Page 5 of Daydreamer
I hadn’t been back home in over five years after that final straw with my father – when he crossed the line so completely there was no coming back from it. I was justified in staying away from him. But I felt the guilt of not checking in with the Mayweathers. I’d been so focused on trying to outdo my father in business that I’d let everything else fall by the wayside. Even my own mother had only seen me a handful of times and then only in London on neutral ground. I loved Mum, but nothing would get me back to Little Buckingham.
So no, I wasn’t going to give in to the desire to simply take Lucy home and keep her all to myself in my house so she could daydream to her heart’s content out of my window seat. I was going to help transform her into someone her mother didn’t have to worry about. I was going to toughen her up. Because the world isn’t kind to dreamers like Lucy. There’s no room for daydreaming in this reality. It’s harsh and cruel, and the sooner Lucy woke up to that, the better.
“You’ll feel more confident now you’re in professional clothes,” I told her. “Think of it as armour.”
“Hmm,” she hummed under her breath, turning to look out of the window and rubbing her hands up and down her arms. “That’s a bit depressing, isn’t it? Needing to wear armour for work. Is it really that much of a battle?”
I frowned. “Ofcourseyou need armour in the corporate world, Luce. We’re not in Little Buckingham now. It’s dog-eat-dog here.”
Her mouth turned down, and her shoulders slumped. “Oh,right. Dog-eat-dog. Okay.” It didn’t sound okay at all. It sounded the opposite of okay, but what did she expect? This was London. If she didn’t change, she’d be chewed up and spat out in an instant. I’d learned that the hard way – people took advantage if you showed any sign of weakness, and that included not dressing the part.
Anyway, there was no denying she looked beautiful. These new clothes were a huge improvement. She should have been happy.Ishould have been happy. I was sorting the brief Hetty had handed me after all. I was transforming her daughter. Shecompletelylooked the part now. But as I surveyed the new Lucy – fitted suit, high heels – I felt an awful ache in my chest and a profound sense of loss. I shook my head to clear it. I was losing my mind.
“So, now you just have to buck up your ideas a bit,” I said. “No more daydreaming. Right?”
She bit her lip but gave a slow nod. I sighed. “Lucy, honestly, you can’t stare into space when you’re a personal assistant. There’s a shit-ton to get done every day.” It was time to stop playing Mr Nice Guy. Lucy needed to really knuckle down if she wanted to succeed. “You can’t carry on being unrelentingly crap. It’s not fair to anyone. You’ve got your armour now. You can go out there, fit right in and get on with the bloody job.” She nodded slowly, looking unconvinced. There was a knock on my door, and I frowned, not finished with Lucy’s motivational talk.
“Yes,” I snapped. Will walked in, doing a double take when he spotted Lucy. Then, to my deep annoyance, he looked her up and down, and a slow smile spread across his face.
“Christ, what have you done to her, Moretti? Who knew this was what mousy little Lucy was hiding under those god-awful jumpers.” He’d stepped closer to Lucy now and touched the lapel of her suit jacket, feeling the material between hisfingers. Lucy startled and flinched away from him. His grin widened, and I narrowed my eyes.
“Leave it out, Brent,” I snapped. His smile dropped, and he shoved his hands into his pockets.
“So, is this new Office Lucy actually going to deign to answer the fucking phone?” Will said, his eyebrows going up. My instinct was to go over there and punch the smug prick in the face, but I shoved that down. I was letting my feelings for Lucy get in the way of reason. Could I honestly be angry with Will for wanting a real, functioning assistant? He was handling one of our most high-profile land deals at the moment, and I’d saddled him with a real dud.
“Lucy’s totally on it now,” I said. “Aren’t you, Luce?” Silence. When I looked over at her, she was looking out of the floor-to-ceiling window of my office, fiddling with the button on her sleeve. I sighed and rubbed my hand over my face. “Lucy!” My voice cracked across the room, and she jumped; her gaze flew to me. I spoke slowly, trying to tamp the anger in my tone down. She really was impossible. “You’re ready to do better,aren’t you?” Lucy flashed a nervous look at Will and then gave a quick nod. Her hands came up to rub her arms again as she took another faltering step away from him.
“Sure,” she said, sounding anything but. “Er… best assistant ever. From now on. Brownies’ Honour.” She actually held her hand up in a Brownie salute, and I sighed as Will snorted back a laugh.
Chapter 4
The very worst assistant
Lucy
I clenched my jaw to keep my teeth from chattering. The office temperature had been just about bearable in my thick jumpers, but in my current silk shirt, fitted suit and four-inch-heels combo, it was freezing. Plus, my ankle was throbbing from when I’d savagely twisted it earlier on the way into the lift. Unfortunately, I’d arrived there just as Will the Slimeball was getting in – he’d spotted me coming through the large double doors this morning and insisted on holding the lift for me, even though there were two others I could have gone in. I’d tried to wave him away with a smile, telling him I’d catch another, but he just ignored me, keeping his foot shoved against the automatic doors to keep them open.
Will was just plain mean and gave me the creeps. He had even less patience than Felix with my daydreaming. I was mostly relegated to office gopher-slash-tea-maker, which, to be honest, was probably for the best. When I’d been making the tea for him and his clients last week, after he’d instructed me not to “fuck it up like you always do” right in front of them, I’doverheard him telling the others that I was “total shit as an assistant but pretty fuckable for someone who dresses like a tramp”. This was met with a ripple of contemptible boys’ club laughter, which made my flesh crawl. I’d had to slink back in there, completely mortified with a tomato-red face, and serve those dickheads their tea. I cursed my blushing habit again as I moved around the room; some of them did look deeply uncomfortable when they glanced at me – it must have been pretty obvious that I’d overheard them. Will, however, did not seem in the least bit uncomfortable with the situation. The bastard seemed to revel in my discomfort in general. He’d even cornered me by the kettle two days ago on the pretence of reaching for hisfavouritemug in a cupboard above my head. The process of reaching for it seemed to involve a fair bit of side-boob contact. When I scuttled away, he actually laughed.
“You’re a skittish little thing, aren’t you?” he’d said in that self-satisfied smug tone. “Don’t worry, my taste doesn’t extend to scruffy country bumpkins.”
Well, that may have been the case, but it didn’t seem to stop him grabbing me this morning as I fell into the lift after going over on my ankle, and then hauling me up against him as he dragged me inside. I did not want to feel my boss’s junk against my stomach at eight in the morning. The whole thing made my flesh crawl. When I scuttled away, he laughed.
“Just making sure you stay upright,” he said through his smug smile. “First time in heels? Must say I like the new look. Always suspected those jumpers were hiding a passable body.”
I was ashamed of myself. I should have been able to tell him to fuck off. But in reality, Iwasa country bumpkin. Navigating an urban predator like Will, who was soon to be a junior partner in the firm, was beyond my capabilities. So I just ran out of the lift as soon as the doors opened like a frightened rabbit, twisting my ankleagain.
The day had deteriorated since then. I’d been thinking about a really annoying plot hole in my latest book (how was Astrida, the Queen of Light, going to get from the Black Kingdom to the Fae underlayer and still retain her powers?) when fingers snapping in front of my face brought me back to the present.
“Do you think she’s had a stroke?”
I blinked, and my heart sank as I looked up at the CFO of Moretti Harding. How she made it to the top with the level of misogyny around here was a mystery, but Victoria Harding was properly terrifying. Completely emotionless. I don’t think I’d ever seen the woman crack a smile. She rarely actually condescended to speak to anyone. Usually, everything was communicated via her assistant Lottie. Now, Lottiedidsmile. To be honest, she seemed to be the friendliest face in the office and the only one who didn’t seem to fit the corporate vibe completely. Pretty with caramel, curly hair and an easy smile. Don’t get me wrong, she wore the same power suits and heels, but her multiple ear piercings, the small tattoo behind her ear and the neon trainers I saw her change out of when she arrived at the office yesterday told a different story. But then Lottie could get away with anything because of how powerful Victoria was. I didn’t have that luxury.
Weirdly, I actually knew Victoria from childhood. My brother’s friend Ollie was her half-brother. But I’d only seen her a few times when I was growing up, seeing as she was the product of Ollie’s dad’s affair and so lived with her biological mother. This was quite the scandal as Ollie’s dad was the Duke of Buckingham at the time (he’d since died and Ollie had inherited the title). Mum said that aristocrats had affairs all the time, so it wasn’t really that shocking. One of the few times I’d met Victoria had been at our small cottage when I was seven and she was nine, although she didn’t speak to me. Mum told methat Victoria didn’t actually speak to anyone back then – selective mutism or something. She certainly wasn’t mute now, though.
My ankle twinged with pain again as I shifted in my seat to look up at Victoria and Lottie. Victoria was looking at me with a curious expression, her head tipped to the side like I was a bug in a microscope. The way she’d asked if I was having a stroke in that emotionless manner summed her up perfectly. As did her outfit – a winter-white trouser suit with high heels, blonde hair scraped back into a perfect bun, make-up on point. Where Lottie was pretty with a girl-next-door vibe, Victoria was intimidatingly beautiful in an untouchable way.
“Shit,” I muttered. “I mean… sorry, I’m fine. I must have just drifted off for a minute.”
