THIS JOB SUCKS!

Chapter 4

Chapter 4

Three days later Whitney closed the door behind her and leaned against it. 

"What a day!" 

What a few days! She felt like she had been doing double duty trying to make up for the easiness of her first day. People had been coming and going constantly. The phone was always ringing. Rami had been busy ushering people in and out of Mr. Ravilla's study. They had all seemed a little odd too. Nothing specific that you could put your finger on but something felt different about them. Whitney shook her head the stress must be getting to her, people were just people.

It was obvious that there was some kind of crisis going on but Whitney couldn't seem to find out anything. Not one person that came through would volunteer any information. Thankfully Whitney hadn't seen much of Ravilla and when she had seen him he had been in a foul mood, so she tried to stay off his radar. Except for about an hour ago when he had come into her office and started rifling through the filing cabinet. It was obvious that he was not finding what he wanted.

"Is there something that I can help you find?" she asked politely. 

"Where the Hell did you learn to file?" He turned to her with a furious expression.

"Excuse me?" Whitney blanched, "That filing cabinet was like that when I got here, so don't blame it on me." He stared at her a moment and then turned toward Rami's office.

"Find some time to fix it," he threw over his shoulder as he left.

"Bite me," she mumbled after he was out of earshot.

She had left right after that. There was no way that she was going to stay even later tonight and sort files.  It was almost ten o'clock and she still hadn't gotten to eat dinner. 

She sighed and pushed away from the door. She couldn't stand the thought of cooking. Working these weird hours was starting to throw off her body. She never seemed to eat at normal times or even sleep normal hours. 

Maybe she could just reheat the leftovers from the Mongolian Barbecue place she had ordered from yesterday. Then while that was heating she could jump in the shower. Whitney slid the foil wrapped package into the slowly warming oven and started stripping on her way to the bathroom. She dropped clothes as she went. She knew she would have to pick them up later but she was too tired to care right now. 

Madraeus came out of his study and stood in the hall. His sensitive vampire's sense of smell had caught the whiff of something as he had been working. He wrinkled his nose. It smelled like it had been sweet and spicy at one time but now it just smelled burnt. The whole hall was filling with the awful stench. 

"Whitney," he growled and stalked down the hall to the door at the end. It led to her kitchen. He knocked but there was no answer. "She's going to burn the whole place down and never even notice," he grumbled.

Madraeus strode back to study and dug through his desk drawer until he found the spare key. He marched back to her door intent on draining every drop of blood from her body no matter what Rami said. He unlocked the door and threw it open and stopped dead. Smoke was curling out of the open oven escaping out the door above his head. In the midst of it all stood Whitney. She was holding the charred remains of her dinner waving smoke out of her eyes as she blinked in surprise at his sudden entrance.  She set the smoking lump on the counter and closed the oven door.

"Sorry about the smoke," she coughed out waving some of the fumes away. "I guess I took too long in the shower." 

She had obviously dressed in a hurry because only a couple of her buttons were fastened and her wet uncombed hair was dripping a little puddle around her bare feet. But that was not what made Madraeus' throat go dry and froze him in his tracks. It was what she was wearing. She had on pink fuzzy pajamas with little white bunnies all over them.