Chapter Two
Max Treadwell hated surprises. Especially on Monday mornings. He’d walked into his office, expecting to find Grandmother fulfilling her one-day notice, and instead found, he was fairly certain, the source of his current headache. The Chosen One was shockingly thirty minutes early. She stood at his desk with her back to him, thumbing through a stack of his papers. She had arrived for her interview wearing the type of short dress women wore at the clubs he frequented. And she had topped it with a scarred bomber jacket. Interesting choice for an interview.
He’d dug into her social media presence over the weekend. Under her biography she’d written the quote:
Life’s a journey to ping-pong through in a haphazard fashion.
No wonder she couldn’t hold a job. The asinine life philosophy would leave all who followed its wisdom mutilated and defeated.
“I take it you’re Agnes Johansson?” he said.
She whirled around, a look of bemusement—not embarrassment for having been caught snooping through papers on his desk—in her lavender-blue eyes. She batted her long lashes at him. “You can call me Aggie. And you must be Little Maxi Treadwell.”
He scowled. “It’s Max. You’re not on my schedule for another half hour. Do you happen to know where my assistant went?”
“She called last night and asked me to come in early. She said you really put a lot of stock on punctuality, and I do oh so want to make a good first impression. Speaking of good first impressions, Ms. Grace is such a sweet woman. Anyway, when I got here, she told me to tell you that she’s meeting my meemaw for coffee and she’d try to be back in time for you to take your lunch break.”
He swallowed the dismay he felt over Grandmother’s lack of professionalism and…well…almost everything about the woman standing in front of him. “I see.”
“Oh, and she said to tell you that she’s had the phone forwarded to your desk, so answer when it rings. And to remind you that you’re expecting an important call from a client.”
He rubbed the back of his neck. “Let me get this straight, she called you in early and then still left you here unattended and the phones unmanned?” Grandmother’s one-day notice hadn’t even made it past hour one.
Aggie’s eyes narrowed a fraction, like maybe she found the comment a subtle dig. “Your phone has rung twice, and since you’re expecting an important call, I took the liberty of answering. I left your messages for you there by the phone.”
“Thank you.” The initiative didn’t mesh with his view of her as an employee train wreck. She could have just as easily let the calls go to voicemail. He picked them up and grimaced. The handwriting was horrific. “I can’t read these.”
“My bad.” She plucked them out of his hand then held one up. “This one’s from Grant. He said to tell you to check your email before interviewing me.”
Damn. “What?”
Her lips pressed together in a firm line. “Well…he didn’t say my name, but he described me.”
Max pinched the bridge of his nose. He should’ve grabbed a cup of coffee after his morning run instead of showering and rushing to work. “What did he say?”
“He called me the chosen one.”
“And the second message?”
She glanced at the other one. “This was from a fun-sounding Tabitha, who said to tell you she really hated that she had to hurry off.” She dropped the messages into the trash bin and picked back up his papers she’d been thumbing through before.
His first impression of the Chosen One was cementing his decision to implement his and Grant’s plan. He strode to his desk, swiped the résumés out of her hand, and motioned for her to have a seat in the chair across from his desk. The scent of her perfume tickled his nose. Not strong. Subtle. Flirtatious. He ignored the asinine desire to linger so he could inhale her deeply.
“Didn’t anyone teach you it’s impolite to snoop?” He did a quick glance around to see if anything else looked out of place. The blinds that he closed every night before leaving had been opened. One of the chairs in the seating area had been turned to face the view of Kansas City out the floor-to-ceiling wall of windows from his third-story office. He refocused.
“Snoop?” The Chosen…Aggie stuck a loose strand of hair behind her ear. She had a lot of loose strands, like maybe she’d yanked up her ponytail in a hurry. “For your information, your grandmother, Ms. Grace,” she said, “handed them to me before leaving and asked me to alphabetize them.” Instead of taking a seat, she leaned the curve of her hip against his desk. “Since this is a courtesy interview that won’t end in an offer, why don’t I help you find the best candidate?”
Oh hell no. It would end in a job offer. An offer he needed her to refuse. “Not a courtesy interview at all,” he said. “I know all about your employment history, and I’m willing to cut you some slack. Do you have a résumé?”
“My employment history?” Traces of steel hardened her tone. “Since I haven’t yet given you my résumé, how do you know anything other than my name and who my meemaw is?”
“Grandmother mentioned that you’ve had a run of bad luck job-wise.”
“Oh.” She leaned down, picked up a bag that was way too large to be a purse, and set it on the chair. For a few moments, she rifled through it before pulling out a tube of toothpaste, a Rubik’s Cube with all the correct colors on each side, a bag of gummy bears, and a rather heavy-looking hammer.
He cocked his head. Should he ask?
She straightened. “Damn. I knew I forgot something this morning. If I could borrow your computer, I’ll pull up my Aggie’s Assets and print it off for you. It will only take a jiff.”
He raised an eyebrow. “Aggie’s Assets?” Did it include her bra size along with her typing speed?
She cheerfully nodded.
“That won’t be necessary. You can email it to me later today.”
“Thank you.” She shot him a bright fake smile. “Meemaw said you were a peach.” Her tone was suddenly purely Southern in every way possible. The accent. The sweetness. The thinly veiled insult.
“I do try to be a peach every chance I get,” he said drily.
One by one, she put everything back into her duffel bag of a purse. How did she even manage to carry that thing?
Once she’d finished repacking, she gave him a saucy smile and then took a seat.
“I’ll start the interview by asking you to fill out a questionnaire.” He walked around his desk and sat. His knees hit the desk. Damn it. She must have sat in his chair and jacked up the height.
“Like a test?” She retrieved a gummy bear from her suitcase and popped it past her bright red lips.
“More like a personality survey.” He tore his gaze away from her mouth and reached under the chair to adjust it.
“You’re testing my personality?” She eyeballed him. “Why?”
“The job as my assistant is demanding and somewhat odd at times, so I need someone I’ll mesh with. After the impressive number of employers you’ve burned through, you would agree meshing is a good thing. Right? Even for a temporary position.”
“Temporary?”
“What? Did Meemaw forget to tell you?” he asked in a patronizing tone that came out sounding just like his father. Good. That was the plan, after all. Channel dear old Dad during this interview.
Her nostrils flared. “I must have missed that memo.”
“My permanent assistant, the one Grandmother was filling in for, is out on maternity leave. And I’ll be honest with you, her shoes will be hard to fill.”
“Your permanent one or your grandmother’s? Because…I mean…Ms. Grace left me alone in your office. I’m thinking I can slide into her shoes just fine and dandy.”
Did she mean to downplay her abilities just now? If so, what game was she playing? “My permanent. My competitors have tried to lure her away for years. Lucky for me, she’s loyal.” He opened his laptop, shook the mouse awake, found the email from Grant, then clicked the link and hit print. “Are you not interested in a two-month job?”
“Temp work is my favorite.” Aggie crossed her legs at the knees, causing her already short skirt to slide up ever so slightly, showing off her slender, toned calves. “Especially if it pays well. Meemaw said she was sure you would be super generous with my compensation, considering I’d be doing you such a huge favor and all, helping you out in this bind.”
“Bind?”
She leaned in, her eyes twinkling like a person privy to insider information. “You know… Since you knocked up your permanent assistant. You know, the Loyal One.”
He coughed. Damn it. “I did not get her pregnant. She’s happily married. And I have plenty of candidates to choose from for this position, so there isn’t any bind here for me to get out of.” Where in the hell had she gotten that misinformation?
Aggie gave a delicate shrug and settled back in her chair. “Right. My bad.”
He grabbed the pages of the survey off the printer without looking at them and handed them across the desk to her. He glanced at the pencil holder. Empty. His germophobic Grandmother must have confiscated his writing utensils for a thorough disinfecting. He sighed. “Do you have a pen?”
Once again, she rummaged in her purse, this time pulling out a condom. She glanced up at him, and for a moment, a hint of red flushed her cheeks. Then she gave him a wicked grin. “I have an extra if you want this one. It’s glow-in-the-dark pink.”
He said nothing. What could one possibly say to a job candidate who had just offered you a condom? If it weren’t for the fact he knew Grandmother hated pranks, he’d think this was all one elaborate prank.
She dropped the condom back into her purse and pulled out a pen. “You don’t mind pink, do you? It’s my lucky color.”
And all this time he thought it was hideous orange. Like what was on her eyelids. “It’ll be fine. Fill this out and return it to me when you’re finished. You’ll have one hour.” He held out his hand. “I’ll need your phone so you can’t contact anyone for insight on how you should answer a question.”
She handed over her cell. Easily. Too easily. “And your bag.” She could be hiding a dictionary in that thing. Or an entire library.
Aggie lifted her purse and placed it on the edge of his desk with a thump and then flipped through the pages of the document. “Do you have a clipboard, or should I use the corner of your desk?”
“Follow me.” He marched out and pointed at the receptionist’s desk.
“Won’t your receptionist need her space?” Aggie asked.
Don’t even get me started on the receptionist fiasco. “I don’t have one of those at the moment.”
Aggie chuckled softly. “Is it just me or is there a pattern forming that doesn’t reflect well upon you as a potential employer?”
“It’s just you.” Grandmother was supposed to have hired him a receptionist last week. Not only did she not get that job accomplished, but to make matters worse, over the weekend, she called and asked him not to fill the opening until she’d made up her mind if it was a position she might want to tackle. After all, it wouldn’t be as demanding as that of his assistant.
Aggie studied him as if looking for a sign of lying. Then she shrugged. “My bad.”
He snapped his mouth shut, pivoted, went back to his private office, and turned off the air for the receptionist area.
…
Aggie watched the great Max Treadwell stomp back to his office and shut the door with a defined click. His expression when she accused him of getting his last assistant pregnant had been priceless. For a moment, she thought she might have given him a heart attack. There was no way in hell he’d offer her the job now.
She scanned the personality quiz. I’m in search of someone whose personality meshes with mine. Jeez. She was applying to coddle to his office needs, not his heart needs.
She read the first question. Laughed. Read it again.
Explain zymology. Why did his assistant need to know the chemistry of fermentation? Did he have a side hustle making beer? Or did he want to assess if she was the personality type to have a beer with him after hours?
What is pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanokoniosis? Well, duh. It practically gave you the answer in the word itself. Who didn’t know that the longest word in the English language was a name for a lung disease?
She rolled her shoulders and glanced at the next question. Another easy one.
Which letter of the alphabet is most often used to start words? Anyone who watched Wheel of Fortune knew it’s the letter S.
The smirky bastard views me as brainless. She’d show him. Blondes can kick trivia ass. Get ready for a rude awakening.
If he truly needed an assistant with this type of knowledge, he’d be lucky to have the Chosen One. Meemaw had been stuffing Aggie full of odd facts since she’d been in kindergarten.
She looked around for a cooler spot to sit. This room was a lot hotter than his office. She walked to the air vent, but nothing came out, and there wasn’t a temperature control on any of the walls.
“It takes a lot more than a little heat to beat Agnes Johansson.” She grabbed several tissues out of a box on the desk, stuck them between her boobs where she always sweated first, and reclined onto the cold tile. With her back against the wall, she got busy.
She quickly made her way through the questions. Most of them were easy. A few were more thought provoking. Like questions number ninety-five, ninety-six, and ninety-seven. Until this point, she’d kept her answers beyond reproach, but these just begged for jazz hands.
What do you think about when you’re alone in the car? I remember things while I’m driving. Like this one time I was speeding down the highway on the back of a Harley, when the hum between my legs got to be too much. I unbuttoned the top button of the guy’s jeans I was with and slipped my hand inside his boxers. You can tell a lot about a man in that kind of situation. I think about his erection a lot when I’m alone in a car.
She chuckled. Let him squirm over that one. If he was going to make her sweat, she could make him do the same. That answer alone should keep him from offering her the job. She moved on to the next question.
What would your autobiography be called? Reckless in the City.
How would you describe yourself in three words? Fabulous. In. Bed.
Fifty-five minutes later, she knocked on Max’s office door, ready to hand him all the ammo he needed not to offer her the position. Of course, by now, he should have already firmly made up his mind not to make the offer. Hell, she’d worn spiked heels to the interview.
If there was a part of her that kind of, sort of, maybe wanted a job that required this kind of knowledge, well…she just ignored it. She didn’t take handouts. Not even job handouts.
…
Max’s mood had deteriorated from amused to annoyed then pissed to damn right ready to strangle someone, and it was Aggie’s fault. He had plenty of work to keep him busy, but her damn phone kept mooing every five minutes. After the third moo, he checked to see what in the hell all the farm noises were about. It was her sound choice for new text alerts. The sound choice of an adult delinquent. Curious, he read what he could see on the screen without opening her messages.
After that one, he’d turned her damn phone facedown. But that didn’t keep him from wondering how she’d reply to Bill. Which kept him from concentrating on the contract he was reviewing, which—
A firm knock pulled a curse out of him. “Come in.” He glanced at the time on his computer. Fifty-five minutes. She couldn’t possibly finish a two-hour test so quickly.
Aggie opened the door and stepped inside. She didn’t appear flustered.
He frowned. “Did you need more time?”
“Nope.” She strode over to him and handed him the survey. She’d removed her jacket, displaying a sleeveless dress.
“Have a seat while I check these.” He glanced at the first question. Fuck. He didn’t have a clue if she’d answered it right or not. He read the next, and the next, and the next. Hell. Were these personality questions or trivia questions? Did Grant send him the wrong form?
He pulled up Grant’s email and smiled when he discovered he’d attached an answer guide. Not wanting her to know he was checking her work against a key, he picked up her phone and held it out. She didn’t notice. She was too busy…pulling tissues out of her pink lace bra and stuffing them in her purse.
He cleared his throat. “Before I forget, here’s this. You’ve had a few thousand moos.”
She laughed. “Sorry about that. I should’ve put it on silent.”
There wasn’t one apologetic bone in her distracting body.
She happily thumbed through the messages, stopping to laugh and reply to a few as he reviewed her responses. While she aced all the answers, he only fathomed about half. Her graduating in the bottom of her class had nothing to do with her brain.
He flipped to the last page and settled in to read her pink loopy script.
What would your pet say about you if we asked for a reference? My human is puurrrfect as long as you don’t expect her to procure you anything until she’s fetched herself a cup of coffee.
In other words, if he hired Aggie, he’d probably end up making and bringing her coffee instead of the other way around.
On a scale of one to ten, rate yourself on how weird you are? Zero. I’m perfectly normal. Anything I do wrong has nothing to do with an abnormality in my personality and everything to do with my mood.
A well-thought-out response. Mature.
How do you weigh an elephant without using a scale?
Max hissed in a breath. What an asinine question. He glanced at her response.
Calculate the volume of the water in the pool and make a note of the water level. Once you’ve got the elephant in the pool—good luck with that—the Archimedes’ principle says the volume of water dislocated is the same as the object’s weight.
What is the temperature when it’s twice as cold as zero degrees? Depends. Are you asking Fahrenheit or Celsius?
Are your parents disappointed with your career aspirations? I don’t know my parents.
Shit. He was playing dick-fuckery with an orphan. He shut down the guilt and moved to the next question.
Why is a manhole round? Any other shape of a manhole cover could be moved in such a way that the cover would fall in. No one wants that to happen, because it would probably land on an important rat and kill it, and then PETA would get involved and there’d be protests, and the surviving gutter rats would get all worked up and invade the city to avenge the death of King Rat Face. The circular one can’t fall in and it doesn’t require exact placement and it’s easy to move and roll out of the way.
If you don’t get this job, what is your back-up plan? Blame you for being unrealistic in your expectations.
He groaned and then smiled.
How would you describe the man who is interviewing you? Cocky. Handsome in a pretty-boy way. Not my type. But I’m sure we’ll mesh on a professional level.
He’d bet his trust fund Grant added that question. The next time he saw the guy, he would kick his ass.
Not her type. He didn’t ask to be her type. He glanced her way. She was clicking away on her phone with what he’d bet was a real smile stretched across her face. No doubt answering her messages.
He read the next question.
What do you think about when you’re alone in the car?
By the time he finished reading her response, he was hot, hard, and horny. Now he knew her type. It really wasn’t him. She went for the bad-boy brand. But God help him, at this moment, he wished he were. Which pissed him off, because he knew that’s exactly what she’d meant to happen.
He shifted in his chair, trying to ease the discomfort of having a hard-on, and immediately felt her gaze on him. He stopped squirming and glanced up. They made eye contact. Contact that lasted longer than it should have. Her lavender eyes darkened a fraction, and she slowly licked her bottom lip. He shook his head, as if to tell her no, or himself no.
“How did I do?” She lifted a brow at him.
Time to pull out the big-dick guns. “I’m relieved to know I’m not your type. You’re not my type, either.”
She sat up straight. “I’m not?”
“Not enough drive. Too…casual.” That part was true. He planned to take the world by its balls, and when he was ready for love, he’d need a strong woman by his side. Not someone known for quitting. Like his mom had.
“Whatever.” Aggie flicked a piece of gummy bear off her dress, leaving it on his carpet where it landed.
He raised a brow. “Brain food of choice?”
“My man’s breakfast food of choice.” She bent forward to pick it up, giving him a clear view of her cleavage.
He gulped. Damn.
…
Aggie watched Max and waited. There was nothing left for them to say to each other except the one very important thing. You’ll be hearing from me.
“One more question,” he said in a voice that sounded forced, while twirling a pen between his fingers. “Are you willing to work evenings and weekends? Is there anything, short of getting naked or illegal activity, you would not be willing to do?”
There was something going on with him. Something she couldn’t put her finger on. Yet.
“Well?” He sounded annoyed. With himself.
She squared her shoulders and stared straight into his slate-gray eyes. The color of a moody, moonless night. This was her last chance to prove to him she did not fit his needs. “I’ll do anything to make this job work, short of robbing a bank, lying to old ladies, or blowing you.” That should seal the no-deal spiel.
He dropped the ink pen.
It took everything inside of her not to laugh. His expression was priceless. “I’m sorry,” she said in her best contrite voice. “I didn’t mean to say that last part.” She reached for her purse and was about to stand when he made a noise. She glanced up and caught his lips twitching. The guy was trying to be a gentleman. How sweet.
“I can live with those terms.” He wiped at his eyes.
He had a nice face. Not nearly as uptight as most of the words that came out of him. Maybe he was slightly good-looking…in a handsome-and-he-knows-it kinda way. She raised her chin, waiting for the punchline. None came. Realization seeped in.
Are you freaking kidding me? “You can?”
He nodded. “I’m impressed with how you conduct yourself under pressure. The job is yours. For the next two months.”
Noooooooo. “With benefits?”
His eyes widened. “With benefits.”
She sighed internally. A deal was a deal. Meemaw would be happy. “I’ll need you to put that in writing.”
The nostrils of his arrogant nose flared. “You need a contract for a two-month position?”
“I do.” She’d not lasted that long anywhere since graduating from college. She’d done her best not to get hired here, but since that failed, she had to go all in to make Meemaw proud. Hopefully, a contract would solve her quitting problem.