7

Donning a new dark blue pin stripe suit with a champagne shirt and loafers, I strolled into the WolfeTech offices on Monday morning feeling invigorated.

I signed in at the desk as I’d been instructed and waited for someone to come and collect me.

Some minutes later, Sara who’d carried out my interview, appeared from the lifts with a beaming smile. She was maybe in her forties and rocking a chignon, pearl necklace, and silk wrap dress.

“Rae, welcome!” she greeted me, extending her hand. I shook it eagerly. “I’m so glad you took us up on the offer. I know it was a tight turn around.”

“No, it was perfect timing. I’m so happy to be here.”

“Come on, let’s get you set up.”

Sara showed me up to the 36th floor of the skyscraper that WolfeTech occupied half of. Inside the lobby sat a reception desk with a twenty-something redhead at the helm, typing away on a modern computer.

“Becky, this is Rae. Mr Wolfe’s new assistant,” Sara introduced me.

The pretty redhead peered up at me, a smile on her lips. “Oh good, you managed to find someone. Nice to meet you Rae.” She held her hand over the top of the tall desk, which I took with a shake.

“Nice to meet you, too.”

“Come find me on your lunch break. I’ll give you the low down on the place.”

I hoped she meant this sincerely and not that I was about to become a pariah. I didn’t handle being picked on well. In fact, when I was at school I got suspended for a week when a girl tried to steal from me. We Buxtons were brought up feisty and the school didn’t appreciate a teenage girl kicking one of her classmates in the tits.

“Sounds good.”

Sara towed me away, down a long corridor to the very end. A small seating area made up of two low couches and a coffee table were arranged against one wall, with a bare, vacant desk sitting in the floor-to-ceiling window.

“This will be your station. Your usernames and passwords are all in this folder, and you will need to set your own passwords after your initial login. Dress it up however you want, we don’t mind.

“Mr Wolfe comes in for 8:30am most days and leaves after 6, except Fridays where he comes in at 9 and is gone by lunchtime for a standing date with his mother. This is already preprogrammed into his online calendar.

“Any appointments in his calendar will show up here. You’ll need to ask them to wait here,” Sara pointed to the seating area, “and call him to let him know they’re here. He’ll retrieve them himself, you should never need to physically go and get him.

“There are often a number of menial tasks he’ll ask you to do daily like ordering lunch, coffees and arranging his dry cleaning. There’s a Filofax in your drawer which tells you where to call for each thing. He’s a bit fussy, but he’ll get used to you eventually. Whatever you do, don’t let him bully you.”

I choked on a laugh and Sara smiled. He sounded like a catch.

The truth was, I knew nothing about Caleb Wolfe or his business. This was the first job listing I found that needed a quick hire in a reputable company, and in all the excitement of the past weekend, I hadn’t bothered to look him up. Maybe I should have, but what harm would it really do? I could look him up properly later.

I sat down behind the desk and found my login details. “Who’s idea was it to put the desk in the window?” I asked conversationally.

“I don’t know. It’s just always been here. Why do you ask?”

I shrugged. “Just seems silly to have a waiting room by a blank wall when you could have it with a view.”

Sara chuckled. “You make a valid point. Maybe when you’ve settled in you can pitch the idea to him.”

Perhaps. I logged in, changed my passwords as instructed, and started sifting through emails. By the looks of it, a lot of them were crap.

Sara stayed with me until 8:30, when voices began emerging from down the corridor.

I braced myself for the forthcoming introduction. I was nervous to meet someone for the first time in my life. I wasn’t sure why, since I’d met many powerful, rich, important men. But this time it meant something. This one in particular held the fate of my new life in his hands. If I couldn’t do this one job for this one man, it was over.

“Benji, I don’t know how many times I have to tell you,” an authoritative voice said from mere metres away, “you cannot make a decision like that without me present.”

“I know, but you were busy all week last week and I couldn’t let it slip away! It’s a great opportunity, Caleb. He said he’d pull the plug if he had to wait any longer.”

“That there, brother, was your mistake. Never let anyone else make you believe their time is more important than yours. Not in this business. If he wanted a partnership with us that badly, he’d have waited.”

“Will you still meet with him?” Benji pleaded.

“You haven’t given me much choice.”

Just then, two men appeared around the corner. One was shorter, with black hair and thick black reading glasses, but eyes a very familiar shade of blue. He looked like Clark Kent if he didn’t work out so much.

“Morning, Sara,” the Clark Kent wannabe greeted her with a grin.

“Morning, Benji.”

I turned my attention to the other man, my new boss, and I felt my stomach hit the floor.

“Morning, Sara,” Caleb Wolfe parroted. “And this must be Miss Buxton.”

He was already holding his hand out. When our eyes met, I watched a hundred different emotions pass through his gaze, and yet I doubted the other people in the room had noticed.

I cleared my throat and stood up, taking his extended hand. I watched his jaw flex. “Nice to meet you, Mr Wolfe. You can call me Rae.”