Fiancée for Hire (GirlxGirl)

2 | When One Door Closes

"Me? What the hell is wrong with me?" My voice pitched. "You just threw a fucking coffee at someone!"

Margot bit back a snort, the whisper of a smile tugging at her lips.

"All that girl wanted was to get your signature and impress you- "

"A pitiful attempt." She interrupted me, voice low and humorous.

I took a step closer to her, lowering my voice as I spoke, poison biting my tone.

"I get it. You don't understand what it's like to have to work to get to be where you are," I lifted my chin to look up at her. "But that doesn't warrant you being an entitled bitch. What if the coffee you'd thrown at her was still hot? What if you had hurt her?"

All teasing humor vanished from her eyes, replaced with an emotion I couldn't quite describe.

Anger was coursing through me, hot and ugly. It tightened my jaw and curled my fingers, nails piercing into my skin.

The driver of the Bugatti rolled his window down, poking his head out to take me in. He saw the look of venom in my gaze and winced.

"Actually, I don't think you do 'get it'." Margot looked down at me, ignoring a pointed look from her driver, "All my life I've been told that I didn't work for what I have. Because I'm a woman. And I've had to work twice as hard as any man for my whole life, just to be viewed as more than a pair of tits."

I opened my mouth to speak, but the sound died in my throat.

"The paparazzi will be here at any moment ma'am," Margot's driver called out, "and I don't believe that you would want them to capture you like this."

Whatever emotion that had been in Margot's eyes quickly faded as she brought her palm up to her head and sighed impatiently.

"Right, let's go," Margot stepped towards the car, looking back to face me, "and for all that it's worth, I didn't throw the coffee, I bumped it."

Before I could protest, she slid back into her car. Her movements were exactly like a snake. Scheming, sly. She gave me one final look, sharp and quick, before signaling to her driver. The engine revved, the car took off, and she was gone.

In a huff, I turned back to face the café, once choked in chatter from the breakfast rush, and now stood staring, stunned into silence. Among the crowd was my boss, face red, eyes glowing with fury. He pushed past the crowd and out through the door.

"Get inside," he sneered. "Now."

~~~~~

I sat in Andrew's office as he loomed over the desk, leering down at me. Although his eyes still held rage, he nearly undressed me with his wandering gaze. I thought, just for a moment, about flirting myself out of whatever he was going to say.

No way in hell have you reached that level of low yet.

He opened his mouth to speak. His teeth were yellowed, and his breath reeked of cigarettes.

"You're fired."

I opened my mouth to speak, but he silenced me.

"Your role as a woman is to do as I say, and if you can't even do that, I have no choice but to ask you to get the hell out of my café."

I had worked for this man for two years, never complaining about the minimum wages, the skimpy skirts, nothing. Yet he'd fired me. Just like that.

"You know what?" I stood up abruptly. "You can't fire me. Because I quit. You can take your misogynistic, degrading uniform and shove it up your ass."

Surprise flickered in his eyes as I stormed out of his office, slamming the door hard as I left.

It was only when I was walking down the street back to my apartment did everything hit me. Yelling at a bloody billionaire. Getting fired. Counteract firing myself.

I thought about Margot O'Dell. The way she had been underestimated her whole life. The way I had underestimated her. I grimaced at what I had said to her.

You don't understand what it's like to have to work to get to be where you are.

I took a deep, shuddering breath. An entitled, coffee bumping billionaire was the least of my worries. I had no way to pay my bills, no job to return to in the morning, nothing. Violet had called my phone a dozen times since I'd left the café five minutes ago, but I continued to shove my phone back into my pocket after each of her attempts.

I turned to walk down the dark alleyway that veered off the side of the street, a shortcut home. Tears had begun to press at the back of my throat, and I'd be damned if I let any passerby's see me this way.

The cobbled alleyway was eerie and silent, a place where even the sun was afraid to glimpse. The further I walked, the more the light died out, and the more I began to regret my decision.

A rhythmic sound of clacking heels behind me broke the silence, the defined short sound of footsteps. The darkness pressed in on me as I fought the urge to turn around. The alleyway should be empty, it always was, but the echoing of someone else's presence was undeniable.

"You know what they say," a voice filled the alley and the footsteps stopped, "when one door closes, another one opens."

My heart rose to my throat, legs frozen in place. The darkness of the alley seemed to wrap a suffocating coat around me, beckoning me to stay. To listen to what the voice behind me had to say.

I turned around slowly. Kim Hartley. The regular from the café.

"Kim, what are you doing here?" I whispered, almost afraid to break the silence. "Why the hell did you follow me?"

"I had to. I couldn't talk to you back in The White Swan."

"What couldn't you talk to me about back there that you'd need to talk to me about in a bloody alleyway?"

She took a step towards me, holding out a small business card.

"Well, you need a job, and I need an employee." 

Every fiber of my being screamed at me to stay still, or better yet run, but the unpaid bills that would inevitably pile up pushed me forward, delicately taking the business card from Kim's hands.

"Tomorrow afternoon. Be there."

Just like that she turned back around, shadows engulfing her as she walked off.

I glanced down at the business card with hands shaking from adrenaline.

Fiancée for Hire