50. Emily

50

EMILY

" W e're sorry. The number you have dialed has been disconnected or is no longer in service. Please hang up and try again."

It had been weeks, and Grant still wasn't returning my calls. No, that was a lie. Grant wasn't even getting my calls. I think the bastard blocked me?

I hung up, glancing at my phone like it had personally offended me and pulled up the spreadsheet with all the financials I had to review for the month, while trying to figure out where things went wrong. And I didn't mean with the numbers—which didn't add up all that well either, mind you.

I wanted to know what I had done to deserve being ghosted. Again. I mean, I thought we had a decent enough end to our night. At least for me it was.

Unless that was his problem? That I didn't reciprocate?

"Prick," I muttered under my breath, tossing my phone aside and clicking away at my keyboard. Too lost to my irritation to realize someone had crept up behind me and was leaning over my desk chair to eye my screen. Someone with a distinctly masculine scent and baritone voice.

"What'd that poor PC ever do to offend you?"

"Hmm?" I pivoted in my seat and stared up into the greenest eyes I'd ever seen. Closer to an olive tone than emerald, a dimple appearing on one side of his mouth—a mouth that was presently kicked up into a panty-melting smirk.

He brushed a strand of his shaggy black hair behind one ear before dipping his head towards my desktop. "Excel giving you trouble?"

"What?" I flicked my gaze from the guy standing in front of me, to my screen, then back again. "Oh no. Excel is fine. Men are the real troublemakers."

Shit!

"I mean, um, sorry… I shouldn't have said that. It's not very professional."

"No need to apologize, Emily. You're not wrong." He chuckled before adding, "And as far as professional goes, you wouldn't believe the shit I see in my line of work." I quirked a curious brow and he quickly extended a palm while clarifying, "Elliot Walker, IT department."

"Right. Bet you do." I shook my head until another thought came to mind. "Wait… How do you know my name?"

This time a full grin spread across his face, his pouty lips revealing some of the whitest teeth I'd ever seen. "Elliot Walker, IT department," he repeated. His way of saying how do you think?

"Of course." I smiled back at him before spinning my chair around and tugging myself closer to my desk. As nice as it was to eye my hot but slightly creepy coworker, I really did have a shitstorm of receipts to sort through and my libido had been enough of a distraction for one day.

Guess old cat lady was the life for me.

Elliot obviously didn't take the hint and continued to lean one of his arms over my headrest, his breath so close I could feel it on the side of my face. "There's an easier way to do that, you know." He tapped a finger against my screen. "Add a formula to the bottom cell and it will auto-calculate the sum."

"No?" I gasped while slapping a sarcastic hand to my chest. "You don't say. And here I was, using my teeny-tiny girl brain to manually add all those giant man numbers." I rolled my eyes before pinning Mr. IT-Hotshot with a seething glare. It wasn't his fault I hated his gender right now, but he was about to take the brunt of my annoyance. "I know what I'm doing, thank you very much. I add the formulas after I double-check the values. Relying on a computer to do all the work for you leaves room for error."

"Kinda like human error?" he countered without missing a beat.

"Oh, there's human error all right." I scanned Elliot from head to toe. "Pretty sure I'm staring at one right now." It was a low blow. An inaccurate one too, at least on the outside. And we both knew it. But I wasn't about to admit that out loud.

Instead of replying, Elliot rose to his full height and barked out a laugh. "Now I see why he likes you," he muttered under his breath as he turned on his heel and walked down the hall towards the boardroom and not the IT department.

It took me a moment to process his words and by the time I yelled out, "Who?" after him, I could barely make out his faint response.

"No one important."

That post-lunch irritation was in full effect as I entered the breakroom later that day. Cursing Grant, Elliot, and basically all of man kind under my breath as I swiped out an arm and grabbed my mug from the Keurig machine. I took a deep breath and sucked the scent of freshly brewed coffee into my lungs.

I'd landed this job in the financial department of Prescott Research and Development almost straight out of college, after graduating a year early. It was funny how productive I could be when my focus was shifting away from dumbass frat boys and onto my studies. Still, I realized how rare an opportunity this was. It was almost impossible to get your foot in the door, unless you were related to or sucking off the CEO.

Tate Prescott was as slimy as they came. And the office was a lot easier to tolerate without him slinking around the halls, trying to lure the newest youngest intern into the back room with the promise of some cushy secretary job. Which was code for: his personal fuck doll. And just like any spoiled brat with too many shiny toys at his disposal, good ol' Tate would toss the girl aside as soon as something better caught his eye. By better, I meant blonder or sluttier or with a larger set of tits.

Point was… none of us were questioning his absence. It'd be like looking a gift horse in the mouth. And I preferred this particular horse as far away from me and my mouth as he could get.

If I were being completely honest, Tate Prescott could drop dead in the middle of the office and I wouldn't give the fucker a second glance when I stepped over his corpse to get to the copier.

"Oh my god! He's dead!" Sarah came running into the breakroom, her eyes wide and her breathing frantic.

"Who?"

"Tate Prescott!" she gasped before covering her mouth with her hands to stifle her sobs. She was our boss's latest fling, and if I had to hazard a guess, I'd say the waterworks were more for his little black credit card than the man whose name was on it.