What the Heart Needs (3 page)

“Oh, of course. I don’t want you to think I am implying anything else. It’s just… well, I think you will just have to meet him to understand. Oh, but look at the time, darling. You better get that coffee brewing. He will be here any minute.”

And he was. The second the coffee pot chimed its completion, the elevator doors opened and there he was. He never looked up, holding the newspaper in his hand and reading something that had caught his interest. He wore an all black suit with a purple and yellow tie. Something about him looked even more intimidating than he had the day before. And he still hadn’t shaved.

Hannah filled a cup quickly and, just as he was powering up his computer, she had it next to his hand.

“Good morning, Mr. Michaels,” she said, smiling and hoping she was making a good impression.

He grunted and took a sip from his coffee. And that seemed like that was the only reply she was going to get as he went on to check through his emails and typed methodically.

Hannah waited silently at the front of his desk, hoping to god that he would give her some occupation other than standing around like an idiot. He left her there long enough to type a lengthy reply to an email before finally breaking the silence.

“My car will need to be dropped off at the shop at nine-thirty for an oil change. My dry cleaning must be picked up. I have an appointment at eleven and I will need my car back by then. While I am at the meeting, I expect you to see to the planning of my business trip next weekend and finding a new housekeeper for me.”

Hannah scrambled for a paper and a pen, jotting down as quickly as she could to make sure she didn’t leave anything out.

“There is a package at Cooper Construction that I need picked up and then, of course, I will need lunch at a quarter to one. I also need a detailed schedule for tomorrow to be compiled by coordinating with all the secretaries out there. And these,” he said, hauling out an impressive stack of unopened letters, “will need to be gone through and replied to by the end of this business day. Understood?”

“Yes sir,” she said.

“That’s all,” he said before she had even stopped writing.

Feeling thoroughly dismissed she walked toward the door. And it certainly wasn’t past her notice that he hadn’t even looked her way once during his speech.

She couldn’t focus too much on feeling disgruntled because her mind was already working a mile minute. She would take the letters and read them and jot down notes for replies as she waited for the car to finish at the shop. From there she could get the dry cleaning. That was she could get the car back by eleven. From there she could make plans for the trip and type up replies to letters. She could order lunch on her way to pick up the package from Cooper Construction and then grab it from the restaurant on her way back to the office. Maybe she could grab a few bites from the lunch she had brought with her while she hit the newspaper and looked for a housekeeper. Then at sometime close to five, she could figure out what the secretaries in store for tomorrow and then type that out as well.

She had it all planned out. Easy peasy.

Except that it wasn’t. At all. She hadn’t factored in traffic or commuting time or just how often this man needed a refreshment of his coffee. It also had never occurred to her to inquire during his speech about exactly what car shop his car had an appointment at, or what he liked to eat, where his dry cleaning was, or how often he needed a cleaning lady. She already had Tad programmed into her cell phone as her first contact and had to text him at least ten times before she had even returned to the office.

She rushed in, balancing the weird cylindrical tube the incompetent workers at Cooper Construction had finally given her after searching for it for twenty minutes in the crook of her arm, the dry cleaning in her hand, letters all but spilling out of her purse, and EM’s meal balanced between her chest and her arm.

Maneuvering her elbow to open the door, she pushed silently into the office, dropping the package on the desk by the door, hanging up the fresh dry cleaning on the coat rack, and dropping off the lunch container to the side of EM’s arm. He said nothing, reading over some file. But he pushed his coffee cup toward the edge of his desk which she had learned was his way of letting her know it was empty.

Hannah snatched the cup away aggressively and stomped out of the room, closing the door with a bit more force than was necessary.

The insufferable man never even said thank you, let alone told her she was doing a good job. He never said anything but bark out an order and talk to more important people on his phone.

He was a complete jerk.

--

She was a pleasant surprise. She handled the myriad of responsibilities he threw at her with looked like relative ease. And her defiant attitude hadn’t escaped his notice either.

He didn’t think she was aware of it, but she had a tendency to mumble under her breath. While he couldn’t be absolutely certain, he was pretty sure she said something about gratitude and happy employees. And how money couldn’t buy people good manners.

To him, it was a nice change from the meek and timid assistants he had scared away or fired for sheer incompetence in the past few years.

She brewed his coffee too strong, no doubt due to her own caffeine addiction and her somewhat annoyed disposition.

He wasn’t going to pretend he hadn’t noticed her appearance, though he tried to keep his gaze on his work. She was a stunningly beautiful woman. He had realized that the moment he had laid eyes on her in the interview room the day before. There was something about her sharp cheekbones, grey eyes, and black hair that screamed of a strong personality and a sharp mind. Her frame was much more curvy than you generally found in fashion magazines, but the undeniably feminine figure was altogether too appealing to him.

But he had enough on his plate with work, and his incompetent brother, and the seemingly obsessed legal assistant he had taken out to dinner the night before. She had called eight times already. He was embarrassed for her. And even if it wasn’t for all of that, he knew better than to ruin the one decent employee-employer relationship he had had for years.

And he was too old for her.

God, when did he get too old? Somewhere between college and the building of his headquarters or the merger with the East Trading Company that truly gave the company its financial security. Somewhere between knowing he had all the time in the world and, well… not.

Then there she was again with that harsh set to her eyebrows, his coffee cup in one hand and a manila folder in the other. She had a pen stabbed through the bun in her hair and a smudge of what looked like copy machine toner on her jawbone.

“Coffee,” she said, placing it in front of him then dropping the obviously packed folder on the side of his desk, “and copies of all the mail responses.” She picked up the pile of paperwork that needed to be faxed off his desk and cradled it against her hip.

“Now about the housekeeper,” she started, waiting for him to show some sign that he knew she even existed.

“What about it? I asked you to handle that.”

Asked? He hadn’t asked for anything. Hannah took a deep breath and refused to let herself get any more frustrated. “Yes, Mr. Michaels,” she began in a voice that sounded much like her mother’s when she was a child and kept asking things of her when she was obviously otherwise occupied, patient yet irritated. “But you did not specify how often said housekeeper was to be employed, how much you will offer as a salary, and if you wanted me to do the interviews or line them up for you to do yourself.”

“Indeed? Have I been so negligent?” he asked, taking his eyes off his paperwork and looking directly at her.

She fought the urge to squirm under the discomfort of his striking blue eyes.

“I need a housekeeper three days a week for as long as it takes her to clean the house. The salary will be two-hundred dollars a day, flat rate regardless of how long it takes to make the house immaculate,” he paused, seeming to debate something in his head. “You will line them up and interview them and, ultimately, will have the job of terminating them if they do not live up to my standards. Am I clear?”

“Abundantly,” she said, her voice dry as chalk.

He liked that quality of hers; how she could make one agreeable word sound like a battle cry of mutiny. Somehow he knew she would do the job and do it well just so she could shove it in his face that she knew what she was doing and did not need to be talked down to. He wouldn’t be surprised if this new housekeeper was the most qualified, fastidious, and diligent housekeeper he, or anyone else, had ever had.

“Is there anything else?” she asked when he was silent for a moment.

“My schedule…”

“Will be ready at a quarter to five,” she interrupted, backing toward the door.

He made his usual grunting noise and she quickly left the room.

She would work out nicely.

--

She dropped down onto the edge of Tad’s desk, closing her eyes and rubbing the lids with more pressure than was comfortable. She could feel a headache forming.

“Hang in there, kid,” Tad said, hanging up the phone and starting to tidy his desk. “The first day is always the worst. Between me and you, on my lunch break my first day, I snuck into the bathroom stall and cried for twenty minutes straight. Then, when I got home, I cried myself to sleep.” He smiled, revealing one overly pointed eye tooth. “I know that doesn’t sound promising, but you really do start to like it here after a while.”

“I don’t see how,” she mumbled, annoyed at herself that her voice sounded whiny.

“He pushes you,” Tad said, smiling at their boss’s closed door. “He makes you realize how much you really are capable of doing.” He patted her leg, a little too high up on the thigh and, if it had been any other man, it would have been vastly inappropriate. “You will surprise yourself. Besides,” he grinned, a absurd glint in his eyes, “he is really yummy to look at.”

“Oh, please,” Hannah scoffed, rolling her eyes childishly.

“Now be honest,” Tad laughed, “you cant tell me you haven’t noticed! That’s not even possible.”

“He’s old,” Hannah came back, not wanting to admit he was good-looking, but not wanting to lie either.

“He’s older,” Tad corrected. “Age recommends a man. They have been around the block a time or two.”

Hannah rose from the desk, picking up the part of the schedule Tad had compiled for her, then leaning down over Tad’s shoulder and saying, “Now you tell me. Which would you rather buy… a shiny new car or one with a hundred-thousand miles on it?”

Tad’s laugh followed her all the way to the copy machine. “Don’t you worry, Hannah-Banana, you are going to make it after all!”

Hannah leaned out of the copy room, lifted an invisible hat off her head and threw it in the air.

She had barely been able to get all the schedules from the secretaries as they scrambled to get everything squared away before the end of the workday. The entire staff practically ran out the door at five, leaving the floor hauntingly empty.

Hannah sat there alone, the lights dimmed to ease the headache that was now banging behind her eyes. She was at Tad’s long-abandoned desk, balancing Mr. Michaels’ checkbook. He had sprung the task on her last minute just when she was about to breathe a sigh of relief at the thought of being able to go home. Who even balanced their checkbooks anymore?

The only good thing was she hadn’t seen him in over an hour. He had been sitting in his closed office and the only sign that he was even still there was the blinking light on the phone panel suggesting the use of his private line.

Hannah tapped on the calculator she had to go down three floors to find, lifting up one credit card receipt after another. It was amazing that one man could do so much damage to his bank account in a single week when he never seemed to leave the office except for the occasional business meeting. She filled out the spreadsheet, humming quietly to herself to ease her frayed nerves.

She had the sneaking suspicion he had given her this job to do just to mess with her. Maybe he was trying to make her break. As much as she would have loved nothing more than to go and throw them in his face, her pride made her accept the work with a smile even though it was already well past seven-pm and she still hadn’t had a chance to eat anything.

She never even heard the door open. She jumped a few inches and yelped when she heard him ask, “What are you doing sitting at Tad’s desk?”

“I… er… um… wasn’t assigned a desk of my own. That could have something to do with it,” she replied, not caring how surly her voice sounded. She was exhausted and all she wanted to do was pile the receipts into a envelope and be done with the day.

Elliott’s eyebrow raised a little as he realized, for the first time, that perhaps his office staff wasn’t as loyal as he had thought. Someone was trying to make her day even harder than it had to be. He wasn’t happy about it. “Sally should have shown you your office this morning,” he informed her, a slight annoyance creeping into his usually tempered voice.

“As you can see,” Hannah said, waving a hand around her, “she did not.”

Elliott sighed and nodded, holding a hand out as if he was offering it to her. “Come on then, I will show you.”

Hannah rose from the desk slowly, her body aching in places she didn’t realize she could have strained. Not even the promise of her own office could ease the urgency she felt to get back home, make a cup of soothing tea, and fall into bed.

She followed EM into his office and then through the door to the right which she had assumed, up until then, was a storage room or a private bathroom. He pulled the door open, reached in, and switched on the light.

Inside was a small black desk which faced away from the huge windows that lined that whole side of the building. A long, low black bookshelf lined the entire length of the wall they were facing. There were two doors, the one they stood in and one that led out into the lobby. There was a black and white hound’s-tooth love seat situated between both doors. There was a computer on the desk with an enormous flat screen monitor as well as her own phone and various office supplies. Situated on top of the bookshelf was a printer and her own fax.