“HR Department,” Juniper answered the phone professionally seeing the line from the CEO’s office displayed.
“Juniper Kennedy?”
“Yes.” Her eyes widened nervously at the brusque tone of the man on the other line.
“My office. Three minutes.”
The line went dead. She removed her headset and stared at it in disbelief.
“What’s wrong?” her supervisor, Maxine, head of HR, looked at her with concern as she staggered to her feet.
“I don’t know. That was the CEO, and he just called me to his office.”
“Phineas Perez? The CEO? Are you sure?”
“Yes. It was his office display number on my phone.” She pointed to the desk phone.
“I’ve never even been to his office. What did you do?”
“I don’t know!” she threw her hands up in disbelief.
“Doesn’t your mother work for his family?”
“She’s the live-in housekeeper for his parents.”
“Maybe something happened to her.”
“Jesus, Maxine,” she flung her things on her desk and grabbed her ID pass and hung it over her neck. She walked briskly to the elevator and stepped inside.
By the time she reached the top floor every fiber of her being was vibrating with panic. Maxine’s words reverberating in her mind.
“God, Mama don’t be hurt.” She was surprised to find Mr. Perez’s assistant not at her desk and his door was ajar but barely. She stood at the desk not sure what to do. She turned back towards the elevator hoping the AA came back soon.
“Are you going to stand out there all fucking morning or are you coming in?”
She looked up to see the man who could grace the cover of GQ wearing a potato sack and still sell out every single copy, glaring at her.
“You’re late. I gave you three minutes. It’s been six.”
“Is my mother okay?”
He pulled his head back, “how the fuck would I know?” He waved at her to enter the office.
She walked in and was surprised to see two other men standing there. One of them held a chair out for her.
Her body immediately reacted to all three men. They were the caliber of men chosen for television shows like The Bachelorette or those firemen or police drama shows her mother loved to watch. All three of them completely different and yet all three of them sexier than hell. Brown, blue, and hazel eyes all stared at her while she took a seat, and she breathed in the cologne of the man closest to her. She was blaming her reaction to them on hormones. She might be married but she wasn’t blind or immune to good looking men. One of them might even make it into a role-playing session with Kyst later. She packed the thought away.
“Juniper, this is my lawyer Benicio and my private investigator Adil.”
His words snapped her out of her daydream. Private investigator and lawyer? Did they think she’d done something wrong?
“Look, I don’t know what this is about.”
“Obviously so can you sit there and listen instead of interrupting?”
“Jesus, man, it’s not her fault,” Adil griped as he sat in the chair next to her. “In fact, if anything you owe her.”
“Owe me for what?” she looked back to the blue-eyed man behind the desk. His eyes were the color of arctic ice and equally cold.
He frowned and then narrowed his gaze on her, “oh shit. Your mother. I just remembered who you are. You’re the girl my father insisted we hire because your mother is their housekeeper.”
“I interviewed for the position after graduating college.”
“Sure. Yeah, this has nothing to do with your mother. It’s about your husband fucking my wife.”
She choked on the accumulation of spit which clogged her throat at the bold accusation. Adil patted her back while Benicio rolled his eyes and went to the mini fridge to get a bottle of water.
Phineas clearly didn’t give a damn she was choking, and he continued speaking over her wheezing.
“Six months ago, my wife came to visit me here in the office and didn’t get what she wanted. She left here in tears,” his expression told her he didn’t care in the least about his wife’s emotional state. “On her way out of here, your husband who dropped you off after lunch or something, saw her sobbing outside the building and asked her if she was okay. He took her across the street to the café, and she poured her miserable little heart out to him. That was when they met. They exchanged numbers.”
“He’s a nice guy.”
“Yeah, he’s so nice he’s doing me a favor by helping me get divorced.” Phineas snorted with disdain. “He’s so nice, for the last four weeks, every Wednesday when I need to leave Toronto to visit the offices in Ottawa, he works from home, and she goes to your apartment, and they fuck.”
“Allegedly,” Benicio spoke up. “Allegedly fuck. We can’t prove it because we can’t get inside. It’s a secure building and while we can get access into it, your apartment is locked up tight.”
“You think your wife is going into my apartment to have sex with my husband?”
“No. I don’t think it.”
New Book: Back Home to Marry Off Myself
Loredana’s father left the family for his mistress, leaving them to fend for themselves abroad. When life was at its toughest, her father showed up with “good news” after 8 years of absence: To marry off Loredana to a paralyzed son of the wealthy Mendelsohn family.