“Ms. Boyd?”
Sabrina lifted her head, rubbed the back of her neck and glanced at the little clock icon on her desktop. It said 4:30. She hadn’t taken a break all day. She’d skipped lunch so she could scoot out a little early and get Alex to his checkup.
Gert Bordon, soulless and sour-pussed, stood poised before Sabrina’s desk, a slip of paper in her hand and judgment in every line of her angular body. She made no secret of her disapproval of Sabrina’s less- than-professional attire and so-called lifestyle. In her oft-expressed opinion, Sabrina should spend less time texting to check on her child and more time focused on work.
After Alex became her sole responsibility, Sabrina stopped challenging Ms. Bordon’s presumptions. Her mantra was don’t complain and don’t explain. She knew her work was top notch. Short skirts didn’t mean she was heading out to a club after work, but that she hadn’t bought something new in years. Her overlong hair wasn’t a fashion statement but the result of the high price of a city hairdresser. She knew better than to correct Gert Bordon’s misapprehensions. The fewer people who knew about her life and Alex’s, the better. But Gert Bordon’s eagle-eyed gaze never wavered from Sabrina. If Sabrina didn’t trip herself up, Gert Bordon would no doubt be happy to stick out her foot and watch Sabrina take a tumble into unemployment.
Sabrina took the slip of paper. Really? Paper? What happened to email or the telephone? Gert Bordon’s paper summons and personal appearance at her cubicle spelled trouble. She waited to see Sabrina’s reaction to whatever was written there. Well, no way would she give her one. In this war between Sabrina and her supervisor, Sabrina discovered that attitude was everything. What was that saying, ‘never let them see you sweat’?
Sabrina was to report to the executive suite at five o’clock. Flicking her braid back over her shoulder, Sabrina assumed a relaxed pose and texted Mrs. Egan that she was delayed. Gert Bordon’s lips tightened, her tiny eyes jumped like angry insects in her face.
“Soon you’ll realize you can’t have your cake and eat it, too,” Bordon said before she stomped back to her office.
Sabrina’s careless smirk was replaced with a thoughtful frown as she contemplated the tired wisdom of her supervisor’s parting comment.
****
The top floor of the building, the executive suite, hummed with an even more determined air of industry than every other floor at VGI combined. Surely, no one on the fiftieth floor was tasked with typing and retyping the famously complex and thoroughly boring procedures manuals the way Sabrina was. This was where the company’s heavyweights thought deep thoughts and came to considered decisions that determined the future course of VGI.
Although she never actually had a reason to visit this floor before, walking down the long corridor, Sabrina knew for a certainty that it could be five in the morning or five at night and the cubicles here would still be amply populated with VGI personnel.
There were two full sets of executive support staff so that Vladimir Grigory and his deputies could work at every hour imaginable from any given spot on the globe.
It was said that as top man at VGI, Vladimir Grigory never took a day off and never stopped raking in his millions designing, manufacturing, and selling his fleets of tankers and carrier ships across the world.
Every single head swiveled toward Sabrina as she made her way along past the center hall of cubbies and the offices that flanked them. She wished for the billionth time that she had managed to find something a bit less random to wear this morning than the thin pink sweater purchased when she was too young to realize how badly it clashed with her coloring. She tugged it down over her midriff again as the assistant bade her enter.
He was opening a folder, but he glanced up when she entered the room.
It was a close thing to say who was more stunned.
Sabrina was flabbergasted. The hot guy from last night looked like he owned the place, decked out in a sharp navy suit and tie pulled straight from a high-end men’s shop. Her mouth fell open as realization dawned, and she didn’t even need to check the name on the plate affixed to the door.
His initial look of astonishment was quickly masked.
“Yeah, it’s me, Vladimir freakin’ Grigory.”
The deep drawl with the faintest of accents shivered down her spine just as it had last night. Only this time he was laughing at her.
Sabrina cringed. This could not be happening. She had to be asleep, trapped in a nightmare. Her face burned as she recalled one of the more vivid dreams
she’d had last night. He hadn’t been wearing that bespoke suit and starched white shirt. He hadn’t been wearing a stitch!
“Ms.,” he glanced at the folder again, “Boyd.”
Now Sabrina felt lower and dirtier than the bottom of a trashcan. They hadn’t exchanged names the night before. We went from zero to sixty in five minutes in the backseat of a car. We were seconds away from completely anonymous sex. You’re the top guy at VGI. Hell, you are VGI, and I climbed over you like a lap dancer. But buddy, your hands were glued to me, too!
The heat climbed up from her chest to her face again.
If she could rocket off the planet, she would in a nanosecond. Her heart blocked her throat, and she couldn’t utter a word if her life depended on it. Not wanting to look but unable to tear her gaze away, she just stared.
And man, he was taking his sweet time staring right back.