Page 7 of Every Broken Piece

Chapter seven

Gabe

J ack strolls into my office at the exact wrong time.

My frustration is at its peak and I’m not in the mood for his barbs and sly grins today.

It’s been a shit day. An important meeting fell through.

Vincent has been calling nonstop, trying to get me to see his way about the downward spiral of his company.

He refuses to accept that he’s responsible for the decline and suddenly wants me to be CEO for the next six months. Like I have time for that.

I sit back and glare at my brother. “I’m going to have to let Ms. James go.”

Why I led with that, I don’t know, but she’s been on my mind lately. She’s too chipper. Too...sunny. I need someone who’s all business. Every fucking morning I wake up to a good morning email from her. It’s...

Refreshin g

Annoying.

Jack’s steps stutter to a stop and his shit-eating grin falls. “Tess? Why are you letting Tess go?”

My brows wing up. “Tess? Since when are you on a first name basis with my assistant?”

Also, I thought her name was Theresa.

He shrugs, burying his hands deep in his pockets. “Since you wouldn’t video chat with her, I did, and I got to know her. She prefers to be called Tess.”

“ You video conferenced her?” Of all the things my brother has done and said over the years, this has me the most stunned. He’s never taken an active interest in any of my assistants. Why this one?

Unless...

“Are you hitting on Ms. James? I swear to God, Jack, if you hit on her I’m going to fire you instead.”

“You can’t fire me because I own half the company and I’m not hitting on her. I feel sorry for her because you keep brushing her off and I thought it important that one of us got to know her.”

I open my mouth, then close it. “That makes no sense. She doesn’t even work for you.”

Speaking of which, I need to get on HR on the status of my west coast assistant. Things are piling up and soon I’ll have to ask Ms. James to take on the west coast too. Except I can’t do that because I’m firing her.

I ignore the tweak to my conscious at that thought. I’ve never felt any sort of attachment to my assistants and I’m sure as hell not going to start now.

“Why are you firing her?” Jack falls into the chair in front of me and stretches his legs out, crossing them at the ankles.

“Have you seen her emails?” I swing my laptop around and stab a finger toward her latest email, the one where she wishes me a good day, followed by an exclamation point. “Look at this. I count three exclamation points.”

My brother stares at me like I just spouted a third eyeball on my nose. “You want to fire her for exclamation points?”

When he says it like that it does sound unhinged, but I’m in too deep now and even though I feel foolish there’s something about Ms. James—Tess—that makes me uncomfortable. “It’s unprofessional,” I mutter as I turn my laptop back around.

Jack stares at me for so long that I scowl back.

“Have you thought that maybe you need a little more exclamation points in your life?”

“What the hell does that even mean?” I snap.

He studies me a little longer while I start a new email of things I need Tess—Ms. James—to do.

When he doesn’t respond, I snarl, “Stop staring at me.” Fuck, I feel like we’re little kids again.

“You should talk to her. Not email her. Talk to her. She’s sweet.”

My hands halt over my keyboard as I process this. “Who are you and what did you do with my brother?”

“I’m serious, Gabe. Give her a chance. Exclamation points and all. I think she’d be good for you.”

“Good for me?” Oh, hell no. He’s not hooking me up with my virtual assistant. That’s unethical and HR would have a field day.

“Not to mention beautiful. Have you seen a picture of her?”

I recoil, yanking my hands from my keyboard as if typing an email to her now is somehow dirty. “No, I haven’t seen a picture of her because it doesn’t matter what she looks like as long as she can do the job.”

“And is she? Doing the job?”

I think about her seafood catch that could have been disastrous. “Yes, she’s doing the job.”

“Despite the exclamation points.”

I sigh, seeing where this is going. “Despite the exclamation points.”

He leans forward to dig out his phone from his back pocket. He swipes a few times then slides the phone across the desk to me.

“What’s this?” I glare at him, refusing to look at the phone because I know what I’m going to see. Jack did his hacking thing and found pictures of Ms. Theresa James and he feels I need to see them too.

“She doesn’t have social media,” he says. “Which is odd for someone her age. I had to dig deep to find these. Luckily, she has friends who post a lot of pictures.” He lifts his chin to the phone. “Go ahead. Look.”

“No.”

He narrows his eyes and smirks. “Why?”

“Because it doesn’t matter what she looks like.”

He settles back in his chair, leaving the phone where it is.

I pointedly don’t look at it. I don’t know why I’m so opposed to seeing a picture of my assistant.

It’s not like I didn’t know what my other assistants looked like.

But Ms. James. Theresa. Tess. Something about her makes me uneasy.

Not like she’s a psycho, stalker, shoot up the office, uneasy.

A different uneasy, like she’s a danger to me in other ways.

I hate it and that’s why I want her gone. Plus, I don’t like exclamation points.

She’s a people pleaser, wants to do a good job, but doesn’t require constant praise. She’s efficient and thoughtful and...

Hell.

I glance at the phone and draw in an involuntary breath.

Jack’s right. She’s beautiful.

Not in a glossy magazine model kind of way, but an everyday fresh way.

In the picture I’m looking at she’s laughing, her head tilted back.

Long, dark hair falls way past her shoulders and out of the picture frame.

Her eyes are also dark. Brown, maybe. It’s hard to tell in the picture.

It looks like she’s at a bar but isn’t holding a drink.

There’s a tinge of olive to her complexion, like she has a bit of Italian in her.

And she’s too fucking young.

“Jesus, Jack, she’s a kid.”

“She’ll be thirty in a few months.”

I see what he’s doing, and I shove the phone back to him. “Knock it off. I could be her father.”

“Only if you fathered her when you were thirteen. I knew you at thirteen and you weren’t fathering anything with that pimply assed face.”

“Fuck you.”

I’m not forty-three yet but it doesn’t matter because I feel far older than forty-three. Losing your wife at twenty-five ages you. Becoming a widower and a single father when your friends are still doing the bar scene makes you feel ancient and worn down.

“Anyway.” Jack heaves himself out of his chair.

Sometimes I wonder how he gets any work done when his sole purpose in life seems to be bugging me.

“Gotta go get shit done.” He stretches his arms over his head and yawns before swiping his phone off my desk, tapping a few times on the screen, then walking out.

Just as he closes my office door my phone pings.

The fucker sent me those pictures.