Page 23 of By A Thread

Finish the renovations. Sell the house. Mango margarita.

The printer spat out my badge which doubled as a key card. HR lady smugly handed it over. It was even worse offscreen.

“Admin pool is on the forty-second floor. Ask for the supervisor.”

And with that, I was unceremoniously dismissed.

I found my way to the stairs and went down a flight, using my spiffy new key card to enter the suite of offices. The mood here was similar to the forty-third floor. A lot frantic, a little distrustful.

On the blindingly bright side, I didn’t have to deal with Grumpy HR Lady or Charming on this floor.

I asked the first beautiful, six-foot-tall woman I saw where to find the admin pool. It turned out that I was standing in the middle of it.Label’ssecond floor of offices opened into a sea of low-walled cubicles taking up some serious acreage surrounded on two sides by glassed-in offices.

Everyone was, if not breathtakingly beautiful, perfectly coiffed and tastefully accessorized.

I asked a stunning brunette who was frantically trying to fold some kind of silky chartreuse fabric into a white gift box to point me in the direction of the supervisor and caught the woman at her desk between rapid-fire phone calls.

The nameplate said Zara. Her long, black hair was tamed in a sleek braid. There were sticky notes of every color organized in neat little rows on her desk.

She eyed my outfit. “New hire? Grab an empty desk, dial the IT extension, and have them set you up with a login and an email.”

“Thanks,” I said, wondering what I’d do then.

But her phone was ringing, and her computer dinged six times in rapid succession with chat and email notifications. “For shit’s sake,” she muttered, grabbing one of two iPhones on her desk as they both started vibrating.

I ducked out of the office, leaving her to the beeping and vibrating, and did a quick lap searching for a clear flat surface. I found one in the back on the outer ring of cubicles and about as far away from the windows as you could get. But beggars couldn’t be choosers. I wove my way through the desks and busy people and claimed my new territory with my purse, coat, and container of the last helping of Mrs. Grosu’s Korean barbecue chicken.

“Okay,” I whispered to myself.

I tried out the chair and found it reasonably comfortable. To be fair, every other job I’d had in the past six months didn’t involve chairs or me sitting in them. So having any chair was a big step up.

The computer monitor was a sexy, state-of-the-art flatscreen, and the only other items on the desk were a thin, white keyboard and a phone.

I picked up the receiver and skimmed the buttons looking for IT.

“You new?”

I peered around the Jumbotron flashing theLabellogo and found a woman looking back at me.

She had glossy hair the color of a wheat field with subtle silver-toned highlights. It was pulled back in a low ponytail that no strand dared escape. Her face was generic perfection with high cheekbones, expertly applied contouring, and a petite nose that other women probably took pictures of and presented to their plastic surgeons. She would have been downright beautiful if not for the pinched line of her overfilled lips and the mean girl vibe.

“Hi,” I said. “Yes. I’m Ally. Just started today.”

She gave a derisive snort that still somehow managed to sound ladylike. “Don’t get in my way.”

“You must be the welcoming committee,” I said, cocking my head. I couldn’t tell if she was twenty-eight or thirty-eight.

“Any assignments that come in for Dominic Russo are mine. Got it?”

I laughed. It was a perfect match as far as I was concerned. “You can keep him. I prefer my men with hearts.”

Her lips got impossibly flatter, and I worried they might pop.

“Are you making new friends, Malina?” Gola strolled up and perched on the edge of my desk.

The woman in danger of a lip filler explosion turned her icy glare to my newest friend. “I’m filling her in on the ground rules.”

“Her name is Ally, and no one is getting in the way of your delusions,” Gola said.