Page 47 of By A Thread

I was so far behind on my plan that it made me want to hyperventilate into a paper bag just thinking about it.

To make matters worse, my last visit with my dad had been an ugly one. I could handle him not knowing who I was. I could handle him calling me by my mother’s name. Hell, I could even handle him listlessly staring into space.

But I couldn’t handle it when the man I’d known and loved all my life became aggressive. It happened. Something would trigger him, sending him into an agitated state and the happy, kind-hearted, lovable man disappeared only to be replaced with a belligerent, violent stranger.

“The meeting was good. The designer was great. And I just worked all weekend,” I told her. “You?”

“I met a guy,” she said, trying to bring the straw to her lips but nearly taking out an eye instead.

“You did?” I wasn’t in the market. But that didn’t mean I couldn’t live vicariously through friends’ lives.

“Lunch. I’m definitely going to need more details about you sitting side-by-side in the back seat with a certain gorgeous grump in Midtown traffic,” she warned me.

“And I want to know all about this guy,” I told her.

She wiggled her fingers at me and headed toward her desk.

I booted up my desktop and was pulling my headphones out of my bag when Zara and her sticky notes appeared. “Don’t get comfortable,” she said blandly.

“Fired already?”Damn that Dominic Russo.

“New assignment,” she said, peeling off a note and slapping it on my desk. “Linus needs extra hands this week. You’re the lucky admin. You’ll be stationed at a temp desk near his office on forty-three for the week.”

“On it,” I said, slipping my headphones back into the bag.

“On your way, hit up IT. They have something for you,” she said.

I frowned. “What is it?”

“How the hell should I know? No one bothers to tell me anything,” she said. “Now go be productive and drop some hints that your supervisor has her eye on the new Marc Jacobs bag in case Linus needs to rehome it after the shoot tomorrow.”

* * *

IT was a dungeony,cave-like room full of unhappy, casually dressed creatures.

I introduced myself to the closest one just across the countertop that protected the staff from human encounters.

The girl had jet black hair tied in pigtails on top of her head and wore a baggy pink sweatshirt that saidTry Unplugging It. Her jeans were name brand and distressed in all of the right places.

“We can’t help you with your personal electronic problems without a Help Desk Ticket,” she said flatly, her dark eyes boring soullessly into mine. She slid an iPad toward me. “Fill this out, and we’ll get to you when we get to you.”

If bored were a human, I was looking at her.

“Uh. Yeah. Actually, I’m here to pick something up,” I told her.

She blinked in slow motion.

“I’m Ally Morales from the admin pool,” I tried again. “My supervisor said I was supposed to stop in and pick something up.”

“Oh.” Pigtails wandered away, and I stood there, unsure if I should follow her or wait to catch the attention of a different robot.

I was still debating when she returned with two boxes. “Here.” She slid them across the skinny countertop.

“What’s this?”

She slow blinked again. “It’s a laptop and a phone. They are smaller, more portable versions of—”

I held up my hands, surrendering to her sarcasm. “I mean, why am I getting a laptop and a phone?” I asked, convinced there’d been a mistake. Especially since the laptop was the latest and greatest model that had bells and whistles for graphic design.