She's Got Mail!: She's Got Mail! / Forget Me? Not

“When we goin’?”

“When I get my paycheck.” She didn’t have to say which paycheck. Maybe it would be the paycheck she received in a year. Or two.

“Oh, right, I almost forgot.” Jerome reslouched so his other hip leaned against the desk. “You gulchers live paycheck to paycheck.”

She sensed danger. Just the way her farm animals back home sometimes sensed danger when no obvious threat was nearby, she sensed Jerome sneaking up for some type of surprise attack. “I’m no longer a gulcher,” she said, keeping her voice level. “Now I’m Mr. Real.”

Jerome looked surprised, then broke out in laughter. “Mr. Real,” he finally said, the words choked out as though it were a struggle for him to be serious. “That’s rich.” He reached over and stroked her clenched fingers, wound tightly around the dinosaur. “You’re filling in for Mr. Real only because of me, baby.”

Baby? A nauseating spurt of adrenaline shot through her. She eased her hand away. “You got me in to see Paige. I did the rest.”

“But you never would have had that opportunity if I hadn’t opened the door.”

Rosie was squeezing the dinosaur so tightly, she was sure she’d have a permanent imprint of a little dinosaur face on her palm. “So you opened the door….” she said calmly, determined to not let her voice shake as her hands were doing.

He leaned so close, she could see the lusty glint in his dark eyes. Smell his sweat. “I could open it again,” he said, his words thick with insinuation. “Help you get another opportunity.”

Through clenched teeth, she said, “Are you propositioning me?” Even after years of being told, “Watch your tongue,” Rosie couldn’t take this macho act any longer. He’d already blackmailed her for lunch—now he was blackmailing her for more.

Jerome stepped back, fast, and adjusted the lapel of his leather jacket so the collar stood up. In his best Johnny Depp “I’m cool” voice, he said, “I never said anything like that.”

“No, you implied it.”

He cocked an eyebrow. “I came here to deliver a message from Paige,” he said, suddenly all business. “She wants stats on your Mr. Real answers. Number received. Number answered. Quality of responses. Quality of feedback.”

Sheesh. When Jerome got serious—or miffed?—he turned from a bad boy into a tough guy. She shouldn’t have accused him of propositioning her. What if he said some negative things to Paige about Rosie? There goes my great escape from the gulch. “I’ve only been Mr. Real for a day,” she said, forcing herself to sound light, professional. “When does she want these stats?”

“Tomorrow morning. First thing.”

“First thing?” She opened her cramping fingers, giving the dinosaur some breathing room. “How first is ‘first thing?”’

“Let’s see…I have two openings. Ten or seven-thirty.”

“Ten would be good,” Rosie offered. That’d give her more time to pull together statistics, print off a few of the questions and answers as examples, forecast estimates based on the number of outstanding questions in William’s inbox….

“Sorry,” Jerome said. “Ten’s taken. Your slot is seven-thirty. She can squeeze you in between a breakfast meeting and a senior management staff meeting. Don’t be late. If there’s anything Paige hates, it’s when people are late to meetings. She calls it passive-aggressive insubordination.”

Paige called it all that? “Seven-thirty,” Rosie repeated, deciding she’d be here early just in case Jerome had given her the wrong time. The last thing she needed to do was saunter into Paige’s office at seven-thirty and discover the meeting had been for seven.