The Next Ex

Excerpt

Jamie pushed her cleaning cart to the center of the next row, glancing back over her shoulder at the closed elevator doors as she reached down to pick up another trashcan. How in the world could she have missed seeing the company president? Even worse, how could she have possibly missed his seeing her? She swallowed, a tremor of unease tickling down her spine as she hoped to high heaven that she hadn't done something wrong.

Like using the customer's elevator instead of the service shaft located at the back of the building.

Jamie groaned, leaning on her cart as she covered her eyes with one hand. Why oh why, when she first discovered she'd slept through her alarm, couldn't she have followed her instincts and called in sick?

* * * *
At a few minutes to four o'clock and the end of her shift, Jamie's supervisor handed her a note. In a bold, neat pen, her immediate presence was requested on the top executive floor. And by all means, someone had scrawled across the bottom, use the main elevator.

Think positive, Jamie, she told herself. Maybe there was a stopped sink or a clogged toilet, or something had been knocked over. Maybe she was only being summoned to vacuum paper punch holes off the rug or mop up an unexpected mess. It wasn't likely, but she could always hope. So once again, Jamie wheeled her bulky cleaning cart into one of the Dorsett Building's three main elevators and pressed the button for the top floor.

These elevators were among the grandest of features of all Seattle based superstructures. Made almost completely of glass, they attached to the outside of the building and gave their passengers an unobstructed view of the city, sprawling as far as the eye could see in all directions. Since none of the surrounding buildings were higher than fifteen floors, once the elevator rose above that, the view was absolutely awe-inspiring. At eighteen stories high and to the right, Jamie saw the Space Needle only a few blocks away, as well as the Woodland Park Zoo. She leaned forward to rest her forehead against the cool, transparent panes. She loved riding these elevators. Surrounded by luxury, glass and gold, she would imagine she was someone else. It didn't matter who, so long as she wasn't a cleaning lady trapped in a mind-numbing job, with a mountain of bad debts holding her hostage there.

But this trip to the top was different. This time, Jamie was too nervous to daydream. Travis Dorsett, the same phantom who had supposedly been watching her earlier, had requested her presence personally.

This would be her first time meeting the legendary recluse face-to-face. For years, it had been rumored that he didn't really exist. That the entire Dorsett Corporation was run by a huge, inter-galactic space alien, with three eyes in the middle of his stomach and an elephant's trunk that stuck out of one ear. Today had pretty much dispelled that myth for what it was, since everyone but Jamie, it seemed, had seen him. According to Nita, he looked just like the dark, solemn portrait of him that dominated the entrance lobby.

She really hoped he had a stopped up sink.

As the world shrank far below her, Jamie quietly cleaned the glass where she'd touched it and fogged it with her breath. Above the doors, the red neon lights dinged the sixty-third floor and her destination, and she drew a deep, fortifying breath. Turning around, she wheeled her cart into the company president's reception room. Her eyes slid to the waiting area, but the long L-shaped couch by the window was vacant, so it was safe to talk.

Despite her nervousness, she cast a quick smile to Travis's very pregnant secretary. "Hi, Greta."

Glancing up from her computer, Greta grinned. "Jamie! I haven't seen you for days! Where have you been keeping yourself?"

Greta was a pretty woman, with long, dark brown hair and laughing brown eyes that could coax even the most irritated individuals into more cheerful dispositions. As her secretarial skills were nothing out of the ordinary, this was probably the reason she worked directly for Travis. It had also been rumored that Mister Dorsett was not a chipper man.

"What's the news?" Jamie gestured towards the secretary's child-swollen belly. "When's the little fellow going to make his birth day debut?"

"He's his father's boy." Greta grimaced. "There's not a force on Earth that could ever make Jim arrive anywhere on time, either. Nine months come and gone, and my stomach still sticks out to here. He's just as happy as a little clam, staying where he is and kicking my insides black and blue."

"If I was you, I'd just take the maternity leave and stay home all day. Put your feet up, and eat bonbons while you can still say you're eating for two."

"Jamie, you have no idea what staying at home with a soon-to-be, first-time father is like," Greta said, then caught herself. Her eyes widened, and then softened with sympathy. "Oh, Jamie, I'm sorry. I said it without thinking."

Waving her hand, Jamie shrugged. "That's okay. Don't worry about it. I'm glad you've got someone there for you. Put all that nervous energy to good use and make him rub your feet."

"He already does that." Greta grinned and her eyes fell to the cart Jamie leaned against. "You can leave that out here; you won't need it." She nodded her head meaningfully at the giant twin doors, the entrance to the only office on the entire floor. "He wants to see you."

Gnawing at her bottom lip, Jamie studied the doors. "Do you, um, know why? Does he need his rug vacuumed or his plants dusted? You know, this isn't my floor. Don and Jim have everything above the fiftieth floor. They should be here in about an hour..."

"He asked for you," Greta said gently. "First thing after lunch he requested your personnel file. Then a little while ago, he asked to see you before you went home. I don't know his reasons; I'm just a secretary. But I do know there's nothing wrong with his rug."

"He looked at my personnel file?" Jamie echoed dully. "Does it already show I was late this morning?"

"Among other things."

Great.

He was going to fire her. Jamie clutched the handle on her cleaning cart so hard her fingers turned white. "What am I going to do, Greta? I can't afford to lose my job! I just can't!"

"Oh no, no, it's nothing like that," Greta hastened to assure her. "Think, sweetie. If he wanted you canned, he wouldn't bring you up to his office to do it. Your supervisor would have handed you your severance check at the end of your shift. Don't worry about that. Just go on in, find out what he wants, and let me know, okay? The curiosity's just been killing me all afternoon."

Not at all comforted by the secretary's reassurances, Jamie crept towards the giant office doors. As Greta picked up the phone to announce her, Jamie took another fortifying breath. Too bad the option to cover her head and run screaming back to the elevators wasn't a practical one. Swallowing, she reached for the silver door handle and pushed her way inside.

Travis's office was quite possibly the largest single office that she had ever seen, with plush blue carpeting, soothing white walls, and several pictures and plants for decoration. A mammoth desk dominated the room, big enough for three people to work at and shaped like a great, mahogany horseshoe. The window behind it stretched the length and width of the entire wall and provided an uninterrupted view of Seattle. From sixty-three stories, it was even more spectacular than the view in the elevator. And at the bow of the 'shoe,' like a king on a leather-covered throne of a chair, Travis sat studying a small stack of papers on the otherwise immaculate surface.

A space alien would have been easier to believe. For an instant, Jamie felt a fleeting sense of betrayal that the rumors could have allowed her to work here for so long without knowing the truth. Travis was like a well-imagined dream. There was simply no other way to put it; he was beautiful.

And not paying the slightest bit of attention to her.

He made several corrections on the page in front of him, then turned it over and studied the one beneath. As she watched, one dark eyebrow arched slightly above the other and there was a noticeable tightening in that square, clean-shaven jaw. He glared at the paper, as though that single, innocuous-looking page had committed some horrible offense--gracious, he was even more handsome when he was mad--and he made a note in the margin.

His hair was dark, almost blue-black in color and cut at a neat, professional length. There was a hint of curl at the sides, just long enough to almost be able to run fingers through. His age she placed somewhere in the mid-to-late thirties. Jamie could well image what one smile from a man like that could do to a girl. Here he hadn't even done that, and already Jamie felt as if she was melting. A kiss--why, a kiss could very well bring about the end of the world. If only the situation weren't quite so scary, the idea of such a kiss from him might have been more appealing.

Travis raised his head from his papers and looked at her. His eyes--a deep amber, flecked with hints of light brown and golden yellow--settled on her face, clear and penetrating. He smiled slightly, though only with his mouth, and set the papers aside.

"Come in, Miss Miracle." He stood up, resting his fingers lightly on top of his desk. "No need to hover in doorways. I've been waiting for you."

Hover? Jamie started, glancing back over her shoulder. At her desk, Greta was making shooing motions with her hands, encouraging Jamie further into Travis's office. A sudden warmth filled her belly, spreading up to her cheeks. She didn't know which was more embarrassing: this awful, uncertain, lock-legged, teenager-with-a-crush feeling that left her unable to move and feeling like an idiot; or the fact that he'd noticed.

Clearing her throat, Jamie softly closed his door. "Sorry."

The corners of his handsome mouth turned up a little more. "No need to be. Come in, please."

Jamie took a hesitant step, but then stopped again. Her ratty sneakers looked atrocious on the dark blue carpeting. She tucked the worst looking one behind her right leg, hiding it from sight and hoping he hadn't already seen it. Oh for heaven's sake, now she looked like a stork! Biting her lip, she put her tattered shoe back on the floor. Her face flushed even hotter. She felt so foolish, at this point getting fired would almost have been a kindness on his part.

She cleared her throat again. "Look, Mister Dorsett. I--I know I wasn't supposed to take the cleaning cart into the glass elevator, but the service lift was in use and--"

"I didn't ask you here to reprimand you," Travis said.

"You didn't?" Jamie shifted her feet nervously. "Well, um ... why am I here then?"

He gestured to one of two vacant chairs on her side of the horseshoe desk. "Would you like to sit down?"

She shook her head. "This ... This isn't my floor. If you need something cleaned or repaired, um ... I could get Don for you."

The corners of his mouth went up a little more, and this time his eyes seemed to warm. "It's not Don I want to talk to. I really do promise not to bite. Please." He indicated the chair again. "Sit down. If I have to talk to you from this distance, I'll grow hoarse."

Rubbing her sweaty palms against her jean-clad thighs, Jamie hesitantly approached his desk and sat down. As he returned to his chair as well, she jiggled her leg nervously up and down. Now that she was up close, all she could see was how truly huge he was. A virtual mountain of a man. And he was staring right at her, hands folded over his desk, amber eyes studying her intently.

Not used to being scrutinized, Jamie shifted nervously. She cleared her throat, then stretched her hand out over his desk. "Jamie Miracle. How do you do?"

There it went again, that light in his amber eyes that suggested he might be laughing at her. But obligingly the mountain stood up again and reached across the desk to take her hand. His completely engulfed hers in a firm shake that sent a sudden spark leaping up through her arm the instant their fingers touched. Jamie all but snatched her hand back, staring at it as though horribly betrayed, then blushed profusely as she realized how ridiculous she must look.

"I, uh..." she cleared her throat and tried to collect her scattered thoughts. Her leg began to jiggle up and down again. "Why am I here?"

Travis sat back down again and leaned back in his chair. Bracing his elbows on the rests, he steepled his fingers. "I have something I want you to do for me."

Jamie glanced first into the near empty garbage can to the right of his desk, then at the spotless rug beneath her. "What?"

"Boost my career," he said bluntly. "I'm willing to pay you for it. How does two million dollars sound?"

Her nervous fidgeting abruptly ceased. "I'm sorry. How much?"

"Two million," he enunciated, his smile widening by the barest of degrees. "Are you interested?"

She looked around the office again, this time for a hidden camera. "Am I on America's Funniest Practical Jokes or something?"

"My offer is genuine."

"Sir ... I'm a janitor."

Again that spark of amusement. "I saw the cleaning cart, yes."