Page 110 of The Temporary Fiancée
I let out a breath. “Oh, you know.” I try to wave it off, but there’s a little tremor in my voice. “The typical stuff. Coming on to me. Asking me to dinner. Telling me he liked the way my ass looked in a skirt.”
At that, his lip curls in disgust. “He said that?”
“Once.”
“When did that start?”
“He only started to get sexually inappropriate toward the end of my time there,” I admit. “I didn’t stick around long after those types of messages started coming in. I didn’t feel safe in that workplace anymore.”
“So he didn’t always do it?”
“No,” I say, shaking my head even though his eyes are fixed on the road. “But he was always an asshole, right from the beginning. He was cruel, always too hard on everyone, and he never listened to a single word I said.”
The way that Keller ignored me was all too familiar; the man was a classic misogynist, right from the start. I would have quit soon after getting the job, but I needed the work too badly. With my mother sick and my father struggling, I didn’t feel I could afford to be picky.
If I’d known what a mess it would cause, I would’ve walked straight out of those doors without a second thought.
“What do you mean, cruel?”
“He was just… mean to people. He was a nasty piece of work, you know? If he had a bad day, he made it everyone’s problem. He came down too hard on all of his employees, but the women most of all. I saw him make one of his secretaries cry once.”
Reed’s grip tightens on the steering wheel until his knuckles are white. When I turn to look at him, I can see the buildinganger in his eyes, like a storm ready to break. “You shouldn’t have had to deal with that.”
I shrug. “It’s nothing that others haven’t dealt with.”
“That doesn’t make it okay.”
“I know. It’s just… I needed the money. I couldn’t leave.”
“That makes it worse,” he says through gritted teeth. “The fact that you felt trapped there. He probably knew it, too.”
“He did,” I sigh. “He knew my mother was sick. He held it over my head all the time, to be honest. Threatened to fire me constantly, even though he never actually would. He needed me too badly.”
He’s quiet for a long moment. Tense. His eyes are narrowed.
Then he says, “I want to make sure that you never have to work a job like that again. Even after our arrangement is over.”
The reminder of our short term agreement stings a little, but that sting is eased by the obvious protectiveness in his voice. His anger is fueled directly by warmth, and some of the ice that was between us melts away.
“Thank you,” I say.
“I’m serious,” he replies. His gaze slides away from the road for a moment to meet mine. “That man is a total fucking asshole for treating you like that.”
The fury in his voice takes me aback. I’ve seen him angry before, of course—when he snapped at his father at dinner, or when he pulled me away from the dance floor at the party. But never like this. This… this is something else entirely.
“Yeah, I… I know,” I say, staring at my hands.
“He needs to go down for this.”
I’m trying to formulate a reply when the car pulls up in front of a building’s glass facade. “This is the place,” he says, opening his door.
The Post’s offices are bustling as we step inside the building, but Reed ignores the chaos. He cuts a clean path through thelobby, straight to the front desk, where he gets a receptionist’s attention.
“Excuse me,” he says, polite despite the urgency in his tone. “We’re here to see Maisy O’Conner for an interview.”
“Reed Eastwood?”
When he nods, the receptionist stands, gesturing for us to follow her as she skirts around the desk.
