ROMANCE: His Reluctant Heart (Historical Western Victorian Romance) (Historical Mail Order Bride Romance Fantasy Short Stories) by Jane Prescott Read Free Book Online

anybody who is listening up there, if you even exist.  Did I just save   the changes with Christopher’s name splattered all over my piece?  A horrible feeling slides all the way down my chest and settles in my stomach, making me take one step closer to puking all over my dashboard.  The entire half hour drive to work, I keep oscillating between having sent it in in the highly inappropriate form and having changed it back.  The dread is so tangible by the time I get to work that my hands are shaking as I open up my email account and click the download icon next to the attachment I sent out the QC department.
                  I open it.  Scan it.  Find CHRISTOPHER MELLINS smackered all over the pages like seeds in a watermelon and mentally start digging my way to China.  I quickly shoot off another email asking for the draft back, saying that I know it’s highly irregular, but I’ve got to make a very key change otherwise it will offend our readers to no end.  Jeff from quality control sends me an email back saying he already forwarded it to the staffers there and if there’s anything offensive about it, they can edit it out themselves.  I know that the QC staff is limited and that they go on a roundtable schedule with each of the writers, so I ask him who’s got my piece this time; if it’s Sally, I can bribe her with double fudge chocolate cookies to allow me to change the piece before it gets into the wrong hands.  After all, she’s a red-blooded heterosexual lady, she’ll understand.
                  Jeff emails me back saying that he doesn’t have time to look himself, but he’s forwarded me the schedule for the week and I should look myself.  Heart pounding so loudly I feel it reverberating in my ears, I scan up and down Thursday’s lineup, find my name, and slide my finger up to match it to my reviewer.
                  CHRISTOPHER MELLINS.
                  That’s it.  I’m fired.  I’m fired so hard and so fast that I won’t even have time to clear out my cubicle.  There are strict company guidelines about this; no fraternizing with any authority figures, and now I’ve gone and screwed that up.  There’s no way Christopher won’t think I’m not flirting with him, and then I’ll be charged with creating a hostile work environment.  And there’s not just the work aspect of it—I have just announced, quite publicly and directly to the source, that I imagine Christopher helping me finger myself.
                  Oh Lordy Lord, Vishnu, Hashem, whatever.  What am I going to do about all this?
    *              *              *
                  For the rest of the day, my heart races like I’ve shot up on heroin.  I keep excusing myself to the bathroom because I don’t want my co-workers to see me with my head between my legs trying to regain control of my breathing.  Sally asked me what was wrong as I was coming out of the restroom and I almost told her, then realized I didn’t need anybody else telling me exactly how badly I messed up.
                  All day, I’ve been waiting for that stern e-mail in my inbox from Christopher telling me to come into his office so that he can sit me down and tell me in no uncertain terms that I better get a big box for my things and not be so bold as to expect a recommendation.  And the curious thing is that all day, my inbox has remained blank; I got a (1) icon next to my name on my account and almost swallowed my tongue, but it turned out to be Sean asking me where that paper on Italian fig trees came from because he’s writing one of those nerdy pieces where the people like their genus and species named exactly right even though nobody’s boning the fig tree.
                  The next day is no better because I begin wondering what happened on Christopher’s end when he read the story.  Maybe he thought it was a typo or a