Page 41 of The Billionaire's Wake-up-call Girl

I take a seat in the waiting area, annoyed. I wonder, not for the first time today, what Operator Seven is doing. Is she calling other people? Unease rises in my chest.

I grab a Vossameer newsletter from the little table and pretend to read it, but I can’t stop going back over our conversation. The way Seven’s voice gets raspier when she’s aroused. Her sense of humor. I love how she doesn’t take shit from me, but there’s that vulnerability to her.

The women shuffle their papers. Turnip Truck seems to be helping the receptionist. Maybe Sasha gave up on her and demoted her. Being that she’s so moronic and all.

Finally Sasha finds her way up to the front. “Mr. Drummond! I hope you weren’t waiting long.”

I stand. “I’m going to need the contact information for the wake-up-call service.”

“I hope there isn’t a problem,” Sasha says.

A flutter of papers behind the reception desk.

“Oh no!” The receptionist disappears behind the desk, kneeling, presumably to gather whatever papers were dropped.

Turnip Truck stands there looking bewildered at this strange demonstration of the principle of gravity, then she, too, disappears behind the desk. Apparently picking up dropped papers is a two-person job at Vossameer Inc. Do I need to fire every last person on this floor?

Everybody except Sasha. Sasha’s work has been stellar in the past month. And her ideas for doing behind-the-scenes lab spotlights have really grown on me.

“Mr. Drummond? Are you no longer finding it effective? I could find you a new service. It would be no problem,” Sasha says.

“No, I’m happy with this service you found. I just need the contact information. The name of the service. The number.”

Now Sasha looks bewildered. Am I speaking in Urdu?

“Will that be a problem?”

“Sure, I could get that for you, no problem.” She smiles brightly. “I’ll email it.”

“I’ll take it now, if you don’t mind.” I nod at the phone in her hand.

She looks down at it. “It’s not on here. It’s on my desktop.”

I sigh. “I’ll wait, then.”

She looks nervously over her shoulder. “I got kicked offline. I need to go back and reboot it, and it’ll be a bit. I don’t want to make you wait. I’ll email it as soon as I’m back up. The first task.”

It comes to me here that Sasha’s hiding something. She seems nervous.

“As soon as it’s back up,” she confirms brightly. “Top of my to-do list.”

I frown. “Wouldn’t it be more efficient to have started the reboot process before you left your desk? It would be rebooted by now.”

“Oh, of course,” she says. “But I thought you might be up here with an urgent matter. I’ll have that info ASAP.”

I sigh. What the hell am I even doing down here? I have work to do. “ASAP.”

Fifteen

Lizzie

Sasha turnsto me as soon as the door closes behind him. “Did I not ask you for those call service details yesterday?”

“Yes,” I say.

“Yet you didn’t see fit to provide them for me. Thanks for making me look completely foolish.”

“I’m so sorry,” I say, clutching the papers to my chest. Quietly freaking out.

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