Page 5

5

Dakota

M y eyes narrowed at the man before me. My boss. No, more like my boss’s boss. But also, a man accusing me of something fishy on my very first day on the job, just because I’d gone to a random club and... picked him up, of all the people in there, the day before I started working for him.

Okay, I could see where that looked weird.

But dammit, I hadn’t done anything wrong, and I wasn’t going to be accused of it, either.

“Just what am I supposed to have done, then? Is sleeping with a hot guy I met at a club a crime now? What, do you think I’m going to demand a raise because I know you’ve not-so-secretly got a big dick?” My cheeks flushed even as I said the words, and I couldn’t believe my own fucking audacity, but dammit, I hadn’t done anything wrong .

I sure as hell wasn’t going to let the first time I’d done anything for myself in my whole fucking life turn into a bad thing.

No. That wasn’t allowed. It had all been so very good right up until I’d walked into the conference room. Even the ache in every step had been a delicious reminder of the night I’d had.

He frowned at me, like I was being deliberately obtuse. “Well, do you work for Igarashi? Are you?—”

I barked out a laugh. “What, just because I look Japanese? Newsflash, I grew up right here in the bay. My adoptive parents are whiter than you, and I’ve never even met anyone named Igarashi. My last name is Morris, for fuck’s sake. I learned Japanese in college, not because I lived there.” I threw my hands up. “Are you honestly expecting... what, corporate espionage? The world’s clumsiest corporate espionage ever? You’ve met me. You know my name and control my future employment. What underhanded thing do you think I’m up to?”

Oh hell, he controlled my future employment.

The single man I’d ever had sex with in my life controlled my future employment.

I was fucked and a half.

He stopped and cocked his head at me, mildly confused, but didn’t explain what it was he thought I was up to by having slept with him and then showing up to work.

I spread my arms wide as though to offer myself up as a target. “Well?”

He opened his mouth and then closed it again, apparently dumbfounded by me. Or maybe by my being so confrontational. A lot of people were surprised by that, but if there was one thing my adopted father had taught me—and there probably was just the one, since he’d never been all that interested in me—it was that if someone punches you, you should always punch back. Letting someone strike out at you and doing nothing in return was just letting them know they could do it again whenever they wanted. That wasn’t the life I wanted to live, so I never let a blow go unanswered.

When he continued to hesitate, I scoffed and shook my head. “Of course. Assuming the worst, but with nothing resembling an actual reason for it. Are we done, then?”

He gave a little nod, letting himself fall into his chair, and I turned and marched out.

Only, when I got to the hallway I realized that I didn’t know what the fuck I was supposed to do next.

Had I just quit?

No, that wasn’t a thing. I’d signed a contract, so unless someone from Crescent told me they were breaking my contract, I was fucking staying. Because I hadn’t done a single damned thing wrong.

Well, maybe except that I’d berated the CEO of the company, but damn it, he’d had it coming. Accusing me of doing something wrong. Hell, I wasn’t the one who’d slept with someone who was technically my work inferior; he was. Not that he’d done anything wrong either, since neither of us had known, but if one of us was in a more tenuous position because of it, it was me, not him.

I turned a corner, still drifting aimlessly down the hall, and almost ran right into Maia and... and she was standing with Jax’s twin sister, the COO. Fuck me entirely.

They both looked up at me, and Maia, bless her, smiled at me. “Hey, Dakota. I was just talking to Jillian about you. She’s got an office set aside, and we’ll figure out if it’s the right spot pretty quickly. Crescent hasn’t hired someone like you before, so this is all new territory, and we’ll have to learn it together. You might end up in HR at some point, since a lot of the inter-company work with Igarashi will be done there, but you know how it is.”

Her sunny smile made the pit in my stomach quiver. I didn’t want to leave. I wanted to work with them. I wanted to be here. I wanted this job.

“That makes sense,” I agreed, trying not to wince at the shake in my voice. I wasn’t sure if it was remaining anger causing it, or terror that I was about to get fired on my first day, but either way it was weakness, and I hated showing my weaknesses to people.

Jillian sighed. “Whatever Jax said, ignore him. He’s an ass.”

Maia gave a nervous giggle, like the notion of calling her boss an ass both amused and terrified her, and then lowered her voice to a bare whisper. “He tries hard, he does. And he’s great. He’s just still... I mean, we all grew up with that ‘I’m the alpha’ bullshit. It’s hard to just get past it. I’ll bet especially for him.”

The way she said it was almost like... like they had literally grown up together, the lot of them. I supposed it would explain some things, if the upper echelons of the company were made up of people who’d known each other all their lives.

Instead of demanding more information, which would be suspicious behavior, I just went along with it, nodding. “That does make sense. But he’s going to have to get over it with me. He might be my boss, but he’s not the boss of me.”

Jillian laughed aloud, a bright, brassy noise that made me fall instantly in love with her. This was a woman who had zero fear of being noticed and judged. I wanted to be just like that when I grew up. She leaned around to me, wrapping an arm around my shoulders and leading me off in another direction. “I like you, Dakota. I think you’re going to do just fine around here. Let me show you the office we’ve set up. It’s a little pitiful since it smells like cleaning fluid and has as much personality as a gym sock, but I guess it’s your job to change that, not ours.”

The office was indeed empty and sort of lifeless, but it was also enormous. It was bigger than my bedroom in the apartment I shared with Donnie, and it had a window that overlooked the city. A window .

I stared at that for a moment, and Jillian just stood next to me, looking out the window as well. “Gorgeous, isn’t it?” When I looked over at her, she smiled. “I know, I know, we’re not supposed to like the city. Blah blah unnatural, blah blah bad smells and too many people. Well screw that. I fucking love it. This city is my freedom. We got out of Idaho. We escaped the woods, and now we get to decide our own fates. No asshole alpha telling us who to love and how to live. Just Jax, and he’s usually good about keeping his nose out of our personal lives, even if he does tend to be a little overprotective.”

And that... well, that just might explain a whole lot. Had they been a part of one of those doomsday prepper cults, living in a rural area with some guy telling them every single thing they had to do? That sounded like a nightmare. But it made sense that she would love the city as much as I did. Not that I’d ever seen a reason to favor the woods, but there was just something magnificent about concrete and stone and glass piercing the sky like a knife pointed at everything old and backward. Human ingenuity was something to be proud of, even with all its faults and issues.

“I wouldn’t give it up for anything,” I agreed. “My parents moved out to the country when I graduated high school, but I never want to leave the city. Even if I end up broke, couch-surfing, and living on the sufferance of friends.”

She turned to grin at me. “Right? When we first got here, we shared apartments like we were the rats and encroaching on their territory. Four or five to a bedroom, everyone working or in school constantly, trading in and out of bedrooms whenever a spot was open to grab a nap. It was hell. And perfect, too.”

Wow. That was... I returned the smile and thought that maybe, just maybe, if I could convince Jax that I wasn’t a spy working for Igarashi, this was a place I could belong.

“Okay, let’s talk schedule,” she said, marching over to the desk and flipping open a laptop I hadn’t noticed before. “I made sure they connected you to my calendar and Maia’s, as well as the main Igarashi calendar, so all that is in here. You’ll want to connect it to your phone—do you need a company phone? If you don’t have unlimited data, you might want to get us to foot the bill for that. I’ll show you where tech is, and you can get anything you need from them.”

The next hour was a whirlwind of being shown around the building, introduced to people, and given so much information I was overwhelmed with just the idea of it all.

And I hadn’t even started my actual job yet.

We scarfed down some fabulous pho from a place on the corner next door, and by the time she started heading back to the conference room when we got back, I’d entirely forgotten that the first meeting with the people from Igarashi was that afternoon.

I was reminded of it with a vengeance when we walked into a silent room, and half the conference table was filled with the most uncomfortable looking Japanese people I’d ever seen in my life. They looked like something out of a Matrix movie, all dressed alike in black suits with white shirts, looking starched and perfect. Not a single back touched a chair, even as comfy as those chairs looked. No, they were all sitting at attention, like they were going to have to leave at any moment.

The people I’d met that morning populated the other side of the table, Jax at one end, and at the other... a single Japanese man who actually looked comfortable with the situation.

“—a translator,” Jax was saying as we walked in, but he only barely glanced at us, keeping eye contact with the man at the other end of the table.

The man in question gave a personable smile and waved Jax away. “Oh, you don’t need to hire a translator. We all read English well enough to follow the paperwork.”

It seemed Igarashi, at least, knew the difference between a translator and an interpreter, but that wasn’t going to help here, since I thought Jax was probably talking about having already hired me. And heck, I technically wasn’t either of those things, even if I was capable of serving as either on a small scale.

The man smiled at us, and Jax introduced Jillian and then looked at me for a second, like maybe I was to introduce myself. Or maybe like he thought the people from Igarashi already knew me.

“And this is my assistant, Dakota Morris,” Jillian said, smiling and holding her hand out to Igarashi.

Interesting. Assistant? My office was right next to hers, but assistant was definitely not my job title. Still, the man had said he didn’t want a translator, and he clearly didn’t need an interpreter, so I simply smiled and stuck my hand out to shake with him.

“Igarashi Jiro,” he introduced himself.

When our hands touched, I had the momentary urge to leap back, because every part of me felt as though he were lunging toward me, but... he wasn’t moving at all. So I covered it up, smiling and shaking his hand, burying my discomfort deep and ignoring it.

He seemed satisfied enough, so I assumed I hadn’t done anything outwardly strange. Jillian, on the other hand, gave me a mildly concerned expression when she turned her back on him and took me down next to Jax to take our seats. I gave her a smile and tried to pretend nothing was wrong.

But... nothing was wrong. Right? She let it go, thankfully, so I just sat in the chair she pointed me at and waited.

Jiro was the only person on Igarashi’s side who spoke up as they began, the others continuing to sit there, stiff and formal and uncomfortable, staring at their counterparts. A few of the Crescent people were uncomfortable with this, like that fellow Kent, who’d gone for coffee, but Jax took it in stride.

He was actually... well, he was back to the smoothly confident sexy bastard he’d been last night. Like he was in charge of the room and he fucking knew it.

When they truly got down to business and started trading papers around the table, the people from Igarashi only spoke among themselves. And only in Japanese, not a single word of English.

That was... frankly, I didn’t think insulting covered it. From a people who were usually quite concerned with good manners, as my experience with the Japanese told me they were, this was downright rude. I tried not to look at them, because the moment I did, the game would be up. It helped that initially, there was a lot of “this is the file you need,” and “no, it’s that one.”

But then, when Jax asked Igarashi a question about an alteration they had made to one paper, one of them made a sour face and whispered, “This is what happens when you try to make a deal with beasts.”

Beneath the table, I clenched my hands into fists, while trying to stay entirely impassive. The woman sitting next to Igarashi, perhaps the most starched and proper of the lot, turned and stared at the man who’d said it until he ducked his head, muttering, “Sorry, Ms. Igarashi.”

Ahh, so she was also a member of the family that owned the company. At least she was against outright insulting people, even if she didn’t seem to care about plain old rudeness.

Still, the others looked more amused than bothered, and the man who’d been speaking was just smiling as though nothing untoward had happened at all. He was explaining the rationale behind the change to Jax, something I couldn’t begin to follow, but that I suspected was entirely bullshit anyway.

These people had no respect for Crescent at all, and the entire merger needed to be rethought, in my humble opinion. You should never work this closely with people who didn’t respect you simply as human beings.

The meeting wrapped up after long, interminable hours that turned out to be only forty-five minutes, and the Igarashi people stood as one, turning and marching out as though they were a military formation, their leader stopping long enough to shake Jax’s hand and say that he looked forward to the next few weeks of negotiations.

For a long, awkward moment after they left, the room was silent.

Then of course, as I was prone to doing, I stuck my ass right in the middle of things. “They’re assholes and you should reconsider working with them.”

Everyone turned and stared at me, a few of them open-mouthed.

I scowled. “Oh, come on. They wouldn’t even deign to speak to you. Every one of them knew English. They were responding to what you said to each other.” I pointed to a seat in the middle. “And that one called you all beasts. Beasts . Seriously, guys, that’s fucked up.”