Becoming “Matt Jones,” an alter ego he couldn't have invented any better than Jonah had, was remarkably easy. A group of hair and makeup people had transformed him into a man who resembled a younger nephew, if he'd had one. His silver hair, a hallmark since he was in his late twenties, was gone, replaced by a dye job that returned him to a hair color he hadn't seen since early college. The bright baby blues he was known for had to go, replaced by green contact lenses that made Ireland's famous hills look dim. His eyes glowed like something radioactive, like The Green Lantern as a contestant on The Bachelor.
All of his bespoke suits and carefully-chosen fine clothes were gone. Scratchy polos, coarse button down shirts and Dockers replaced his wardrobe. To fit the part, he had to look like a guy who shopped at the mall. All he needed was a beat-up old Toyota Corolla and he fit the part of a guy ten years out of college, still struggling with student loans, and who had just landed his first decent management job.
“Perfect!” Jonah had announced as they convened late last night. “We have cameras in your office, in the outer office where the administrative assistant sits, in all the hallways leading to your office in social media, and in your rental car. If you're here at work, you'll be tracked.”
“But once we're off set, it's done, right?” A confirmation. An affirmation. A bit of a power play, too, as Mike made it clear he wouldn't be recorded without his permission.
Jonah had shot him a funny look. “If you're in the office, cameras are rolling.”
“If I'm on my way home or elsewhere, they're not.” That wasn't a question. Mike's blood pressure shot up, his chest tightening with anger. This wasn't the original deal.
Jonah had bristled. “No! Of course not. So here's the first script.” He had handed Mike a thick stack of bound pages.
“Script?” Why would a 'reality television show' need a script? He wasn't an actor, and had assumed nothing was staged. No time in any day for learning lines, either.
“You need to manufacture conflict sometimes. So we'll start by having you steal the administrative assistant's parking spot.”
Mike had groaned. And now he knew why he had groaned. But not for any of the reasons he'd thought then. Now he groaned because he wanted to groan for Lydia. As he thought of her he leaned back in his chair and took another deep breath.
Stretching his arms out on the desk, his hands sliding across the fake-wood top, he inhaled deeply and closed his eyes. Not the most auspicious beginning. She looked exactly as he had remembered, but with a maturity that deepened her features over time. What had been fresh faced was now wiser; her guardedness made him want to break through gently – not just bulldoze. Long, dark hair with the loss of nature's shine that comes from long-term office work, the lack of sunlight turning the dimmer switch down on hair color, skin tone, and – he was learning – morale. Her eyes were still that strange color between brown and topaz, with flecks of green. A long, symmetrical nose and high cheekbones made her look slightly Nordic, as if Finnish genes entered into her family tree a few generations back, along with something spicier.
He couldn't put his finger on it. But oh, how he wanted to.
A few fleeting moments of taking in her sweater, her lap, her legs, had been enough to confirm that her luscious body was, indeed, as remembered: curves where they should be, angles where nature intended, and an ass that was full and sensual, as if carved by Ruben and toned by J. Lo. When her skin flushed his pants had tightened. It didn't take a genius to know she was attracted to him in spite of her anger.
And he was a certified genius, complete with MENSA membership and a long file of tests that confirmed it. None of those had mattered, though. Guts mattered. The will to act mattered. Taking risks really mattered.
He shifted, his erection telling him more than his analysis of her ever could. She clearly had expected a shot at this job, a job he never intended to create. The producers wanted conflict and had made him act out that scene, like something from a very bad Chuck Norris television show, and in the end he had his own raging desire and, now, a very pissed off admin.
The door to the outer office scraped open and his eyes shifted to his smartphone. 7:59 a.m.
Time for his first day as Director to begin.
With a cup of coffee.
Lydia punched the number of her best friend, Krysta, into her mobile phone, except the punching part wasn't satisfying any more. You couldn't really get angry with a glass interface, and her smartphone took the abuse about as well as a stone statue could function as a punching bag. Bruised finger and three mistyped numbers later, she finally heard the ringing and hoped Krysta would pick up.
She did.
“'Lo?” Sleepy voice.
“Krysta, they gave the job to someone else!” Lydia stared at the main doors to the office building as they shut slowly under the control of the pneumatic system, Matt Jones' body disappearing as if swallowed. Her final glimpse of him was his ass, too tight and perfectly aligned as he walked into the building and, she assumed, into his office, the empty office right behind hers that she had fantasized about for more than a year.
“What?” Krysta was awake now. She knew how important that job was for Lydia. “How could they do that? You didn't even get a chance to apply.”
Anger melted into disappointment as Lydia hunched over the steering wheel, willing the tears away. Her eye caught the back cover of Fifty Shades and she rolled her eyes. Like she would ever snag a billionaire. Like she would ever let a billionaire do those...things. What Ana allowed. Then again, if she'd been as naive as Ana and as hooked on some dominating billionaire and hadn't earned a master's degree by the age of twenty-three she might have an inner goddess that didn't have cobwebs growing on it.
“Lydia?”
“I'm here. Dammit.” Tears fought and won, spilling down her cheeks. Good thing she hadn't put on her makeup yet. Tipping her head up, she carefully milked the teardrops out of the corners of her eyes so they didn't drop on her top or roll between her breasts.
“I'm coming over. I was going to come to work late today, but...” Krysta worked on a different floor in the same building, but her boss allowed for flex schedules. Not the Director of Communications, her boss. Dave liked to have coverage at the desk. A desk no one every physically came to.
And that meant Lydia.
“You can't! I'm at work.” And I have to spend an entire day pretending to be just fine with Mr. Matt Jones the Job Stealer. Her boss just gave the job away like that? Of course he did. It was Dave. Dave the snake...
All her insecurities came crashing through as she felt her throat tighten. Two years of hard work, student loans overwhelming her and a master's degree full of ideas pressing down on her, the weight of success so great it made it hard to breathe. Justifying all that energy, so much intellect, so many arguments with herself about the value of getting an M.A. in Gender Studies that distilled down into this moment – a few days before her big project pitch.
The job was gone. Gone, gone, gone. Another round of tears threatened the edges of her eyes and she reached up her skirt to pinch her inner thigh. No! No more crying.
“OK, then. I'll meet you at your house after work. I'm bringing Thai food.”
“Satay, too?”
“You betcha. And Lyd – I'm so sorry. Whoever the new boss is, he's an ass.”
In the distance, the main doors to Bournham Industries stood apathetic, uncaring and monolithic. Stone and steel didn't care about a worker do-bee like Lydia. Pullies and fuses and computer boards moved the elevator up, filled with Matt Jones, taking him where she knew he would need her.
Need her. Ironic that she would be supporting the very person she'd intended to be. Director of Social Media.
“I'm fine.” Even she could hear how pathetic her answer sounded, voice fading and a bit whiny, like a lesson in a book she'd read years ago about the gluttony of delicacy. I'm fine, I just need a morsel to be OK. You go on without me. Her mom called it Eeyore Syndrome and Lydia didn't indulge in it very often.
Only when it mattered.
“See you then,” she answered. Click. Squaring her shoulders, she slipped out of her little red car and walked with purpose toward the main entrance. If nothing else, she hadn't relinquished her parking spot. A petty victory, but one she needed.
“I see you found the coffee,” she said politely, nodding her head toward the cheap foam cup he held in his hand.
“If you can call it that.” He took a sip and grimaced. “Tastes more like death.”
“Death with cremate.”
He sputtered, the joke catching him unaware. “Excuse me? Cremate? As in body ashes?”
Pink cheeks made her look younger, more pleasant, less combative. “Inside joke. I mentioned, once, that we needed more creamer and I called it 'cremate,' and the joke's stuck.”
“Can't we afford half and half?” He chuckled as conspiratorially as possible. The kitchen – if you could call it that – had a coffee maker, a can of powdered chemical hell designed to mimic cream, some packets of sugar and artificial sweetener, and a small refrigerator that smelled like something you'd find in a Jeffrey Dahmer's apartment.
He stood next to her as she photocopied some report that he’d asked her to distribute, her hands deftly manipulating the papers on the machine, her artful movements as arousing as any intentionally sensual activity another woman had ever engaged in with him.
Shake it off. Less than an hour into this and he was thinking with his dick already?
“If you can find room in the budget, I'm all ears,” she laughed. “How about a Viking fridge and an omelette chef?” She shot him a withering look and said, “You've been here an hour. Down, boy.”
The joke just aroused him more, her voice a sarcastic growl that sent rushes of arousal coursing through him. He really was going mad, and this was getting ridiculous. Like some sort of eighth grader with a crush on a classmate, Mike was quickly devolving into a stammering fool. With a giant erection.
He couldn’t help himself, though, as he took a deep breath inhaling her scent – a mixture of freshly laundered sheets and something spicy, a cinnamon perhaps – he wasn’t sure, but whatever it was, it was intoxicating. Reveling in the inhale, in bringing her inside himself, what he wanted was the reverse, of course – he wanted to be in her.
Michael Bournham, CEO Bournham Industries, would have found a way to be obvious, direct, and to get exactly what he wanted, when he wanted it, and how he wanted it. In this scenario, though, he wasn’t Mike. He was Matt. So here he stood, increasingly frustrated on a level he hadn’t felt in nearly twenty years, with one of the most attractive women he’d ever met in his entire life fuming over his very existence.
Oh my God, how long is that man going to stand there? Lydia wondered, shoving stacks of papers into the copy machine feeder and hoping the damn contraption didn’t jam this time. Every time it jammed she got toner all over her hands, and that stuff didn’t come out of clothing, her skin, the walls – whatever she touched. Matt just stood there, his eyes half closed, taking a deep breath, and she wondered what on Earth was wrong with him.
Yammering on about coffee and her ancient cremate joke. Gah.