His 90 Day PA

PIPPA

I'm a fraud. Tick.

A faker. Tock.

A charlatan. Tick.

A phony. Tock.

My negativity blossoms with each movement of the clock on the wall. It’s a shiny silver monstrosity with a white face and long gray hands that resemble iron swords.

I’m in the opulent Manhattan office of Mrs. Leslie Chapman, the HR Director for the headquarters of the Sayle Group. Instead of watching her, or demurely directing my attention to my nails, I squint at what is written in elegant cursive on the big hand. With the drapes drawn against the sunlight, try as I might, I can only make out the word time.

Time.

That’s what scares me now.

In a matter of minutes, my fate will be decided. Thumbs up or thumbs down. To the victor go the spoils, or rather the job as the personal assistant to the CEO, Mr. Xaver Sayle.

I hope against hope I’m the chosen one, but my prospects of landing the position aren’t great on paper. My only credentials are a 4.1 GPA from a small two-year community college and a few jobs as a waitress.

Since escaping to New York two years ago, working as a waitress has put food on the table and paid my rent.

In truth, I like being a waitress. Love it, in fact.

The noise, the chatter, and the interaction with customers make my day. Once a person sits in my section, I make it my mission to send them away with a better attitude than they came in with.

Yes, for me, being a waitress is rewarding.

But I need a better wage.

The debt I owe, the one I’ve been paying on for almost two years, prevents me from living a full life. I’m hoping with the salary from this job, I’ll be able to get out from under my obligations. To have a bit left to start over, and ultimately, to be free.

Free of him.

Swish. Crack.

My anxiety from the past, which never fails to find me in the present, curls my hands into wringing claws. I resist their pull as long as I can, even as they beg me with tiny minds of their own to curl and flex. Instead, I fiddle with the temporary badge that has a horrid picture of me on the front.

Mrs. Chapman's cryogenic freezer-stare zeroes in on my movement, and I still my hands through sheer will born of stubbornness.

Truthfully, I’m not sure if I inherited my stubbornness. My father left my birth mother before I was born. When I was five, my mom went to work and never came back.

A sad story, I know.

The phone on Mrs. Chapman’s desk rings in a soft, melodic tune, bringing me back into the here and now.

Lips folding into her mouth at the interruption, she picks up the handset, places it to her ear, and doesn’t say hello.

A person as formidable as she doesn’t have to.

Leslie Chapman has straight iron-gray hair, which falls in a bob and frames her high cheekbones. Funky retro glasses sit atop her aristocratic nose, and middle-age weight gain has passed her by like a cabdriver after the bars have closed. Her Park Avenue suit matches her dark-blue eyes, and she rounds out her look with a pair of to-die-for Louboutins.

She’s confident. Strong. Unafraid in this world.

Everything I was.

Mrs. Chapman listens to the person on the other end of the line, peering at my résumé with an unreadable expression on her angular face. After a minute she says the word yes, then replaces the receiver in the correct niche and goes back to skimming.

I hope she sees something she likes on my résumé.

I think it's doubtful that she will find my sub-par qualifications enough to give me the job. Still, I'm confident that my uncanny ability to make people comfortable will put me ahead of the other candidates. It's what has gotten me through to being one of the final three.

My first interview, via video chat, was with Darla, an intake screener. The this will only take fifteen minutes meeting lasted well over two hours. We only stopped talking and laughing when I told her I had to leave for my shift. The rest of the interviews, including the panel ones, took longer than they should have for the same reason.

Unfortunately, my gift of the gab probably won’t work on Mrs. Chapman. A woman like her probably devours applicants as a light apéritif.

The woman in question leans back in her chair, picking up my one-page history.

It looks inadequate in her hand.

Just like I feel at the moment.

“Pippa Hofacker.” Her announcement of my name in the stillness of the office is like the crack of a whip.

“Yes, Mrs. Chapman?”

“You don’t have much experience. Tell me, what makes you qualified for this job?”

She aimed for the jugular right away, but I’m not worried. I have a practiced answer all ready to go.

“I’m qualified to be Mr. Sayle’s PA because I don’t have years of experience. I won’t be tempted to do things how they’ve always been done. I’m able to think of innovative ways and new solutions to problems, rather than doing what’s rote.”

I have only a second to pat myself on the back for my smooth delivery before Mrs. Chapman asks another zinger.

“Why do you want this position?” She gives my résumé a doubtful glance.

I lean forward a bit more to convey my sincerity. “Working for Mr. Sayle is a once in a lifetime opportunity.” I give her a candid smile. “I admire him. He embodies everything I aspire to be.”

Asked the same question at each interview, my answer never deviated. But my response wasn’t quite the complete truth.

Sure, I admire Mr. Sayle. Who wouldn’t? He’s the sole owner of The Sayle Group, a multi-billion-dollar entertainment company that he’d built from scratch.

At sixteen, he received a ten-thousand-dollar loan from his father to start a publishing house catering solely to indie authors. The company's first book, Dark Arrow by Maximilian Sabio, ended up being read by nearly everyone on the planet. The rest of the series went the same meteoric way.

Twelve years later, he’d built his corporation into a worldwide entertainment conglomerate. Books. Music. Hit Internet and TV shows. The man is still going strong. His recent Time magazine interview indicated he’s headed to Hollywood to open an indie movie studio within the next year.

The media love him. Women flock to him. Mortal men can’t touch him.

Handsome, wealthy, and intelligent, Xaver Sayle is a wunderkind for the ages. His moniker, Scintillating Sayle, suits the face he portrays to the public. But I’ve seen him at a time when both fame and glory had forsaken him.

A few days after I arrived in New York I bumped into Mr. Sayle. Right away, his custom-fitted suit captured my attention. There was nothing remarkable about the dark-blue color, those are a dime a dozen in the metropolis; yet he made it stand out.

The material had stretched across his shoulders then fell tapered to his trim waist. When he sidestepped me, the fabric had bunched at his biceps, hinting at his strong physique. His dark hair—thick, rich, and black—had brushed ever so gently across the collar of his starched white shirt.

His eyes ... as green as the fragile tips of grass poking from beneath a pile of melting spring snow, were brilliant. Blazing. And directed at me.

Those burning pools caused a feeling of kinship to bubble within me like water from a once-dry well.

This man knew pain. He knew me.

What I’d gone through. Where I’d come from. How low I’d sunk.

I started to say something, anything, to bind him to me if only for a second longer, but he was gone, leaving me with a lasting image of his raw emotion.

I’d never seen such agony on anyone’s face.

Except for mine during the dark times.

The times where he dwelled.