It's A Man's World

"Miss Breely..."

"Raegan..."

"Rae!"

Raegan Breely's mind was lost in the stack of blueprints scattered along her desk. She chewed the eraser of her pencil, a disgusting habit she hadn't been able to kick after college, and made tiny revisions to the building outlines, leaving her suggestions in the open spaces. She was yanked from her work when a crumpled ball of paper hit her in her head. Looking up, Raegan wasn't surprised to see her assistant, and best friend, Kristiana, standing at her desk. 

"What do you want Kris?" she asked, giving the tiny, pixie-like woman, a nasty look as she threw the paper ball in the trash beside her desk and put the edited blueprint down. 

"Mr. Lubbock is here." she stated as though it was supposed to have some importance to Raegan. 

"And?" Raegan asked, motioning with her hand for Kris to give her the information that pertained to her. 

"And he wants to see you in his office. Now." Kris replied and just stared at Raegan expectantly. 

"Okay, let me just--wait who?" 

"Mr. Jason Lubbock. Your boss." Kris laughed at the confused look on her face. "He had to come back at some point Rae. Now he's back, and he wants to see you and Bryson is his office and I already saw Bryson make his way there so you shouldn't be too far behind." 

"Yeah you're right, okay." Raegan said as she viewed herself in the full length mirror and adjusted her black blouse tucked into a red skirt that fell just above her knees. Grabbing her matching red blazer, she threw on and buttoned the single button in the middle, and thanked Kristiana as she left.  Her heels clicked and clacked as she passed the cubicles filled with interns busily working on their sketches or whatever work they had assigned to them. When she finally reached her boss' office, the door was already open and just as Kristiana said, Bryson Andrews was already there, chatting away. 

Bryson was her coworker but most importantly, he was her competition. They'd started on the same day and were pretty much always neck to neck from that point on. With his sharp features, blonde hair and blue eyes, he was fairly attractive but not to Raegan. To her, his personality was the most revolting thing about him. To everyone else, he was pretty much a saint, but she couldn't shake the feeling that there was something snaky about him.

She'd never been in Mr. Lubbock's office since he was rarely in his office. It was spacious and airy, with a great view of downtown Houston, but it was... impersonal. He didn't have any pictures of his family or anything of his that personalized the office.  

Maybe this is his personality, cold.

The walls were bare and the only thing that made the office look like anyone actually used it was his desk. Papers and folders were scattered across the mahogany wood in disarray, but the mess didn't seem to bother the man as he went through file after file. 

"Raegan, nice of you to finally join us." Bryson greeted her, breaking away from his chat with Mr. Lubbock. He had a a wide grin on his face and Raegan was instantly irritated but instead of letting it show, she disguised it with an apologetic smile. 

"I'm sorry to keep you waiting Mr. Lubbock, Bryson. I was busy with the stack of blueprints on my desk. If you have nothing else to do today, you can help me with them later Bryson." she said, cocking her head to the side as she placed her hands in front of her. His smile faltered and Raegan's smile turned into a smirk as she walked over to her boss' desk. She knew that he wouldn't help her with the work. Even though they were supposed to share it 50/50, Bryson always came up with an excuse to get out of doing his fair share. Luckily, Raegan didn't mind the extra work. Extra work made great distractions.