up, too angry to sit still. “I have patience, since you set up this interview for two o’clock and it is now almost four-thirty. I have determination, because believe me mister, you have no idea what I’ve gone through over the past six months! And what’s more? Hiring me means that you’ll get someone who actually wants to work! The others out there were looking to jump into your bed. Trust me, several of them were bragging about their chances of bedding you while they waited.”

She took a deep breath, and kept going. “What’s more? I’m a damn good worker! I am barely out of high school, but before I left school, I took over the high school newspaper when no one else would and turned it around. All by myself. I had absolutely no idea how to put a newspaper together, but I figured it out. I also figured out how to do payroll for my current job, run a chicken fryer, and flip burgers. All at the same time! I create the schedules for thirty employees because the manager is too lazy to do it himself. And I’ve done all of it without training.”

She leaned forward, glaring at him. “So, hiring me means that you’ll get an employee who might not know everything immediately, but I figure things out. I get the job done correctly and efficiently. Furthermore, I definitely won’t be trying to get into your bed! If that’s not what you’re looking for Mr….whatever your name is, then fine! I’m sick of my boss groping me anyway!”

With that, she stalked out of the building. Thankfully, her car started on the first try and she puttered out of the parking lot, unaware of the tears streaming down her cheeks. It would have been awesome if she could have screeched her tires as she sped out of the parking lot, but this car, and she used that term loosely when referring to the tin can on wheels she was driving, didn’t screech. It barely puttered. In this instance, Sloane was just grateful that it didn’t putter out and die.

When she was a mile away, Sloane released the breath she’d been holding, trying to shake off the tension from the miserable, wasted afternoon. Another jerk! Another man trying to throw his weight around! Oh how she hated men like that! She hated men in general, but jerks who thought they could control someone else simply because they had money or power, or both, were real assholes! They were gross, disgusting, horrible human beings!

Parking at the fast food place, she reached into the back seat and pulled out her cheap, polyester uniform. For a moment, she contemplated changing in the bathroom versus here in the parking lot. But if she went inside, Sloane wasn’t sure that her boss would leave her alone while she changed. She didn’t doubt that he’d find a reason to “check the bathroom” while she was in there mid-change. So she figured it was better to risk being seen here in the parking lot than tempting fate, and the pervert, inside.

Parked at the far end of the parking lot, Josh watched as the young woman somehow changed out of the pathetic skirt and blouse she’d worn to the interview and into a pair of jeans and the ugliest striped shirt he’d ever seen. Glancing in the fast food place, he realized that the shirt was the same colors as the tacky décor.

What the hell was he doing here? Yeah, the young woman had struck a nerve back at the interview, but she’d been belligerent and loud. And yet, his instincts told him that Sloane Abbot would make the perfect assistant. Unfortunately, she didn’t have the skills he’d advertised, was completely lacking in the confidence that he preferred in his employees, her clothes had been threadbare in several places…but she had guts. Yeah, that was what he was looking for. He needed someone to help him grow his company and Sloane Abbot had gumption. He almost laughed at the antiquated term.

Driving out of the parking lot, he pressed a button on his steering wheel. “Jefferson!” he called out when Jefferson Lamont, his friend and mentor, answered the call, “I’m heading to your place. I’m about to do something stupid.”

“Sounds interesting. Come on over,” the older man hung up.

Five years ago, Josh might have laughed at Jefferson’s abrupt way of handling cell phones. But now it was simply expected. Fifteen minutes later, Josh pulled into the driveway of an enormous house. Some might call it a mansion, but Jefferson would snap at anyone who dared, even though there was a carriage house guarding the front gate, fifteen bedrooms in the main house, and there was even a pool house at the opposite end of the enormous pool.

Spring was a good time to visit this part of the country. Right now, everything was green and lush. In a few more months, the grass would be brown and the trees struggled to hang on to any precipitation. By August, everything would be hot and miserable.

No brown lawn here though. Jefferson had an elaborate sprinkler system that watered everything in the early hours of the morning and the pool sparkled invitingly in the sunshine on those hot, summer afternoons when it was too miserable to do anything but swim. Of course, Jefferson Lamont was what some might call disgustingly rich, but Josh knew him to be an extremely good man. No one knew how generous the old bastard really was. But Josh did. Josh had been a gutter rat, only two steps away from prison when Jefferson had pulled him out of the harsh and unforgiving streets and cleaned him up. Josh owed the old man everything, although no matter how much money Josh made, Jefferson refused to accept repayment.

So, Josh was going to take a chance on someone else. Someone that Josh sensed needed a break, just like the old man had done for him.

“What has your panties in a twist?” Jefferson demanded as soon as Josh entered the library.

Josh tossed Sloane Abbot’s resume onto the old man’s desk, then walked over to the liquor cabinet and poured himself a scotch, not bothering to ask permission because it would only piss the old man off.

“You’re hiring a girl?” Jefferson asked, his white, bushy eyebrows lowering in anger as he looked at Josh, now sitting in one of the chairs in front of the man’s desk.

“I’m hiring me,” Josh countered.

Jefferson let the resume flutter back to his desk as he sipped his scotch. For a moment, he contemplated Josh. “So, who is she?” he asked.

Josh shrugged one massive shoulder dismissively. “I don’t know. But she’s young, desperate, and on the brink of disaster.” He paused, the glass halfway to his mouth as he said, “She might actually have reached disaster and is just muddling through, trying to keep her head above water, although she might be sinking pretty fast.”

Jefferson’s lips pressed together and he took a long sip of his scotch. “What happened to her?”

Josh stared at the amber liquid in the crystal glass, his eyes narrowed as he thought back to the lovely girl-woman’s furious words just prior to her less than epic departure. “I don’t know. But she’s too damn young to have such an attitude.” He paused, smiling for a moment. “You should have seen her, Jefferson. She was…amazing! This Abbot woman…she yelled at me. She told me that the other women who had been in for interviews before her were only trying to get into my bed and I should hire her simply because she’s a good worker and because she’d stay well away from any sort of sexual liaison with me. That she was sick of men who manipulated…or something along those lines. She was…” he paused again, shaking his head. “Fabulous.”

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