Inconvenient Attachment

“Ms. Blythe, step into my office for a moment,” said Mr. Armante over the intercom on my small office phone which sat on the far corner of my desk. I lifted my attention to the phone and then to the large, double-doors just to the left of my work area. 

         Clearing my throat, I reached over my desk and clicked the page button on the phone, leaning close to it to give a quick reply to Mr. Armante. “Yes, sir.”

        I gathered my folder—the folder I carried with me anytime I was with Mr. Armante, in the event that he had some important information I needed to keep notes on—and moved a few steps from around my desk to the large doors. Slowly pushing one open, I entered quietly and stopped just a few steps.

        “You wished to see me, sir?” I asked, tugging down the hem of my pencil skirt, finding that it had rode up a few inches from the short walk from my desk and into his office. 

       Mr. Armante glanced up at me from atop his glasses, setting down the papers he’d been reading. He removed his glasses and slowly leaned back in his chair, looking at me more clearly, focusing his full attention on me. Mr. Armante was a relatively large man, even in his older age. One might even sit here and call him a silver fox, with his tall stature and muscular build—maintaining his youthful physique with constant diet and exercise—and with his hair being a brilliant silver color, borderline white, with a full beard over his jaw and an equally extravagant mustache to go with it, he fit all the right criteria for a silver fox. His eyes were the lightest of browns and he had—in my opinion—one of the most charming smiles.

         “As you may have heard from the news and tabloids by now,” he began, hinting to me what the conversation was going to be about. “I will be stepping down as CEO and passing the position to my son. Well, not necessarily passing it down to him, he’s already been voted to be the next CEO—no doubt there,” he continued on, veering slightly off the intended topic at hand. He cleared his throat. “Anyway,” he began again. “I will be stepping to Chairman of the board for Armante & Co. to allow my son to shine as CEO.”

         I nodded along slowly, waiting patiently for the true subject to surface behind his rant. I was well aware that his son, Donovan Loïc Armante, was set to become the next CEO since it was the rage over newspapers, magazines, and the news. It would’ve been hard for me to miss it, that is, if I lived under a rock and paid no attention to the world around me—which the first was not true and the second was impossible.

        “Now, that brings me to the news about you, dear. As far as what will happen to you during this transition,” he said, finally sparking my attention. “When I transition into my new position as Chairman, the board already has a group of assistants specifically for board members.”

         I continued nodding, keeping my back straight and my body still although I could feel the ever impending anxiety creeping in at the fear of what his next words would be.

        “So, this leads me to the actual subject of the topic, the entire reason I called you in here this morning,” he said, standing to his full, six-foot height and buttoning his beige suit jacket together. “Since I will have a personal assistant provided for me, I’m sure you are wondering, does that mean I’m fired?”

        That is exactly what I am wondering but you have yet to tell me if that is factual or merely suspicion.

        “No, of course not. You have been a wonderfully superb assistant. I could not possibly think of replacing you with anyone else and I could not even imagine firing you for even knowing I would not be able to find another worker such as yourself, Ms. Blythe.”

         I hid my pride from his words, but, on the inside, I puffed my chest with triumph and stuck my chin in the air. I knew very well that I was incredible at my job, organization was my greatest strength and when it came to keeping a CEO of a multi-billion dollar company, organization was extremely crucial.
       “If this does not mean I am fired, then can I be led to believe I will be keeping my position, sir?” I asked him, speaking with nothing but utter eloquence even though my rushing anxiety came creeping back.

         “You most certainly can, Ms. Blythe,” he said, flashing his signature smile. “Although you will no longer be my personal assistant, you will be my son’s instead as he steps into the position of CEO.”

         Of course, I should’ve been ecstatic that I was going to be keeping my position as a personal assistant—and being in such a position for a prestigious company and to the CEO himself came with immense perks, perks I could not possibly imagine to get with any other job. However, being the personal assistant to Donovan Loïc Armante was not on the top of the list of things I ever wanted to do. I heard the rumors about the young billionaire, although extremely successful and precise in any and all of his work, he was a heartless man with little to no compassion for anyone or anything. 

           I had the displeasure of meeting the man on a few occasions, all of which ended with his lack of acknowledgement towards me and his disregard to my existence given I was not that of high-class. I was well aware of his prejudice against those of lesser, lower classes than his own—although it most likely had more to do with the fact that he believed that no one was as accomplished as he was and therefore not worth his time.

        Even after my mother worked for him in the Armante estate as his personal servant, and after her death, he still treated me with the same amount of disregard as a passerby to a sidewalk salesman. I wouldn’t even be surprised if he were the devil in disguise.   

         “You are familiar with my son, I recall you have met him before on multiple occasions—” although none were pleasant whatsoever, “so working with him should be no challenge that you cannot overcome, Ms. Blythe.”

         “Are you insinuating that your son is a challenge, Mr. Armante?” I questioned, raising a brow at him.

        In response, he gave a light-hearted chuckle, rubbing a hand over his gray, perfectly-trimmed beard. “Now, now. Don’t put words in my mouth, Ms. Blythe,” he teased. “But, he definitely will not be the same as me, my dear. I am well aware of how different my son is from me and he is a ruthlessly devoted man to his own personal craft and success. So, in layman's terms, he is far more serious of a man than I am.”

          “Duly noted, sir,” I responded carefully, nodding my head slowly. 

          He let out another chuckle and sighed. “So,” he clapped his hands together. “The full transition of things will commence this week, my son will fully take over as CEO by next week. These first two weeks will allow him to ease into the position, show his face more around the company—although many will recognize him upon first glance. It will also give you the chance to get acclimated to working with him. He will most likely want things done differently than I did so, Ms. Blythe, this is your heads-up that many things will be changing around here.”

            I took a quiet deep breath and nodded my head once more. “Understood.”

         “As I said, it will not be a challenge you cannot overcome, Ms. Blythe. He will be lucky to have you as an assistant.”

            I did not believe that, not even for a single second. 

           Once the conversation ended, I exited his office and returned to my desk just outside, sighing heavily at the news. I’m not sure what exactly I was expecting, even after seeing the news plastered everywhere that a new CEO would be taking over. Maybe I was hopeful I would be able to follow Mr. Armante anywhere or to whatever next position he had but that was simply over-optimism on my part and highly unrealistic. It only managed to get my hopes up and filled me with an unprecedented amount of disappointment.

          I took another deep breath and shook off my anxiety. It was just as Mr. Armante said, it was not a challenge even I could not overcome. I simply had to do what I did best, my job.

 

* * *

 

“My God, you’re not kidding, are you?” my dear friend, Jane, said looking at me with utter bewilderment. Although, her bewilderment did not stem from the same disappointment I had felt but from pure excitement. “You mean the Donovan Loïc Armante? The hottest hottie of all hotties?”

        I rolled my eyes at her predictable words and took another sip of my Diet Coke, nodding my head slowly. 

           “You know what that means, Beth, you can have some much-needed hot, steamy sex in the office. Could you imagine that?” she said enthusiastically, her undying love for erotica novels peeking through at the obvious painted picture she depicted.

       “No, thank you,” I responded quickly. “I am not interested in that man by any means.”

           “Come on, he was the one your mom constantly raved about you getting with,” she pointed out, causing me to give her a pointed look. 

         “She only said that because she was his personal servant for nearly his entire life and because he’d always been ‘breathtakingly handsome’ as she said,'' I told her, remembering painfully the sound of my mothers voice every night she’d come home from work gushing and sputtering pure nonsense about the man. Although I hated the subject of our conversations, looking back, I adored remembering how her face lit up when she spoke to me about the day when I’d find my true love.

          It hadn’t been that long since she suddenly passed away and the pain of losing her still lingered, like a massive hole shot through my heart. It had been seven months since she passed and I still could not figure out who the anonymous person was that paid for her funeral in full, including service, casket, and everything else. I had initially believed it to have been Mr. Armante, given the generations of service my family has provided to the Armante’s, but he was completely oblivious to the matter.

             “Surely, knowing your mom, she wouldn’t have said anything about the man just to say it. She worked closely with him, if anyone would’ve known the type of person he was, it would be her,” Jane pointed out, smiling brightly. “Imagine the animalistic sex from that man, Beth. Whoo,” she sighed, wiping a fake bead of sweat off her forehead. “Hot.”

            “Again. No, thank you,” I responded sharply. I had little to no interest in that man, let alone attraction. “He will be my boss, as Mr. Armante was, and given that I am not interested whatsoever—I am not—having any type of coitus relationship with your boss is strictly, and I mean strictly, prohibited. I am not going to jeopardize my career to feed your erotic-romance-novel fantasies.”

         “Boo, you’re no fun,” she grumbled, getting up to pour more wine into her glass. “But just imagine it, Beth. God,” she breathed, the erotic imagines of Donovan Armante flashing through  her mind—no doubt. She reached over and into her bag, pulling out a magazine with the dashing photograph of Donovan on the cover, pushing it into my face.             “I mean just look at him, Beth. Tell me he does not look like every man you see on the cover of those steamy romance novels?”

           I grabbed the magazine out of her hand—more so that it was not pushed into my face—and looked at the cover. Denying that he looked like the husky men on the cover of steamy romance novels would be an absolute lie, he did. By all means, Donovan Armante was an extremely attractive man. The few times I met him, his height exceeded his fathers six foot by many inches, his skin was the perfect shade of light mahogany, his hair jet-black and wavy, his eyes a gorgeous clash of green and earth, high ad defined cheekbones, a jawline that could cut, and a body that looked to be sculpted right out of marble. Unlike his father, he had a light stumble along his jaw in the photograph and a very serious, calculating expression permanently etched into his features.

             “For someone as good-looking as him, it seems to be quite a waste that he always has such a serious expression,” I commented, tossing the magazine to the side and taking another sip of my wine. 

             “Says the woman who always looks serious,” said my other dear friend Maeve, who was cooking her signature dirty spaghetti as she called it, which was traditional marinara sauce—which she makes from scratch—combined with a little alfredo sauce, pesto, a ridiculous amount of parmesan cheese. 

             “It is just how I look,” I responded defensively. 

            “Yes, your resting-serious-face—or RSF—I like to call it,” Jane jumped in, chuckling at her clever title.

          “That’s how I have to look with my position and after sitting for eight hours a day, five days a week—sometimes more—my features tend to just relax that way,” I explained.    “Even more so now that my mother isn’t around.”

           “You always looked that way,” Maeve said. “And we all know—as much as you may never admit it—that you always looked that way due to your protectiveness of her.”

            “Well, we definitely did have a man in the house who would’ve done the job for us,” I added. “And my mother was too kind for her own good. I didn’t like watching people take advantage of her.”

         “God, I miss that woman,” Jane jumped in. “Such a wonderful human being, not many of those around.”

           “She always raved about you being an angel, so that must’ve made her the purest of Goddess’s right?” Maeve said, all of us smiling, nodding our heads in unison. “Come on you two, dinner is ready.”

        We wasted no time in getting up and moving into the kitchen where Maeve had already served us helpings of dirty spaghetti on plates. “To Ms. Katherine Blythe, a woman to beheld.”

           We each clinked our glasses of wine together and took a sip, my two friends giving me a knowing, sad smile and each of them resting their head on either of my shoulders. The three of us had been friends since senior year of high school and got to spend an immense amount of time with my mother and they, too, were heart-broken about her passing. My mother was the type of woman who treated her own children and others she met—whether it had been my friends or young Donovan Armante—like her own. She gave motherly love and affection wherever she went and my friends adored her during the time they knew her.

             They knew today marked seven months and had invited themselves over and, quite frankly, I’m glad they did. I didn’t realize, until that moment, how much I needed the company.

            “I miss her,” I whispered, letting out a deep sigh, fighting back the large lump that formed in my throat, tears threatening to spill down my cheeks. 

             “Oh, hun,” Maeve said, the two wrapping their arms around me.

          “We miss her, too,” Jane said. “Let her live vicariously through us each and every day,” she said, the two of them letting them go and patting my back comfortingly.

         “I’m sure she missed this spaghetti,” I commented, each of us diving into our steaming piles of hot pasta, swirling it around our forks and groaning at the first delicious bite. “I know I did,” I said mid-bite, each of us laughing and enjoying each other’s company, remembering my mother on this day.