any of you want to take over as Creative Director, I suggest you suck it the fuck up. Besides, I already made her the offer. She’s going to accept it, and I’m going to accept her acceptance.
“How do you know?”
“How do I know what?”
“That she’ll accept? She must realize you’re a batshit-crazy tyrant overlord by now. She’s probably changed her name and going into the witness protection scheme as we speak.”
“I’m telling you she’ll accept. We’ll work together, and it will be A-OK. Trust me. I got this.”
Chapter 13
Noa
* * *
“Come in!” Raine’s voice boomed out from the crack in his door that he’d left slightly ajar.
I jumped back a little in surprise. I honestly hadn’t expected anyone to be in the office, least of all Raine, given that he’d shown no signs of being on his way out when I’d left the night before—yet there he was back in already.
I’d come in early because, as I’d predicted, I hadn’t been able to sleep, and so I’d figured that I might as well get a jump on the day, as it was likely to be a hectic one. I’d planned on going through the manual again, to make sure I was up to speed on every aspect of the PA role. I would need to hit the ground running if I was going to juggle both my new roles at the same time.
I wondered if I was out of my mind to even contemplate doing what I was doing. Michelle had made some very solid points about why it was an insane idea, and I couldn’t dispute any of them, but somehow I still did feel compelled to work with Raine.
I wasn’t too big to admit to myself that one of the reasons was that there was something about him I was drawn to. He intrigued me, was the best way I could describe it. Between the creative genius thing, and the arrogant douche thing, he was one of the most interesting people I’d ever met.
I pushed the door open and walked in. “Good morning. I didn’t—” I started speaking before I had a chance to register what was going on in the room, but once my eyes had assimilated the scene in front of me, and the information had gone to my brain, I couldn’t unsee it. Shit!
“I’m sorry. I—” There were no words to finish that sentence, I just needed to be out of there as soon as possible. Not bothering to waste time turning around, I stumbled backward, closing the door hard, once I was out of the room.
I scuttled back to my desk and took a few deep calming breaths. What the fuck had I just walked into? Who the fuck did that? I fired up my computer and decided that the only way I was going to survive was to wipe my brain clean of the image I’d just seen, like clearing a phone’s memory by restoring factory settings, It kind of worked until Raine approached my desk a few moments later.
“What the fuck? You can’t just walk into someone’s office unannounced like that. That’s why we have fucking doors in the first place, privacy.”
“I knocked, and you said come in, which is why I went in. I would never just have barged in normally.”
“There was no knock, and I didn’t say come in, I said “coming.” Jesus Christ in a sandwich, kill me now. “Which is exactly what I was doing when you walked in on me. I would say sorry that you had to see that, but it’s hardly my fault, so I guess you have to suck it up.”
A movement behind Raine caught my eye, and I realized too late that it was the woman I’d seen moments earlier, writhing on top of him in all her bare-chested glory, cowgirl-style, as he came. Who the hell did that? Raine Davies, was who. I wondered if the other partners were so deeply unprofessional and inappropriate as to screw people in their offices, period, but with the door open, even worse. Maybe Michelle had been right, and it was utter madness to have offered myself as tribute for this thing. It certainly seemed that way
“Jesus. Will you get it together? You witnessed two consenting adult humans fucking, not the birth of the anti-Christ, and I’m sure it was nothing you haven’t seen before one way and another.” He raised an eyebrow. The question made me feel like a trifling child, totally overreacting to catching