Five Minutes Late: A Billionaire Romance by Sonora Seldon Page A

belongings to my ample chest, I was surrounded by a changing cast of coworkers – well, former coworkers, if I actually was fired.
    As the floor numbers ticked past on the readout over the doors, I edged to the back of the car and pressed my shoulders against the stainless steel wall as more people crowded in and out each time the elevator stopped. The stops were frequent, executives and tech support and administrative staff getting on and off as they chattered about their endlessly fascinating little lives with each other – but I noticed that the talk changed to whispers when they saw me.
    Trust me, big girls who find themselves holding down exciting and challenging positions that involve answering phones and pouring coffee are right at the bottom of the corporate food chain – before yesterday’s craziness and then whatever was going on this morning, none of these people would have bothered to notice my existence, any more than they would given much thought to a potted plant, or a water cooler, or one of those stupid inspirational posters on the wall.
    But this morning, they looked at me – they looked at me, and they whispered. Men’s eyes lingered on me, women glared, and people put their heads together in private little conversations that involved lots of glancing my way and tittering.
    I caught an occasional word or phrase, and what I heard wasn’t promising – things like “no accounting for tastes,” “seriously?” “bitch,” and “you’re kidding.” I had all I could do to keep myself from slamming a knee into the balls of some snotty suit who leered at me and whispered to his buddy something that sounded like, “a huge ass, but I’d do it.”
    Gee, pal, thanks – I woke up this morning wanting so bad for some jackass to assume I’m a ten-dollar alley whore who …
    Oh. Oh shit.
    That’s why they were all whispering and snickering and rolling their eyes.
    Somebody – probably Dana the Nervous Bitch, maybe the security guy who let me out of the building – must have let it slip that I’d been alone with Mr. Killane in his office for the better part of an hour yesterday evening, and everybody assumed that we’d been up there doing it like bunny rabbits. His reputation for jumping women – usually not curvy nobodies like me, sure, but still – made it plausible, and as for my reputation … well, now it looked like I didn’t have one. At least not the kind you’d want your mom to hear about, anyway.
    Of course, it just figured that on this morning when everybody assumed I was the kind of tramp who’d sleep with her boss, I’d made the fateful decision to wear a friskier-than-usual low-cut blouse that showed off my generous breasts to a point that was just barely acceptable for office wear.
    Great timing, Ashley.
    I tried to sink into the back wall of the elevator and disappear. I rearranged the box of my stuff and the purse dangling from my left shoulder to cover up my cleavage as much as possible, but I ended up just looking like a fumbling, fidgety idiot. Why did it feel like this ride up to my doom was taking an hour or two longer than it did yesterday?
    The elevator climbed higher, entering the upper-level territory of the people who made a serious difference in the company’s command of the financial world.
    The crowds thinned out, but the talk didn’t. Now it was guys in high-end Hugo Boss suits who were eyeing my ass and whispering to each other, and women in designer outfits that cost more than all the clothes I owned put together who were raising their perfectly plucked eyebrows and snickering in groups of two or three about the slutty big girl.
    All this and it looked like I was fired after all? That bastard Killane was so dead.
    After several eternities, I arrived on the floor where the private elevator awaited that would take me up to the Asshole of the Universe’s office. I stepped out to find that although Mr. Killane’s receptionist Dana was once again waiting for me,