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Chapter One
She was being punished, she was sure of it.
Caitlyn Watson heaved out a deep sigh as she silently prayed that this day would be over soon...even though in reality, it had only just begun. Caitlyn had known it would be a stellar morning when she had gotten caught in San Francisco traffic that seems worse than usual. A few blocks from her apartment building, the asshole in front of her hadn’t been paying attention when they’d gotten the signal to turn left. After several seconds of laying on her horn, the jerk had finally moved, but she still didn’t get the chance to turn before the light turned red again.
Then the trolley had come and she was stuck for another round as she missed the turn signal again, this time getting honked by the car behind her. Like it was her fault that she didn’t go through the light and hit a trolley full of people. Maybe she could have, but she really didn’t want to go to jail for manslaughter just because she was late for work.
When she finally pulled into the parking lot of Manchester Klein, she found that the only spot available within a mile of the entrance was between two huge trucks that looked like they could have shit her mini coop out, and still had room for more. Once she had crawled out the driver’s side of her car, she realized that she had slammed the door on her suit jacket…after she’d pulled away and heard the sound of the material ripping.
Sometimes, life just sucked.
With no other option available to her, she had walked toward the building, painfully aware that the seam in the back of her suit jacket was now torn when the right heel of her favorite pair of shoes had gotten caught in a crack on the sidewalk.
It broke off with a loud snap.
She’d stood there for a moment, contemplating just how much trouble she would get in if she just went home and called in sick, but guilt won out. She was already there, and with her luck, her boss would see her leaving and fire her. At least it was Friday and she didn’t have any client meetings scheduled today.
Inside the safety of the building, she had entered the elevator holding her poor, broken shoe in her hand. Caitlyn told herself to wait until later to lament her comfortable, basic, black pumps as she limped onto her floor when the doors opened. She made her way to her desk, acutely aware of her coworkers watching her hobble along. Slinking over to her desk by the front window, she dropped her briefcase down, along with her broken shoe and opened her lower desk drawer. Looking down, she eyed the pair of bright red shoes there with resignation and—if she were honest with herself—a little bit of fear.
What the hell had she been thinking when she’d bought them?
Oh, she knew exactly why she’d gotten them.
Peer pressure...pure and simple.
Banished to the bottom drawer of her desk after the one and only time Caitlyn had worn them, she had sworn to herself that she would never, ever force her poor feet back into those pretty torture devices again. But what choice did she have? Caitlyn knew those shoes would end up killing her feet. Still, she reached down and took them out anyway. Setting them down next to the broken pair, it was almost comical to see the bright red stilettos next to her sturdy, reliable, black pumps.
Well, she thought, either way I’m going to be limping.
Wincing slightly, she put the red shoes on and sighed.
In a gray suit with a pale yellow shell underneath, her outfit just looked weird with the flashy red shoes. So, now everyone would think she was either color blind or a prime example of what not to wear. Sighing again, Caitlyn swung her feet under her desk as if to force herself to forget the hot mess currently gracing her feet.
She typed in the password to her computer and waited for it to power up. Caitlyn had been working at Manchester Klein—an advertising and marketing firm in San Francisco—for almost a year now. The company was small, but when she had gotten the job she had been hopeful that it would be something she could excel at…and she did. She was one of their rising stars, or she had been until she started working for Satan himself.
Carl Lowenbaum had taken over as the head of their department after her old boss went on maternity leave six months ago. Originally, Caitlyn had been hired on as an associate with the firm and had done excellent work for the clients she had worked with, but all of that changed when she’d started working with Carl. Her new boss had started coming on to her, making her workdays a minefield of unwanted advances she had to dodge with an alarming regularity.
Caitlyn knew her curvy figure, pixie style black hair and aquamarine eyes were a stunning combination and often drew male attention, whether wanted or not. Yeah, Caitlyn wasn’t the beautiful, thin model type, but she was fine being short at five-foot-two and a little more plump than was the norm. She liked food and didn’t apologize for that. Caitlyn was also shy, almost painfully so, but forced herself to take the compliments thrown her way. However, in this particular circle of hell, her boss had taken her shyness as a challenge for his advances.
Carl was a big man, tall and fit, with a matching personality. At first he had been friendly with her, and seemed to take an interest in her as a rising star in the firm. But that had changed when he started brushing up against her and lingering while he looked over what she was working on. The man didn’t seem to know what personal space was, or he just didn’t care.
Either way it was creepy and inappropriate.
Caitlyn had made the mistake of talking about it to a few of her colleagues. She hadn’t known at the time that Monica, who she had thought was her friend, actually had a crush on Carl, and had reported everything Caitlyn had said back to him. After that, Carl had all but froze her out, which wouldn’t have been a problem, but he had been using it as a means to keep her from getting any new clients. Caitlyn still did excellent work, but had discovered that while Carl went golfing and had three hour lunches with clients, he had also started taking credit for all her hard work...and she couldn’t do anything about it.
Carl had also implemented a team-style approach when working on client accounts, and it never failed that Caitlyn, as a lowly associate, got stuck with the majority of the work with the least amount of credit. Even when other associates were working on the same projects, they seemed to get more recognition than she did. And none of them had any issues with being praised for work that they didn’t do.
That was when she learned that she really didn’t have any friends at work…except for Jesse Hanson. Jesse was an eccentric man with an eye for details, who was damn good at his job. He had become her best friend since she started working at Manchester Klein. Despite the fact that all of the other people at work seemed fine taking and sharing the credit for Caitlyn’s ideas, as a manager, Jesse fought for her and made sure to give her credit on anything they worked on together.
That was probably why Carl hadn’t let them work together on the last five projects.
No matter what Jesse tried to do to help, it didn’t stop the rest of their colleagues from treating Caitlyn like shit, and he could only do so much to protect her around their boss. Carl made it clear that her career would go better for her if she learned to be a little more friendly to him. When he had mentioned it in passing to her, he had done it so casually she thought she had been hearing things. Over the last few months, she’d hoped he would forget about her, but as time went on, the harassment just seemed to get worse.
And giving in wasn’t an option.
Caitlyn hadn’t led an easy life, but it hadn’t been something she could complain about too much either. Simply put, her parents just didn’t care about her. Yeah, some people would say that as a generalization, but when Caitlyn had turned eighteen, her parents had actually told her they were no longer responsible for her. They had told her that raising her had taken enough of their time and now she was on her own.
Not that they had done much to take care of her when she was growing up anyways.
Both of her parents were gifted doctors and thought it would be appropriate to pass on their genius by having a child. When they discovered Caitlyn was a normal, average kid, they had lost interest in her and had basically left her in the care of a revolving door of nannies and housekeepers. The truth was, she was an embarrassment to them. She knew that they simply wanted to forget about her and move on with their lives.
Caitlyn had been alone for so long it was difficult to learn how to depend on people. She had done her best to hide her hurt and anger from her friends, but she’d learned at a very young age to be self-reliant. Moving from Chicago to San Francisco after she graduated from college had been her big break away from her old life.
It had been a chance for a fresh start.
Only, things hadn’t exactly turned out the way she had been hoping for.
Still, meeting Jesse had been worth it. Caitlyn spent a lot of time with Jesse and his boyfriend George Solomon. Where Jesse was a fantastic and truly talented artist, George was a straight-edged accountant. To the outside world, they were a strange couple, but Caitlyn loved how they balanced each other out. Jesse was a force to be reckoned with, and he was the reason Caitlyn’s feet were already starting to throb in pain from the wicked pair of red stilettos.
Damn him for talking her into buying them.
But then again, Jesse was good at talking Caitlyn into doing all sorts of things she wouldn’t normally do. Always the life of the party, Jesse made it impossible for Caitlyn to fade into the background like she would prefer. Over the last few months, Jesse had been begging Caitlyn to quit. He wanted her to find somewhere that she was appreciated, and where she wouldn’t be bombarded by the lecherous Neanderthal Carl, but Caitlyn was determined to stick it out.
Manchester was simply a necessary stepping stone that Caitlyn needed to achieve her secret dream of writing full-time as a children’s author. She just had to survive working there long enough to gain some experience, and pay off her student loans and the bills while she worked on getting published.
It still gave her a sense of pride to know that she excelled at what she did. The last five clients had gone with her marketing ideas over all of the others on her team, not that she was ever recognized for her efforts. In fact, every victory just seemed to make her co-workers hate her even more. It served them right thought, Caitlyn thought with satisfaction as she read over an email from a former client asking her for her help on a new project.
Thankfully, the rest of Caitlyn’s morning was pretty low key, with no major incidents that made her want to slam her head into her desk. She had gone through a slew of emails, and had started working on a new proposal for a client that she undoubtedly wouldn’t get credit for.
Taking a break, she spent a little time covertly texting with Jesse, since he was stuck at the airport waiting for his flight back from Seattle where he just sealed the deal for another project with a former client. The office was a dismal place without him around, but he would be back late that evening and they would be going out to celebrate her birthday tomorrow, so she couldn’t complain…much.
Caitlyn was briefly distracted from her work by rambunctious laughter as Carl left his office with one of the project managers, Ryan. They were leaving for the rest of the day for a big meeting with a new VIP client at their headquarters across the street. Carl basically thought they had the potential account in the bag. If that were true, it would be the biggest account Manchester Klein had to date. Caitlyn had done most of the ground work for the proposal before she had been pushed aside. She didn’t care, though. With Ryan in charge of the project, she didn’t want anything to do with it anymore. The kiss-ass Ryan was also Carl’s drinking buddy and an all-round asshole.
No wonder they got along so well.
“Wish us luck, doll,” Carl said with a wink as he walked past her desk.
Doll. God, she would do anything to wipe that lecherous expression off the prick’s face. But punching one’s boss in the face was a sure way to get fired. It might be worth it, Caitlyn considered for one brief moment, allowing herself to smile at the thought.
“Good luck,” she whispered, instead of what she really wanted to say. After they left, she happily went back to work, feeling lighter now that she’d have the rest of the day without her creepy boss looking over her shoulder.
It wasn’t ten minutes later that her phone rang. She silently swore when she saw Carl’s cell phone number on the readout. Picking up the handset, she braced herself to hear his voice.
“Caitlyn Watson.”
“I know who the hell I’m calling,” Carl hissed out. “I need you at the Steele Technologies meeting now.”
Caitlyn blinked. Wait…what? “Umm, Mr. Lowenbaum, I thought you said I wasn’t working on the Steele Tech proposal anymore.”
And why the hell was Carl whispering?
“Consider yourself back on it,” Carl snarled. “Grab your stuff and get your ass over to the Steele Technologies building. Top floor. Ass. Here. Now!”
He hung up before she could say anything else and left her staring at her phone in horror.
Oh, no. This could not be happening…
Caitlyn Watson heaved out a deep sigh as she silently prayed that this day would be over soon...even though in reality, it had only just begun. Caitlyn had known it would be a stellar morning when she had gotten caught in San Francisco traffic that seems worse than usual. A few blocks from her apartment building, the asshole in front of her hadn’t been paying attention when they’d gotten the signal to turn left. After several seconds of laying on her horn, the jerk had finally moved, but she still didn’t get the chance to turn before the light turned red again.
Then the trolley had come and she was stuck for another round as she missed the turn signal again, this time getting honked by the car behind her. Like it was her fault that she didn’t go through the light and hit a trolley full of people. Maybe she could have, but she really didn’t want to go to jail for manslaughter just because she was late for work.
When she finally pulled into the parking lot of Manchester Klein, she found that the only spot available within a mile of the entrance was between two huge trucks that looked like they could have shit her mini coop out, and still had room for more. Once she had crawled out the driver’s side of her car, she realized that she had slammed the door on her suit jacket…after she’d pulled away and heard the sound of the material ripping.
Sometimes, life just sucked.
With no other option available to her, she had walked toward the building, painfully aware that the seam in the back of her suit jacket was now torn when the right heel of her favorite pair of shoes had gotten caught in a crack on the sidewalk.
It broke off with a loud snap.
She’d stood there for a moment, contemplating just how much trouble she would get in if she just went home and called in sick, but guilt won out. She was already there, and with her luck, her boss would see her leaving and fire her. At least it was Friday and she didn’t have any client meetings scheduled today.
Inside the safety of the building, she had entered the elevator holding her poor, broken shoe in her hand. Caitlyn told herself to wait until later to lament her comfortable, basic, black pumps as she limped onto her floor when the doors opened. She made her way to her desk, acutely aware of her coworkers watching her hobble along. Slinking over to her desk by the front window, she dropped her briefcase down, along with her broken shoe and opened her lower desk drawer. Looking down, she eyed the pair of bright red shoes there with resignation and—if she were honest with herself—a little bit of fear.
What the hell had she been thinking when she’d bought them?
Oh, she knew exactly why she’d gotten them.
Peer pressure...pure and simple.
Banished to the bottom drawer of her desk after the one and only time Caitlyn had worn them, she had sworn to herself that she would never, ever force her poor feet back into those pretty torture devices again. But what choice did she have? Caitlyn knew those shoes would end up killing her feet. Still, she reached down and took them out anyway. Setting them down next to the broken pair, it was almost comical to see the bright red stilettos next to her sturdy, reliable, black pumps.
Well, she thought, either way I’m going to be limping.
Wincing slightly, she put the red shoes on and sighed.
In a gray suit with a pale yellow shell underneath, her outfit just looked weird with the flashy red shoes. So, now everyone would think she was either color blind or a prime example of what not to wear. Sighing again, Caitlyn swung her feet under her desk as if to force herself to forget the hot mess currently gracing her feet.
She typed in the password to her computer and waited for it to power up. Caitlyn had been working at Manchester Klein—an advertising and marketing firm in San Francisco—for almost a year now. The company was small, but when she had gotten the job she had been hopeful that it would be something she could excel at…and she did. She was one of their rising stars, or she had been until she started working for Satan himself.
Carl Lowenbaum had taken over as the head of their department after her old boss went on maternity leave six months ago. Originally, Caitlyn had been hired on as an associate with the firm and had done excellent work for the clients she had worked with, but all of that changed when she’d started working with Carl. Her new boss had started coming on to her, making her workdays a minefield of unwanted advances she had to dodge with an alarming regularity.
Caitlyn knew her curvy figure, pixie style black hair and aquamarine eyes were a stunning combination and often drew male attention, whether wanted or not. Yeah, Caitlyn wasn’t the beautiful, thin model type, but she was fine being short at five-foot-two and a little more plump than was the norm. She liked food and didn’t apologize for that. Caitlyn was also shy, almost painfully so, but forced herself to take the compliments thrown her way. However, in this particular circle of hell, her boss had taken her shyness as a challenge for his advances.
Carl was a big man, tall and fit, with a matching personality. At first he had been friendly with her, and seemed to take an interest in her as a rising star in the firm. But that had changed when he started brushing up against her and lingering while he looked over what she was working on. The man didn’t seem to know what personal space was, or he just didn’t care.
Either way it was creepy and inappropriate.
Caitlyn had made the mistake of talking about it to a few of her colleagues. She hadn’t known at the time that Monica, who she had thought was her friend, actually had a crush on Carl, and had reported everything Caitlyn had said back to him. After that, Carl had all but froze her out, which wouldn’t have been a problem, but he had been using it as a means to keep her from getting any new clients. Caitlyn still did excellent work, but had discovered that while Carl went golfing and had three hour lunches with clients, he had also started taking credit for all her hard work...and she couldn’t do anything about it.
Carl had also implemented a team-style approach when working on client accounts, and it never failed that Caitlyn, as a lowly associate, got stuck with the majority of the work with the least amount of credit. Even when other associates were working on the same projects, they seemed to get more recognition than she did. And none of them had any issues with being praised for work that they didn’t do.
That was when she learned that she really didn’t have any friends at work…except for Jesse Hanson. Jesse was an eccentric man with an eye for details, who was damn good at his job. He had become her best friend since she started working at Manchester Klein. Despite the fact that all of the other people at work seemed fine taking and sharing the credit for Caitlyn’s ideas, as a manager, Jesse fought for her and made sure to give her credit on anything they worked on together.
That was probably why Carl hadn’t let them work together on the last five projects.
No matter what Jesse tried to do to help, it didn’t stop the rest of their colleagues from treating Caitlyn like shit, and he could only do so much to protect her around their boss. Carl made it clear that her career would go better for her if she learned to be a little more friendly to him. When he had mentioned it in passing to her, he had done it so casually she thought she had been hearing things. Over the last few months, she’d hoped he would forget about her, but as time went on, the harassment just seemed to get worse.
And giving in wasn’t an option.
Caitlyn hadn’t led an easy life, but it hadn’t been something she could complain about too much either. Simply put, her parents just didn’t care about her. Yeah, some people would say that as a generalization, but when Caitlyn had turned eighteen, her parents had actually told her they were no longer responsible for her. They had told her that raising her had taken enough of their time and now she was on her own.
Not that they had done much to take care of her when she was growing up anyways.
Both of her parents were gifted doctors and thought it would be appropriate to pass on their genius by having a child. When they discovered Caitlyn was a normal, average kid, they had lost interest in her and had basically left her in the care of a revolving door of nannies and housekeepers. The truth was, she was an embarrassment to them. She knew that they simply wanted to forget about her and move on with their lives.
Caitlyn had been alone for so long it was difficult to learn how to depend on people. She had done her best to hide her hurt and anger from her friends, but she’d learned at a very young age to be self-reliant. Moving from Chicago to San Francisco after she graduated from college had been her big break away from her old life.
It had been a chance for a fresh start.
Only, things hadn’t exactly turned out the way she had been hoping for.
Still, meeting Jesse had been worth it. Caitlyn spent a lot of time with Jesse and his boyfriend George Solomon. Where Jesse was a fantastic and truly talented artist, George was a straight-edged accountant. To the outside world, they were a strange couple, but Caitlyn loved how they balanced each other out. Jesse was a force to be reckoned with, and he was the reason Caitlyn’s feet were already starting to throb in pain from the wicked pair of red stilettos.
Damn him for talking her into buying them.
But then again, Jesse was good at talking Caitlyn into doing all sorts of things she wouldn’t normally do. Always the life of the party, Jesse made it impossible for Caitlyn to fade into the background like she would prefer. Over the last few months, Jesse had been begging Caitlyn to quit. He wanted her to find somewhere that she was appreciated, and where she wouldn’t be bombarded by the lecherous Neanderthal Carl, but Caitlyn was determined to stick it out.
Manchester was simply a necessary stepping stone that Caitlyn needed to achieve her secret dream of writing full-time as a children’s author. She just had to survive working there long enough to gain some experience, and pay off her student loans and the bills while she worked on getting published.
It still gave her a sense of pride to know that she excelled at what she did. The last five clients had gone with her marketing ideas over all of the others on her team, not that she was ever recognized for her efforts. In fact, every victory just seemed to make her co-workers hate her even more. It served them right thought, Caitlyn thought with satisfaction as she read over an email from a former client asking her for her help on a new project.
Thankfully, the rest of Caitlyn’s morning was pretty low key, with no major incidents that made her want to slam her head into her desk. She had gone through a slew of emails, and had started working on a new proposal for a client that she undoubtedly wouldn’t get credit for.
Taking a break, she spent a little time covertly texting with Jesse, since he was stuck at the airport waiting for his flight back from Seattle where he just sealed the deal for another project with a former client. The office was a dismal place without him around, but he would be back late that evening and they would be going out to celebrate her birthday tomorrow, so she couldn’t complain…much.
Caitlyn was briefly distracted from her work by rambunctious laughter as Carl left his office with one of the project managers, Ryan. They were leaving for the rest of the day for a big meeting with a new VIP client at their headquarters across the street. Carl basically thought they had the potential account in the bag. If that were true, it would be the biggest account Manchester Klein had to date. Caitlyn had done most of the ground work for the proposal before she had been pushed aside. She didn’t care, though. With Ryan in charge of the project, she didn’t want anything to do with it anymore. The kiss-ass Ryan was also Carl’s drinking buddy and an all-round asshole.
No wonder they got along so well.
“Wish us luck, doll,” Carl said with a wink as he walked past her desk.
Doll. God, she would do anything to wipe that lecherous expression off the prick’s face. But punching one’s boss in the face was a sure way to get fired. It might be worth it, Caitlyn considered for one brief moment, allowing herself to smile at the thought.
“Good luck,” she whispered, instead of what she really wanted to say. After they left, she happily went back to work, feeling lighter now that she’d have the rest of the day without her creepy boss looking over her shoulder.
It wasn’t ten minutes later that her phone rang. She silently swore when she saw Carl’s cell phone number on the readout. Picking up the handset, she braced herself to hear his voice.
“Caitlyn Watson.”
“I know who the hell I’m calling,” Carl hissed out. “I need you at the Steele Technologies meeting now.”
Caitlyn blinked. Wait…what? “Umm, Mr. Lowenbaum, I thought you said I wasn’t working on the Steele Tech proposal anymore.”
And why the hell was Carl whispering?
“Consider yourself back on it,” Carl snarled. “Grab your stuff and get your ass over to the Steele Technologies building. Top floor. Ass. Here. Now!”
He hung up before she could say anything else and left her staring at her phone in horror.
Oh, no. This could not be happening…