“Silly girl,” Alex laughed, her voice carrying on the other end of the phone. “I own you. You're salary, remember.”
“You think that. I’m not your toy to play with.”
“Yes you are. Whether you want to admit it or not Devyn, you are mine. I own you.”
“No,” an edge raised in the tone of her voice, “you don’t. I suggest you get a reality check, Alex. You don’t have a right to wake me up at 4 in the morning. There isn’t a single emergency that would require me at 4 in the morning. The building could be on fire, but that still wouldn’t be my problem. I don’t have any employees in that building until at least 6.”
“I beg to differ, Devyn.” Devyn held her breath, waiting for her reply. “I believe the way this works is I hired you as a salary employee, and if I call and need you to do more work, then that is what you have to do. There is nothing that you can do about that either. If you’d like to hand your position over, I recall there is another person who would have gladly taken the position I gave you.”
“You didn’t give me anything.” Devyn crossed her arms over her chest. Her voice leveled out and the anger she felt moments before started to diminish. “You wish that you had given it to me, but you didn’t. I earned it. I worked myself ragged putting in hours off the clock to get my numbers where they needed to be on top of the years I spent getting my degree. You didn’t give me anything. You knew I was the best fit for the position. I was the best you could have hired for this company and, most importantly, you wanted someone to take over the jobs you didn’t want to do. That’s why you need me so bad, because I know if you fire me then you’ll be stuck doing them all yourself.”
Alex hesiated. Devyn could hear her breathing on the other end, but she said nothing. Devyn chewed on her lip and forced herself to spit out the last bit of courage she had left.
“If you think you can run this company without me then be my guest, but hear this. If you fire me without good reason, I will fight you every step of the way.” Devyn’s fingers curled around the railing of her stairs, her knuckles turning white around the wood. “And Alex, if you wake me up again, I will not be so nice.”
She didn’t wait for Alex to respond and she ended the call.
WHEN CHAD FINALLY ROLLED over at 5:45, she offered him some coffee and a shower. Unfortunately, she didn’t have an extra set of clothes for him to wear.
“Don’t worry about it,” Chad said. His early morning voice was scratchy and deeper than normal. Her toes curled in response. He took a long drink of the steamy coffee from the mug she had grabbed for him. “I always keep a spare outfit in my car. Business professional and casual. You never know what will happen.”
He winked at her and her cheeks warmed at the thought of him planning to stay over curled up on her couch. Yesterday she would have detested the idea, but now she welcomed it. How had she already started to feel more than distaste for this man? He sat the coffee cup back onto the table. A soft grunt escaped his lips. Devyn studied him. His eyelids slid over his eyes and a smile curled on the edges of his mouth. He pressed his back into the wooden kitchen chair and he brought the cup back up to his lips again. A soft hum escaped them this time.
“What’s your plan for today?” Devyn asked, slipping a strand of hair behind her ear before taking a long sip of her own drink.
His eyelids fluttered open, soaking her in. He smiled at her, exposing the whites of his teeth.
“Nothing in particular.” His voice had already settled back into a low hum instead of the ragged growl he had managed earlier. Devyn’s heart fluttered at the way his teeth shone and his voiced melted her insides. After he opened up to her the night before, she knew deep down she would never view him the same again. He would never just be the guy who made her life hell. He would be the guy who managed to make work hell for a while but also managed to turn it around. To become a person she shared too many common interests with and made her melt at the drop of a hat.
Even if she didn’t love Christmas after all of this was over, she didn’t know if she was ready to give him up.
“How about we do a do over from yesterday,” she said, taking another long sip of her coffee.
He stopped the cup before it got to his lips, barely averting the risk of spitting the drink across the table at her. He raised an eyebrow at her before parting his lips. He paused, unable to decide what he wanted to say before he closed them again.
“I know yesterday sucked.” she curled her hands around the mug. “I want to try. Can we try again?”
“Yeah, I’m sure we can.” He cleared his throat, obviously surprised by what she was saying.
“Okay.” She looked down at the table and chewed on her bottom lip. “Surprise me. Family tradition. Lame Christmas game. Whatever. Just pick me up after work.”
Chad smirked, looking at her over his coffee and nodded.
“Deal,” he said, sitting his mug on the table and getting up out of his seat. He pushed away from the table and
