IN BED WITH THE BOSS

Scott’s eyes scanned every inch of her like laser beams. His eyes took in her suit jacket and skirt, her handbag, down to her shoes. Then slowly, they returned to her face.

“You’re early,” he said, “And that’s good. Sit down,”

Vivian went to one of the chairs in front of his desk with a casualness she didn’t feel. She sat down and resisted the urge to cross her legs, reminding herself that this was an office and not the restaurant she was used to. She dropped her hand bag beside her. Her ponytail hung across her shoulder.

There was a brief silence for a few seconds while Scott worked on his laptop while Vivian took the opportunity to look around the spacious, expensive looking office. Suddenly he sprawled in the desk chair and rested his head against its high back. The movement brought Vivian’s attention back to him. He had a very intense way of staring, she thought as blood beat against her skull. Her hands tightly grasped the arms of the chair as she waited for him to speak.

“I don’t usually come to the office this early” he began, “but as I told you, there’s a lot of work to be done, and I wanted to help you get started.”© 2024 Nôv/el/Dram/a.Org.

Vivian nodded. “Thank you.”

“Did you bring the documents I asked for?”

“Yes, I did,” Vivian replied and handed the file folder she was holding to him.

He slapped the file on the desk and flipped it open. With his bead bent, Vivian watched him as he went through it. Studying the papers intently, a slight frown on his face as he read. Silence spread over the room, disturbed only by the sounds made as he turned the pages.

Without looking up, he said, “I see you worked for an advertising company years ago. Why did you quit? Judging by what I’m seeing here, it looks like you were doing good.”

“The company had some… setbacks” Vivian replied. “They had to lay off some of the staff and unfortunately I was one of them.”

He looked up then, his expression unreadable. “I’m sorry about that.”

“Thank you, sir”

He shut the file folder. “Well, as I told you before, you won’t be doing advertising. I see you don’t have much experience when it comes to being a personal assistant so we’ll go easy on you. Take things step by step until you catch up. As you know, your job is to assist me and help me make the best use of my time by dealing with secretarial and administrative tasks. You will be scheduling meetings and managing my calendar. You will remind me of my conference calls, Strategy days, Staff briefings and so on. Right now, I have a lot of emails I’d like you to go through so that will be your first task. I’ll give you access to my email account and you’ll sort through my mails. There are lots of them and I don’t know where to start from, so you’ll sort them out in order of importance…. So we can know which of them are urgent and have to be taken care of immediately. The last we want to do is lose important clients because we didn’t get to them fast enough. You’re familiar with Google Workspace according to your CV here so I’m sure you can handle this.”

It was more of a statement than a question but Vivian answered anyway. “Yes I’m sure I can.”

“Good.” Scott said and stood up. “Come with me.”

Vivian followed him out of his office and down the hall. She walked beside him and couldn’t help but notice how tall he was, even in her heels, he towered over her by a few inches. He smelt so good too, she observed, almost choked by how aware she was of every movement he made. He was just one man, but he had this air about him, like he sucked up the air in the room. He was confident and masculine. So…. Attractive.

Scott opened a door to reveal an office much smaller than his and they both walked in. “You will be working from here.” He said, “Since we’re not sure when Ruth will be back, I decided that it would be better to leave her office as it is so you can have this as your office. I had them get it ready for you yesterday.”

“Thank you. It’s perfect” Vivian replied, and indeed it was. The blinds were open and she had a good view of the city. It was so much better than she expected and she was overwhelmed.

“You should sit” Scott said and Vivian did as she was told. He followed her behind the desk and when he bent to use the computer in front of her, she almost gasped. He was close, not too close to the extent of being in her personal space, but close enough to make the hair on every part of her body stiffen.

“I’ll just give you access to the mail now that I’m here” he said, as he pushed down keyboard keys, while Vivian sat perfectly still on her chair.

Seconds later, he stood upright. “You’re set” he said, “The emails that are starred are the ones that haven’t been attended to. Go through them, then forward them one after the other to me depending on which one I have to attend to first. I’ll be in my office.”

After he left, Vivian looked around her office. It was beautiful. It had proper lighting and very comfortable air conditioning. She had a great view and so far everything was going well. The only thing she hated was that it was temporary. Whoever his former assistant was, was she a bad person for wishing they wouldn’t come back for a while?

She felt horrible for thinking that way and shook the thought away. Whatever happened, she would give her best here and who knows, maybe Scott McCall would be very Impressed and maybe he’d make her position permanent.

After slipping her legs out of her shoes, Vivian got to work. Carefully going through and sorting out emails as she had been told. Some included meetings, clients orders, business travel plans, contracts and notifications from other company departments. By 12:35, someone knocked on her door.

She invited the person in and Betty opened the door and peeped inside. “Hello” she said, “Busy, I see. I just wanted you to know that it’s time for our lunch break and I wanted to ask if you’d like to come to the cafeteria with us.”