“Is everyone watching me? Eavesdropping on my phone calls?” she said, furious now. “Are all of your lives so lame that you need to focus on me and what I’m doing instead of minding your own business?”
“Don’t shoot the messenger,” Lucas said. “I like you, Ivy. You know that. Would I tell you all of this otherwise?”
She sighed, grabbing her cup and putting cream and sugar into it, stirring it with a little plastic stirrer. “I guess that’s true,” she muttered.
“Everyone around here’s paranoid, Ivy. This place is crazy.”
She sipped her coffee and glanced at Lucas now. “None of that explains why you were messing around in Emma’s office.”
“I’m getting there,” he said, his voice lowering to a conspiratorial whisper. “We were all going back and forth with those joke emails, and they were getting more and more outrageous. And then I chose to send my worst joke yet directly to Emma Marks this morning. It was an accident, and it was truly stupid. I hadn’t woken up yet, I guess.”
Ivy rolled her eyes. “And that’s why you went into her office?”
Lucas looked again over his shoulder. “Look, I know it was a dumb thing to do. But her door was open and I thought…if I could just delete the email off her computer—“
“How did you get into her email? Everyone has password protection.”
“She didn’t,” he said. “I can’t explain it, but maybe she forgot to lock her computer when she left last night. So I just pulled up the email and deleted the message I’d sent her. That’s it.”
“That’s it, huh?” Ivy said, sighing as she continued sipping her coffee, still not sure how she felt about his confession.
“Ivy, please. Don’t rat me out. Emma Marks is a stone cold you-know-what, and she’ll fire my ass in a heartbeat for this.”
“Well, maybe you should be fired for that, Lucas. That was dumb.”
“I know. I’m sorry.” He hung his head. “Just give me a chance, Ivy. I’ll owe you one.”
She thought about it. Was it really her place to tell Emma or anyone else that Lucas had gone into her office and used her computer? If their security system was so great, they should’ve known he’d done so.
And besides, Ivy wasn’t feeling very charitable towards anything Cullen Sharpe had a stake in. As far as she was concerned, the controlling and manipulative CEO and his dumb company could both go to hell in a hand basket.
“You don’t owe me anything,” Ivy said, finally. “I won’t tell anybody.” She shook her head in disbelief that somehow she’d been roped into this little conspiracy on top of everything else.
“You’re the best,” Lucas told her. He turned to leave and then seemed to think better of it, turning back. “Hey, we never even had a chance to talk about last night. Insane, wasn’t it?”
“Very,” she agreed, raising her eyebrows without going further.
“When that fight broke out, you disappeared. I was getting knocked around pretty good,” he chuckled.
“I’m sorry that happened to you. You were nice. You tried to step in and protect me.”
“Tried and did the opposite of succeed,” he said, giving her a wry smile. “They call me Sir Fails a Lot. Pleased to make your acquaintance.”
“Don’t be so hard on yourself, Lucas. Everything worked out in the end.”
“I figured,” Lucas said, nodding.
Ivy left the break room, her brow wrinkled with puzzlement.
Was it her imagination or had Lucas seen more last night than he was admitting to? Surely, Lucas or some of the other temps had been aware of Cullen Sharpe’s stepping into the fray and fighting those drunks, and then escorting Ivy from the bar.
But Lucas was acting like he had no idea about any of that. Maybe he really had been too busy fighting to notice anything else.
As she went to her desk and sat down, preparing to get to work, Ivy’s mind wouldn’t stop spinning.
The other temps didn’t trust her because they’d seen the special treatment she was getting from the CEO. But Cullen wasn’t going to be giving her special treatment anymore. He was clearly done with her after her little revelation about being a virgin.
Forget about the other temps. Forget about Lucas. Forget all of them.
She shook it all off and got to work. Bottom line, this was just a job…a temporary job to pay the bills.
Nothing more and nothing less.
She wasn’t going to let the drama consume her. In fact, she was done with all of the drama and all of the bloodsucking leeches trying to feed on her. Whether it was her fellow temps, a bitchy supervisor, or the temperamental CEO himself, Ivy was through worrying about what everybody else thought about her.
She was in it for herself, and that was the end of it as far as she was concerned.
Slowly, her coworkers began filtering into the office and Ivy couldn’t help but notice the way they were all sneaking glances at her as she typed away on her computer. There were whispers too, she was certain of it.
Ivy tried not to care.