“Just doing my job. See you tomorrow?” The last part came out as a question, because Lexi still didn’t feel like she was on the best footing with Vincent yet. Part of her wanted to make sure she still had a job.
“Yes. I get in at seven a.m. sharp every day.” He turned his attention back to his desk. “Don’t be late.”
“I wouldn’t dream of it.” She closed the door behind her and let out a huge sigh of relief before going home to celebrate.
∙ 7 ∙
Go od morning, Lexi. How was your weekend?” Leigh smiled broadly as Lexi stepped out of the elevator early Monday morning.
“Not bad,” she sighed as she gathered up Vincent’s messages off the counter. “Oh, but I did get into a rather colorful argument with the stuffed shirt at that fancy steakhouse Rio when I was trying to get a lunch reservation. He got a little testy because it was only two day’s notice.”
“Rio? Isn’t that place booked …”
“Three months in advance? Yeah.”
“So, what did you do?”
Lexi grinned. “It cost me a hundred dollars cash, a half hour of sweet-talking, and I think I might somehow now have a date, but Vincent and the gentlemen from Max will be stuffing their faces with overpriced cuts of red meat tomorrow at noon.” She bowed her head in victory as Leigh clapped her hands and laughed.
“You, my friend, are good.”
“And out a hundred bucks,” Lexi yelled over her shoulder as she headed down the hall.
She set her laptop on her desk and quickly began brewing a large pot of coffee. It was a few minutes before seven, which meant Vincent would be walking past her desk in less than ten minutes, and she still needed to double-check his schedule for the day.
With the precision of a fine Swiss watch, at exactly seven, a perfectly put together Vincent breezed past her desk, wordlessly grabbing his schedule and his coffee, both of which Lexi had placed on the edge of her desk, and then disappeared into his office. Lexi looked at the closed door and smile. She was quickly learning that the man was nothing if not a creature of habit. Over the last week, she had watched him and learned a great deal about the way he operated. She discovered that if she was able to anticipate his moves, she could always be one step ahead of him, thus avoiding disasters and keeping everything running smoothly.
Anticipation was a valuable skill that Lexi had learned when dealing with her father. He too was a proud man who hated asking anyone for help, especially when his Alzheimer’s started getting worse and he became more forgetful. Lexi could see that Harry was struggling, and she’d had to get creative in the way she helped him so he wouldn’t realize she was doing it. The lessons she learned in dealing with him helped her understand her boss much better.
Vincent arrived at the same time every day without fail. His suit, shirt, and tie were always a dark shade and perfectly put together. He would spend half an hour in his office, come out to bark a few orders at Lexi, then either stay holed up in his office until it was time to leave for a lunch appointment or storm down to the production department and get into it with Tony and company. Wednesdays, however, he blocked out for meetings with clients either at Hunter or at their offices, and for whatever reason, on his busiest day of the week Jade routinely stopped by to visit, causing him to fall behind schedule.
Whenever Jade called, Lexi tried to explain how busy his day was, but that meant absolutely nothing to her. If she wanted to see him, she showed up regardless of whether it was a convenient time or not. Leigh told Lexi that it wasn’t unheard of for Jade to stroll into board meetings and simply plop herself into a chair like she owned the place. Some people were so star struck by seeing her in person that she often got away with murder.
Lexi, however, remained thoroughly unimpressed by the self-centered woman, who broadcast to everyone within hearing distance that she was Vincent’s girlfriend every chance she got.
As she learned more about Vincent, Lexi found that his lunch order was as predictable as his behavior. Some days however, it also depended on whether or not he had company. Whenever his rabbit-food-loving girlfriend was staked out beside his desk, he would get a small Calypso salad, minus the bacon, with fat-free dressing and bottled water—just like Jade’s lunch.
A few days later when Lexi went out to pick up their lunch at the deli, she swung by Frank’s Diner to grab herself a bacon cheeseburger and made an interesting discovery in Jade’s absence: Vincent Drake was a burger junkie.
She chuckled as she remembered how God had smiled upon her that day. Jade’s agent had called with a last minute “go see” for her, so she had to leave her perpetual post at Vincent’s side earlier than expected and decided to take her lunch to go. She grabbed the food from Lexi’s hand as soon as she stepped off the elevator, bitched her out for taking too long, and then disappeared in a swirl of smoke and evil.
When Lexi made it back to her desk, she noticed that Vincent was on the phone, so she set his salad at the corner of her desk and began eating her burger and fries and returning E-mails that had unexpectedly piled up. She found something that needed to go down to Sean’s office, so she ran it over to him before he stepped out for the day. When she returned, she found Vincent leaning over her desk and greedily swiping French fries.
“What? The extra sprouts on that mini salad didn’t fill you up?” Lexi snickered as Vincent jumped away from her desk like he had been electrocuted.
His cheeks turned pink with embarrassment over being caught red handed. “Have you been the one stealing my fries? I thought I was going crazy or that maybe I had a tapeworm.”
“Guilty.” He smirked like a boy caught with his hand in the cookie jar, giving her a glimpse, even if it was just for a second, of the person she had known back in high school.
“You know I can always get you your own burger and fries if you like. All you have to do is ask.”
Vincent shrugged. “The salad really is the healthier choice.” He glanced longingly at the burger and fries, and then retreated into his office, clutching the tiny plastic container of tasteless roughage.
The next day that Jade made an appearance at the office, Lexi took pity on a weary-looking Vincent and brought him his usual salad, but as soon as Jade left, she went into his office to give him the Barrington file and dropped the extra bag from Frank’s on his desk. He didn’t say a word about it until later in the day when he called her into his office. He handed her a stack of papers with a small note scribbled on the corner.