Total pages in book: 92
Estimated words: 85593 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 428(@200wpm)___ 342(@250wpm)___ 285(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 85593 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 428(@200wpm)___ 342(@250wpm)___ 285(@300wpm)
I felt like I could breathe again once he was gone. I flopped down on the hotel bed, lying on top of the comforter and staring at the ceiling. What did Dominic want to talk about? What was “everything”? And why the hell were the water bottles in the room ten dollars?
I stirred my cereal and watched the milk slowly turn chocolatey brown. I was in a large carpeted room strewn with circular tables. This morning, everyone from The Squawker had walked from the hotel to this place. Employees guided us past people setting up for some sort of gun show to our right and led us back through a circular hallway to a room full of catered breakfast food on silver platters.
Elizabeth had a little bit of everything piled on her plate until I could hardly see her face. Farhad took about five servings of scrambled eggs, and Polly was poking at a bowl of fruit.
“This is so weird,” I said.
“Yeah, no shit,” Farhad agreed. “What is he going to talk about? Business strategy?”
“I looked it up,” Elizabeth said. She pulled out her phone and turned it to face us. There was video of Gregor standing on stage with one of those headset mics gesturing and speaking enthusiastically. The camera panned to a few dozen people dressed in business casual clothes–probably his employees. They were all watching with pained expressions.
I grinned as she tucked the phone back in her bag. “So it’s like some kind of motivational speech? That’s not so bad. I was worried he was going to try to get us to join his MLM and start selling anti-aging cream or something.”
Polly chuckled. “Yeah, I’ve heard about these things. It’s like his buy-in. He wants his employees to worship him, and Gregor seems to think this all makes him appear larger-than-life, I guess.”
“The eggs are good,” Farhad said as he shoveled more into his mouth.
“Yeah this food is bomb a.f.” Elizabeth had a little mini sausage in each hand and bit the top off both, grinning. “If Gregor Lockwood wants to fly me out for his little dick stroking contests, I’m game as long as he keeps feeding me like this. Did you know room service was covered last night? I had like three cheesecakes on my bed.”
I sighed. “Let’s just remember we don’t actually want this guy as our boss, okay? We want him to move on and leave Dominic alone to run The Squawker.”
Elizabeth aimed an accusatory sausage at me, narrowing her eyes. “You know, that sounds an awful lot like something a dick-blind woman would say.” As if to emphasize her point, she aimed both sausages at her eyes and made jabbing motions, feigning pain and misery.
I grinned. “Fair, but think about it. Dominic wants to prove he can make the company succeed. That’s good for all of us. His dad wants to prove Dominic will fail. How would that be good for any of us?”
“At least I’d enter unemployment with eggs in my belly,” Farhad said with a shrug.
“Would you shut up about the eggs?” I snapped.
Polly snorted, but nodded her head. “Darcy is right, guys. I don’t know what we can do about it yet, but we need to make sure we keep our eyes out for any way we can to help Dominic.”
“Also,” I said. “You two should probably not glare at Gregor like you did back at the office on Friday. Did you you see the way he was looking at you?”
Farhad and Elizabeth exchanged a look.
“Okay,” Elizabeth said. “Nobody is going to take away my right to glare. You can take my subway card. You can take my morning coffee, even. But if you try to tell me who I can and can’t glare at, we’re going to come to fisticuffs.”
“I just don’t think it’s wise to be so obvious about where our intentions are,” I said.
“Wisdom is overrated,” Elizabeth said. “Have you ever tried impulsivity? Answer me this: put a wise woman and an impulsive woman alone in a room with a hot guy. Which one is getting laid? The impulsive one.”
“There’s more to life than getting laid,” Farhad said.
“Coming from the guy who has to clean cobwebs from his dick after he brushes his teeth every morning?” Elizabeth smirked.
Farhad set his fork down, folding his arms to properly give Elizabeth a dirty look. “I don’t talk about my sex life with a pervert like you. That doesn’t mean it's non-existent.”
“I’ve never seen aliens, so they don’t exist. I’ve never seen proof that you get laid, so you’re a virgin.”
Farhad looked like he was about to jump over the table and tackle her out of frustration, but he slowly picked his fork back up and focused on his precious eggs again. Elizabeth knew how to get under people’s skin, that was for sure.