Page 8 of Brooklynaire

“Oh,” he clears his throat. “I’m sosorry.”

It’s terrible timing, but Rebecca’s eyes get hot.You will not cry in an interview!She wants to slap herself. “Thank you, but I’m fine and ready to work. Your messy office doesn’t scare me, mister.” She forces her mouth into a smile and hopes that bluntness has been the right approach, with Nate. Her gut said that itis.

And Nate Kattenberger rewards her with another quick smile. Those dimples! “We definitely need the help. It’s not a very structured environment. Maybe you could work onthat.”

That’s when she notices the drawing on his T-shirt. Nine figures form a cheerleaders’ pyramid, but the participants are kittens, not people. The caption read:StackCats.

“Oh!” Rebecca gasps. She turns her head to take in those weird speech bubbles on the wall.Nate bit a Tibetan. Each sentence is the same either forward or backward. “They’re all palindromes. Your T-shirt,too.”

His eyes widen. “Good eye. Palindromes are a thing with me. My fiancée made the wall mural. Do you code?” he askshopefully.

“No! Sorry.”If only. “But palindromes have been around for centuries. Even in ancient Greece. Literature is kind of my thing.”Washerthing.

“Literature, huh?” Nate cocks aneyebrow.

“Right. I was majoring in comparative lit.” Although she’s only made it through two and a half years of college, with each semester less satisfying than the last. Rebecca loves the way her favorite Jane Austen and Brontë novels make her feel. Unfortunately, comp lit is more about soul-sucking analysis thanfeelings.

Before her dad died, she’d been struggling and fearful that she just might not be keen enough on the major she’d chosen. Leaving school hadn’t been the plan, but a part of her is relieved not to be dissecting another sonnet rightnow.

“What else should I know about you?” Nateasks.

“I’m a good worker,” she says quickly. “I had a three-point-nine gradeaverage…”

“Which class gave you theB?”

Of course he’d zero in on that. “Bio lab. But in my defense, the course description didn’t say anything about dissecting a pig’seye.”

He smirks, and it’s an expression she’ll eventually knowwell.

“I’m, um, very reliable. There’s a stack of references…” She fumbles into the folder she’s carrying, extracting the list of professors and summer employers she printed at the Mid-Manhattan branch of the public library on her wayhere.

Nate takes the sheet without a glance at it. “Any questions forme?”

Where to start? “What do you need your office assistant to do,primarily?”

He crosses those delectable arms. “I’ve never had an assistant before. So we’ll have to figure it out as we go. But we’re gearing up for a big trade show in March. We’ll need to make posters and crap. We need a schedule, and a new website for the company. We need to hire an advertising agency. That all sounds pretty time-consuming…”

He looks off into the distance, and panic washes over Rebecca. She’s losing him. “That all sounds doable,” she babbles. “I could help organize all those projects. Keep things ontrack.”

Nate turns to her again. “Sorry. Sometimes I don’t pay attention when peopletalk.”

This will prove true in time, but Rebecca will also discover that it isn’t as irritating as it sounds. Because when Nate is ready to give you his full attention, there is nothingbetter.

“…But I always make time for my mom and my fiancée,” he is saying. “Her name is Juliet. The fiancée, that is. Mom is Linda. Their calls always matter. Everyone else canwait.”

When he smiles again, Rebecca feels it like a flutter in her chest.Now, now, she cautions herself.This nice man has a fiancée, and you need thisjob.

Stew sidles up and puts a hand on Nate’s shoulder. “How’s it going over here? Are you making plansalready?”

“Seems so,” Nate says. “I was just telling…” He pauses. He’s forgotten hername.

“Rebecca,” she and Stew say at the sametime.

“…All that needs to be done,” Nate says without apology. “Like, we take turns paying for lunch, because that’s the only way we remember to eat. Someone should formalize the rotation. Somehow it’s always my turn. But if we—” he raises his voice “—could finish the fucking beta of version three by the next month, I’ll buy lunch every day for twoweeks.”

There are cheers from the Ping-Pong table. But the current players don’t cease theirgame.

Nate claps his hands. “Okay, Rebecca. You can start whenever. There are probably some forms you’ll have to fill out. Stewie will know what theyare.”