Famished, Meghan O'Flynn [free ebooks romance novels .txt] 📗
- Author: Meghan O'Flynn
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The color drained from Turner’s face. “But… I haven’t had any complaints since I’ve been here. I have a wife, two kids. There must be a mistake.”
I averted my eyes, hoping he’d think I was giving him time to process, but my motivations were selfish: I needed to focus on something else before my heart blew up. In the middle of the desk was a corner of paper I must have torn from the folder earlier in a subconscious attempt to curb my anxiety. Across the top of the desk, the three ceramic owls that usually stared at me quizzically were glaring like I had shit on their waffles. My favorite was a horned owl missing an ear. I had stowed the ear in a desk drawer, intending to glue it back on, but had since decided I rather preferred his one-eared imperfection. Plus, it made him look less smug.
“Is there anything I can do?” Turner’s voice cut into my owl assessment. “If I understood the problem…”
I blinked. His frustration was palpable, his fists clenched, and I resisted the urge to duck. A bruise on my arm throbbed.
You’ve got this, Hannah. You’re okay.
Turner’s eyes flicked to the security guard.
I followed his stare, relieved to see we had Jerome’s full attention. Jerome always made me feel safer, like he could somehow shield me from anything that might come through the doors. If only he could protect me from the psychos in my past. My heart lurched drunkenly against my breastbone.
Jerome approached the cubicle. “Mr. Turner, you will have to come with me.” His voice was the texture of wet silk.
Turner stood slowly.
I pushed the papers toward him. “I need your signature at the bottom of this form.”
Turner signed it, barely glancing at the few lines of text, and walked from the cubicle toward the main doors. In seconds, he was eclipsed by Jerome, the guard’s gleaming bald head the sun to Turner’s gray misshapen moon.
I took a few deep breaths. Human resources wasn’t the perfect job for me, but the guards and the locked entrance made it safe enough. And it was far, far away from…him.
Lovers ain’t nothin’ once they go south. I couldn’t remember where I had heard that, but it was more poignant than most of the nonsensical songs about true love and happiness and beauty and bullshit.
I looked at the clock in the lower corner of my computer screen. Half an hour. Would my chest palpitations ever relent? Maybe I should pound on my breastbone, gorilla style, to subdue my heart. But I’d just end up looking like an idiot.
“Hannah?” Noelle leaned over the partition. Her blond hair floated in silk strands over blue eyes and full lips, made even more supple by pinkish gloss. Men followed her with their eyes, if not their actual penises.
Even I couldn’t help staring at her sometimes.
I forced a smile and moved my hand from my chest to the desktop before Noelle thought I was playing with my boobs.
“I’m going to grab a coffee, then take some dismissal forms back to the filing room,” she said. “Do you have any more?”
“Sure do. I’m the most popular person here today. As long as popular means everyone wants to punch you in the throat.”
Turner’s dismissal papers required my signature as the bearer of bad news. It was like signing a death certificate as if before that moment, nothing had happened that couldn’t be taken back. Adding the final signature always made me feel like the biggest douchebag. Maybe coroners felt like that too, with their endless parade of dead-on-arrival cadavers.
I scrawled my name on the form.
Rest in peace, Turner.
Stop thinking crazy shit and say something.
I looked at Noelle. “I like the pink gloss, by the way. It looks like you blew a dude made out of cotton candy.” Crisis averted.
“Cotton candy doesn’t talk back. Hey, you going to the company picnic tomorrow?”
“Oh…yeah, I think so.”
Noelle squinted at me. “What’s up with you? You look like someone just killed your dog.”
“I don’t have a dog.”
“Something happen with Jake?”
I pulled my sleeve over my wrist, folded the cuff into my palm, and tucked my fists into my lap. My sweaty handprint remained on the desktop.
“Did he find a job yet?”
Is littering the house with fast food wrappers a job?
Noelle stared at me.
“No. It’s not Jake. It’s just…this.” I nudged Turner’s termination papers on the desk.
Noelle nodded, her silver earrings swinging. “You want to go out somewhere tonight? It’ll take your mind off of it.”
“Nah, I told Jake I’d be home early.”
Noelle’s eyes darkened, and my breakfast skittered around in my stomach.
“Soon, okay?” I said.
“Sure. Here, I’ll take those papers.” She smiled, and I watched her go, swaying her hips to unseen music.
I turned back to my computer and glanced again at the clock. Twenty more minutes and I’d be on my way home to the man I loved, or at least, was pretty sure I loved. And he loved me back, as long as I didn’t make him mad, which happened more than I wanted to admit. But he was the lesser of two evils. No matter how much of an asshole Jake was, he wouldn’t kill me. That had to be enough since I couldn’t take Jerome home. Maybe I did need a dog. Not a Chihuahua, though. Those things are yappy jerks.
I set my jaw, pulled the keyboard closer, and went back to work.
Dominic Harwick sat at his desk, his manicured fingers tapping on the keyboard as he finished reviewing the newest batch of engineering resumes. It was a menial task, beneath him, but it was necessary; each individual represented a dollar amount he would not forget.
He had begun a startup engineering staffing firm fresh out of Harvard. When the recession hit, he put his inheritance to work for him, buying up property in California, Texas, and New York. But he’d finally settled on Michigan as his home, unable to convince himself to abandon the glorious buyer’s market that had developed in the blighted Detroit Metro area. A few years later, Harwick Technical Solutions had acquired international acclaim by securing a staffing contract from a large aeronautical corporation, prompting local papers to ask, What Recession? when covering the construction of his ultra-modern, four-story contract house.
His father would have been proud, though he’d have gotten nothing more than a curt nod from Rupert Harwick. Dominic could still picture his stocky legs, his barrel chest, and the salt and pepper hair he had kept buzzed close to his scalp. Even if he had let it grow, no one would have dared call him anything other than ‘Colonel,’ ‘Mr. Harwick,’ or ‘Sir’.
Dominic reviewed the last resume, made a note, and shut down the computer. The screen lowered into a special compartment inside the desk, leaving the opaque glass desktop perfectly pristine. Across the room, leather-bound books sat next to gleaming modern sculptures on custom glass shelves, all now cast in the orange glow of twilight from the floor-to-ceiling windows behind the desk. An oil painting of Duke, his Great Dane, hung beside a door of the thickest oak money could buy.
While the rest of the building was full of glass walls and low partitions to encourage openness and cooperation, his office was shut away from everything and protected by a bulldog-like secretary who let no one enter without his approval. An army of assistants kept his life just as he wanted it: uncomplicated, predictable, and efficient.
Dominic glanced at his Rolex, stood, and walked to the window. On the glass near his right hand, a smudge left behind by the cleaning crew sullied his view. He frowned.
Distasteful.
Dominic peered past the offensive blemish. Below him, a large employee parking lot ended in an expanse of rolling hills that sloped down to meet the water. By day, he could see the lake peeking from behind the tall oaks, maples, and firs that surrounded the five-acre complex. At dusk, the west-facing windows provided an overture to day’s end. But these were not the reasons he had chosen this space for his office.
For several minutes, all was quiet. Then he saw him.
David Turner emerged from the building carrying the contents of his desk, his jacket, and, from the look of his hunched shoulders, his pride. He fumbled with his keys, popped the trunk of his car, and hoisted the box into the back. As he closed the trunk, he wiped his eyes with the back of his hand.
Yesterday, Dominic had overheard Turner bragging to a fellow worker about his track record at the company.
“Six years of service,” Turner had said, “and not one complaint.”
People who got too comfortable became unimaginative workhorses and rarely came up with anything new. They were bad for business. Sometimes when Dominic fired people like that, they seemed relieved, leading him to suspect an inherent boredom with their daily tasks. Turner did not strike him as that type of person, but Dominic suspected the man had some type of emotional connection to
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