Chapter 0012
“Listen, Sean, I am as single as it gets. There must be some mistake,” I said. “Are you sure you got the right records?”
Sean sighed. “Hazel Whitaker, correct? Please confirm your date of birth and social security number for me.”
I whispered the info into my phone so no one else would overhear.
“That’s what we entered into the database. I don’t know what to tell you, it comes up as ‘married‘ under marital status, Sean said.
Of course. Of course this one simple thing I should have gotten did not go my way. “Okay, thank you for calling.” I hung up, frustrated and confused, but I didn’t have time for this, I had to get back to work.
After helping Logan with his weekly schedule, I decided to start trying to build my case against Bob. My job was on the line and I needed to figure out what he was up to..fast.
I walked to the pantry, a well–known source of office gossip. Surely somebody had some dirt on him. This was the place where everyone learned about his potential in–office affair with a former assistant of his, after all. (And how we learned his wife attacked and cut off that girl’s hair in the parking lot soon after she found out herself.)
The pantry was abuzz alright…but not about Bob. Everyone in the pantry seemed to have another on their mind: Logan.
“Oh hey Hazel,” another secretary named Ella said when I walked in. “How’s it going with everyone’s favorite CEO?”
“Oh, uh…fine,” I said, not wanting to get stuck in a conversation about Logan when I had other convos to eavesdrop on.
“You are so lucky to get to work with him so closely,” Ella said, with more than a hint of jealousy in her voice. “What’s he like anyway?”
A handful of other women heard our conversation and huddled around close, hoping for something juicy.
“He’s professional. Straight–forward. There’s nothing really exciting to tell,” I shrugged.
“Oh come on, you can’t tell me you’re not even the slightest bit interested in him. Especially after Vegas,” Ella said. After she realized she spilled a little bit of gossip about me to me, she clamped a hand over her lips.
My face burned. “If you’ll excuse me, I just came in to grab something for my break.”
The women turned, quietly whispering as the walked away from me. I grabbed a chocolate bar and a magazine, and positioned myself against a wall that was closest to where all the ladies stood. I pretended to read while I was listening to snippets of their conversations, hoping to hear something. anything about Bob.
But a good half hour in the pantry only got me more gossip about Logan. These women were obsessed. They wanted to know if he was single, which one of them had the best shot at him if he were, which one had the best shot of stealing him if he weren’t. They wanted to talk about how good looking he was, how
much time he possibly spent in the gym, which cologne he wore so they could buy it themselves. And on
and on.
I tossed the magazine on the counter and left, discouraged. Logan–mania wasn’t going away anytime soon. When would all the other good gossip return?
walked into the restroom and into a stall. A moment later, two pairs of feet entered and stood at the sinks. They started chatting about the lost order, the newest makeup trends they liked, and I was just about to tune them out when one of them mentioned..
“Did you hear that Bob’s been spending like, a weird amount of time in his office lately?” Woman 1 said.
“Like how much time?” Woman 2 asked.
“He practically lives here. The weirder part is he won’t let anyone go near his office anymore,” woman 1 said. “I wonder what he’s hiding in there?”
“What? I just saw Elena going in there at the end of the day yesterday,” woman 2 said.
