“Hey, Pavios, how are you doing? Could you move your legs right quick? I need to hide under your desk.”
Pavios stared at me openmouthed, giving me an unappetizing view of his partially chewed Limburger cheese and tuna salad sandwich. Pavios had a habit of eating the same smelly thing for lunch every day at his desk—much to the dismay of his human Royal Scottish Bank colleagues. For that reason, along with his questionable personal hygiene, his RSB office mates had taken to calling him “Stench” behind his back.
I, however, was beyond grateful that Stench—or Pavios (as he was called by the less nose-sensitive workers on our floor) was oblivious to the wall of smell surrounding him. In fact, it was precisely why I’d ambushed the hapless IT guy in the first place.
Unfortunately, Pavios was taking way too long to respond to my request, and I only had a few seconds to hide before HE showed up.
There was no time for explanations. I yanked at the seatback of Pavios’ wheeled office chair—effectively shoving it and Pavios out of the way—and dove beneath his desk.
I scrambled as far back into the small space as I could, tucking my Jimmy Choos beneath me. The desk space was dimly lit and—whoa!—extremely pungent. I spotted the Church-brand loafers on the dark blue carpet next to me. Pavios must have kicked them off when he sat down.
Well, that explained the extra layer of stink. Once this situation was over, I vowed to pull Pavios aside and urge him to get his hands on a tube of anti-fungal cream and at least two cans of Odor-Eaters shoe spray.
Most humans in my current position would be trying hard not to gag or vomit. But my shifter senses relied on scent to gather important data about my surroundings. That meant I could handle any number of smells that were often too offensive for humans to bear full on. And Pavios, hands down, had the most intense scent of anyone in the office.
I sent up a silent prayer that the combination of Stench’s stench and the Keinwulf Neutralizing Fragrance I always wore would be enough to mask my smell from the incoming mega-problem I wasn’t nearly ready to face.
“Don’t tell him I’m down here!” I instructed Pavios in as loud a whisper as I dared with him nearby.
“Tell who? What’s this all about then—?” Pavios started to ask. But then he broke off to exclaim, “Crivvens! Is that Magnus Scotswolf? Ach, it is! Right here on the Technology and Auditing floor! What’s he doing here?”
“Don’t. Tell. Him. I’m. Here.” With that command, I wrapped a hand around the steel stem of Pavios’s rolling chair and yanked it towards me, forcing him into a wedged-in seated position that wouldn’t allow him to stand up to get a better look at the male I could smell rapidly approaching the cubicle. I needed it to look like the IT guy was simply eating lunch at his desk—not talking to the she-wolf hiding underneath it.
“Have you seen Tara Hamilton?” A voice asked only a few milliseconds later. It was low and commanding with a ridiculously thick Highland brogue.
“You’re … you’re Magnus Scotswolf!” Pavios sputtered instead of answering the question.
“Aye, that’s me,” the deep and officious voice replied. “I’m looking for Tara Hamilton. According to yer office mates by the lift, she was last seen heading in this direction. Did ye see her?”
“You’re Magnus Scotswolf … Magnus Scotswolf!” Pavios repeated. His voice was only a few registers below that of a prepubescent girl, and it sounded like he was on the verge of passing out.
“Aye, right again, mate. Now, could you tell me where—”
“I heard you might reach 100 caps this season!”
A pause. Then, “The only argument I have with that statement is the word ‘might.’ Now, do ye think ye can point me in the dir—"
“Magnus Scotswolf is here! At my desk! Talking to me. Me!!!” Pavios began to make a sound I could only describe as a cross between a wheeze and a scream.
And I let out a breath of relief. Poor Pavios obviously had too much of a man crush on Magnus to be of any use to him finding me.
Magnus seemed to reach the same conclusion. “Alright, mate. Well met. I’ll—er—I’ll see if the folks in the next section can help.”
Pavios just repeated breathlessly, “Magnus Scotswolf talked to me. To me!”
I held my position underneath the desk as I listened to the sound of Magnus’s boots heading away. Other than that, and Pavios’s star-struck fanboy declarations, I heard the light banter of some staffers returning from lunch.
That light banter soon came to an abrupt stop when they saw the male Pavios was still going on about.
“Feckin’ hell, it’s Magnus Scotswolf!” The familiar voice of the normally stodgy Head Auditor rang out among all the gasps and hooting sounds people make when they are well and truly surprised.
“Aye, that it is,” Magnus agreed. “I’m looking for—”
“But why are you on this floor?” The Head Auditor demanded before Magnus could finish. “The private banking fellows are on the second floor. This is the seventh floor—Technology and Auditing.”
“Uh, yes, I ken what floor I’m on. See, I’m looking for Tara Hamil—”
“Tara Hamilton? D’you mean Glamour?” The Head Auditor asked, cutting Magnus off yet again. “Tara’s in Technology over by the lifts. This here is Auditing. Nobody in this department would wear heels the likes of her. Right impractical they are. I have worries about the future health of that lass’s spine.”
A consternated pause. Then Magnus said, “I already checked with her department, but her desk is empty. They told me she headed this way.”
“Am I dreamin’?” Another voice butted in. “Because I had a dream exactly like this the other night. Except you were naked. And so was I. And the rest of you lot just watched us go at it.”
I rolled my eyes. That was Glenda, the oldest auditor on staff speaking. There wasn’t a sexual harassment course in the world that could make her actually think before telling an inappropriate story at work.
“If you can’t find her, she’s probably at lunch,” a helpful voice suggested. It belonged to the new Auditing intern from India. Her recent arrival to Scotland explained why she didn’t sound as breathless or awed as the rest of her colleagues when she spoke to Magnus, one of Scotland’s top rugby players. “Tara usually grabs lunch outside the office. Maybe try the kebab place near the shops on Multrees Walk?”
“But,” interjected Glenda, “Before you do that, let me help you check the loo. She might have popped in there to powder her nose. Right this way, you dead sexy man …”
Glenda’s voice gradually faded as she led Magnus away.
Still, I didn’t budge from my position beneath Pavios’s desk. Nor did I loosen my tight clasp on his chair. I wasn’t taking any chances and I was willing to use every ounce of my superior werewolf strength to keep from being found out.
Lucky for me, Pavios just couldn’t get over his celebrity encounter. He kept going on about how he’d met and spoken with Magnus Scotswolf until Magnus finally headed back to the main elevator bank.
I listened carefully for the far-off dinging of an arriving elevator car followed by the swoosh-hum of its slow descent. Thanks to my preternatural hearing and sense of smell, I knew the very moment Magnus left the floor—just like I knew the very moment he arrived a few minutes earlier.
Only when he was completely gone, did I push back Pavios’s chair and carefully crawl out from under the desk.
However, my problems didn’t end with Magnus’s departure.
When I got to my own cubicle, I found every single employee other than Pavios on the floor, including my boss—a tubby redhead named Gordon—gathered around it.
They started shouting questions as soon as I appeared.
“Why was Magnus Scotswolf looking for you?”
“Where were you?”
“Did I just see you crawling out from underneath Stench’s desk of all places?” Some middle-aged accountant I didn’t know very well asked.
“Now, why on earth would she do that?” Gordon demanded.
“No idea!” the accountant who’d spotted me emerging from my hiding place answered. “Why would any woman hide from Magnus Scotswolf in the first place? I mean, it was Magnus Scotswolf.”
The accountant spoke his name in the same way my mother spoke of Jesus as our Lord and Savior. Then he and the rest of the crowd stared at me in collective expectation of a good answer to all their questions.
But I had no good answers for them—at least none they would believe.
So, I turned to Gordon and asked, “Any updates on my transfer request to RSB Dublin yet?”