Five Minutes Late: A Billionaire Romance by Sonora Seldon

minute.
    It was going to be a long eight hours.
     
    I swept through the main entrance at 8:50 a.m., with my purse slung over my left shoulder and the little box of doughnut heaven clutched under my right arm. I slipped through the crowd of busy worker bees in the lobby and headed for my post at main reception, already planning a day of answering calls, directing the lost, brewing coffee, and surfing the web until my fingers fell off.
    At 8:50 a.m. and thirty seconds, that whole ‘life is sweet’ thing blew up in my face.
    A stranger was sitting behind the reception desk.
    Some bitch with a pipe cleaner figure and inch-thick makeup was sitting behind my reception desk, and my stuff was in a box. My picture of Mom, a few magazines and paperbacks, an old Kindle, and my swinging-chrome-balls thingie had all been dumped into a standard guess-what-sucker-you-don’t-work-here-anymore box. Atop them all slumped Lester the dead jade plant, looking more depressed than ever.
    That bastard Killane had fired me after all. After staging that bizarre little scene for me the day before, after waving his psychosis in my face, after teasing and taunting and mystifying me until I didn’t know which way was up and whether I hated him or was crazy about him, the bastard had fired me. He let me think my job was safe, and then he fired me anyway – probably two seconds after I left his office, the asshole.
    Christ, I was going to kill him. I was going to murder him in front of God and everybody, and then I’d call in the paparazzi to take pictures of his body.
    “Ms. Daniels?”
    I snapped out of my murder fantasy and realized I’d wandered over to my ex-desk on automatic pilot, and that Ms. Skinnyass was trying to get my attention.
    “Um, yes, I’m … well, I feel like I’m the former Ashley Daniels, but whatever.”
    She displayed her best sparkling, professional, glad-I’m-not-you smile. This girl would go far.
    “I apologize for any inconvenience, Ms. Daniels. Please feel free to collect your things,” – she nudged the box toward me, undoubtedly eager to get my raggedy-ass crap off what was now her desk – “and report to Mr. Killane’s office immediately.”
    What the …?
    Was I ever going to understand anything that happened in this madhouse?
    “Excuse me? If he’s, ah, if I’m fired, why would they want me up there?”
    “I’m afraid I have no idea, Ms. Daniels – I was just transferred to main reception this morning, and I only know that I was told to have you report to Mr. Killane’s office as soon as you came in.”
    She beamed her perky smile at me, and I wanted to slap it right off her bony little face. As far as she was concerned, the minor problem known as Ashley Daniels was now solved, and I could just get off her turf and out of her life.
    Two things occurred to me.
    First, the doughnuts. I hurried over to the lines of seats in the lobby’s waiting area, and left the box of glazed goodness in one of the chairs. If I dropped off the doughnuts with Thin Slut, the guys would never have a chance to get them – hell, she’d probably dump all those delicious calories in the trash, just of out of spite.
    Once I was back at the desk, I asked about Thing Two. “Ma’am, I believe there’s a keycard I’ll need to get up to Mr. Killane’s floor?”
    “I’ll let his receptionist Dana know that you’re coming, Ms. Daniels, and she’ll be more than happy to access his private elevator for you.” The slightly less brilliant smile she now aimed my way made it clear that my time in her life was now at an end and that I needed to move on.
    Once more, I rode the elevator up from the main lobby, climbing steadily toward the upper floors where serious employees who had a future here did their thing – but unlike yesterday, I wasn’t alone as I rose toward whatever doom Mr. Killane had planned for me. This time it was the beginning of the work day for most people, and as I clutched the box of my workplace