Hard Limits

CHAPTER 1 THE ASSISTANT “Hey! Watch out!” Too late. The side mirror of the SUV clipped my hand, and the coffee I was holding flew through the air. A second later, my cappuccino with caramel syrup splattered over a candy wrapper, a crinkled flyer advertising Dr. Jo’s Therapy Services, and the sorry remains of a fancy beaded shoe. If that wasn’t a metaphor for my life on this gloomy January day in Los Angeles, I didn’t know what was. At least the cup wasn’t broken. The insulated travel mug had been a gift from my best friend, and although the lid bounced off, it had survived the fall with only a small dent. But the coffee… I’d needed that coffee, and I couldn’t afford a refill. The driver’s tinted window rolled down smoothly. At first, I only saw dark hair, and my insides seized because my older brother drove the same vehicle—a dark-grey Porsche Cayenne—and I feared that my family had finally caught up with me. But the window continued its downward journey to reveal intense blue eyes, smooth white skin, high cheekbones, a straight nose, and a well-defined jaw that definitely didn’t belong to any of the men I was related to. “Maybe if you’d looked where you were going, you wouldn’t have walked into my car.” Okay, he and Raj did have one thing in common—they were both assholes. And you know what? I’d had enough of jerks like them. They thought that having money gave them a licence to do as they pleased. “And maybe if you hadn’t been driving your gas-guzzling p***s extension so fast in a parking lot, you would have seen me before you hit me.” “You just appeared from nowhere.” “What if I’d been a child, huh? Would you still be using that excuse?” “I’d like to think a child’s parents would have taught them to look both ways before crossing the road. And for the record, I don’t need a p***s extension.” “Screw you.” “Not an option, my darling.” He held out a hundred-dollar bill between thumb and forefinger. “Here—get yourself another coffee and a pair of glasses.” “You can’t just buy me off like that.” He let the bill fall to the damp asphalt. “Suit yourself.” A second later, he roared away in his d**k-mobile, leaving me fuming. Were arrogance and condescension coded into the Y chromosome? If I’d been allowed to continue my medical career, I could have done a study on it. The hundred-dollar bill fluttered in the breeze, and I trapped it under my foot. Much as I didn’t want to take the stranger’s money, a hundred bucks was a hundred bucks, and I really needed caffeine. These days, I was too poor to be proud. My pride had gone the same way as my designer shoe collection, my top-of-the-line Mercedes coupe, and my gold jewellery—I’d left it behind when I escaped Massachusetts. I picked up the bill and clutched the cup Meera had given me tightly as I hurried back to the coffee bar. The cup said “Not today, Satan,” but nobody down there seemed to be listening. What was the time? Ten thirty-seven. Which gave me twenty-three minutes to refuel and walk the half mile to Dunnvale Holdings for my job interview. And I needed the job almost as much as I needed the caffeine. My Toyota’s fuel pump had stopped working, the tyres needed replacing, and last week, my landlord had announced he was putting up the rent on my shared apartment by twenty percent. Twenty percent! Even with the amount split four ways, I’d still have to find an extra two hundred bucks each month. When we’d questioned the increase, the landlord had merely shrugged and told us we were free to leave if we wanted to because there were plenty more people waiting to take our place, and he was right. The cost of living in LA was skyrocketing. If I couldn’t find a good-paying job, my only option would be to move somewhere cheaper, but I liked the anonymity of a big city. The neighbours didn’t know my name, and nobody cared about my business as long as I coughed up my share of the rent money. The line for coffee took forever, and I scalded my tongue as I headed out into the parking lot for the second time this morning. I’d have to hustle to get to Dunnvale on time. The job was a personal assistant position, hardly my dream career, but it was better than tending to the every need of a man I didn’t want to marry. At least in this role, I’d be able to do as I pleased in the evenings and—most importantly—sleep alone at night. I mean, I just wasn’t wife material. I was a terrible cook, everything I ironed still ended up with creases, and the idea of submitting to a man the way my mother did made my skin crawl. But in a professional capacity, I could deal with being told what to do, and this position paid better than most. Dunnvale’s headquarters came up on the right, a sprawling Art Deco-style building that stood four storeys tall. The lady I’d spoken with on the phone said to use the side entrance, and the offices were on the third floor. So far, so good… This place looked far nicer than the last company I’d worked at. Clifton Packaging had been based in a soulless brick building in the Warehouse District, the air always filled with dust from the manufacturing processes and too hot because the AC rarely worked. Dunnvale Holdings was closer to Beverly Hills. Farther to commute to but safer, and as an added bonus, the building would look great on Meera’s i********: page. I buzzed the intercom, and somebody answered almost immediately. “How may I help you?” a female voice asked. “Meera Adams to see Braxton Vale. I have an interview.” “Come on up. The staircase is on your right.” The lock clicked, and I found myself in a small lobby. A coffee table and couch sat to the left, shaded from a twinkling chandelier by a potted palm. I tucked the empty cup into my purse and took the staircase to the third floor, my footsteps soft on the thick carpet. I’d long since given up wearing heels. Now that I had to rely on bus rides and my own two feet to travel anywhere, ballet pumps were far more comfortable. This office… It wasn’t like an office. Granted, my experience was limited—I’d only worked for two other companies since I moved to LA, and one of them was a gym, but I’d spent time at my father’s business. Regular offices had rows of desks and filing cabinets with noisy printers providing a soundtrack, cubicles decorated with drooping plants and pictures of pets and kids as their occupants desperately tried to pretend they were elsewhere. Sad employees gathered around water coolers, and people sometimes cried in the bathrooms. Okay, that was me. I cried in the bathroom. But this was more like a luxury hotel, minus the bellhop and the noisy tourists. Gilded mirrors gave the place an airy feel, the velvet Chesterfield opposite the ornately carved reception desk was richly padded, and there was a bowl of chocolate truffles on the coffee table. Paintings decorated the walls, not corporate propaganda and health-and-safety posters. “You must be Meera?” The lady behind the desk was my mother’s age, dressed in a burgundy shift dress and a pearl necklace. Her hair was cut into a sleek bob, a shorter version of the style I currently sported. My waist-length hair had been the first sacrifice I’d made before coming to the West Coast. “That’s right.” “It’s lovely to meet you. Can I get you coffee? Tea? A glass of water?” Coffee? That fight in the parking lot had been for nothing? Well, not nothing—I’d come out of it ninety-six dollars richer, which made the bruised hand worth it. That cash would pay for two weeks’ worth of groceries, although I was so sick of eating rice. One of my roommates had suggested ramen, but that didn’t taste much better. “Coffee would be wonderful.” “Do you take milk? Sugar?” Low-calorie caramel syrup with foam was probably out of the question. “Just milk, thank you.” I was one minute early, and Braxton Vale was ten minutes late. A power play to prove that his time was more important than mine? Probably. My father used the trick regularly. Meera called it a d**k move, but at least I had time to drink my coffee and use the bathroom. The bathroom that was stocked with expensive perfume and unused Chanel make-up, just in case I got the urge to go back to my old ways. Would the receptionist think it strange if I came out with scarlet lips when they’d previously been pale pink? I left them as they were. “Mr. Vale will see you now. Take the hallway to your left and go through the double doors at the end.” “Thank you for the coffee.” The hallway was lined with photos, artful black-and-white shots of the Los Angeles skyline, the ocean, Sunset Boulevard. Santa Monica Pier. The Hollywood sign. A naked woman staring out across the city. Wait. What? I paused to stare, and apart from the barely there panties, she wasn’t wearing a stitch of clothing. I mean, the picture was certainly artistic, and I was no stranger to nudity, but was it really suitable for the workplace? The taut ass of the man in the next print was no less risqué. What sort of company was this? I’d googled, of course, but little had come up, just a vague paragraph on some business website noting that Dunnvale Holdings had backed a new indie movie starring Violet Miller, this year’s hottest Hollywood property. Did she know about this objectification? I stepped closer. The pictures weren’t tasteless—quite the opposite, in fact—just…unexpected. Maybe Violet did know? After all, she had filmed a gloriously dirty movie last year, an erotic thriller with Kane Sanders. I’d seen it in the movie theatre with Meera on one of our final nights out together in Boston, and I’d had to fan myself on more than one occasion. My father would have lost his mind if he’d found out what I’d been watching. There’s something strange about this place… A part of me wanted to spin around and run out of the building. There was an odd vibe in the air, an undercurrent of energy that left me twitchy. But the rent wouldn’t pay itself, and nobody else would even give me an interview. So many employers wanted ten years of experience in return for minimum wage these days, and I lacked the first and couldn’t afford to live on the second. Not with no support network whatsoever. Living alone was every bit as hard as I’d feared it would be, but despite the constant setbacks, I knew I’d made the right decision in leaving my old world. I might have been tired, and poor, and a little bit scared, but I was free. And freedom was worth more than a healthy bank balance. Silence reigned as I approached Braxton Vale’s office. The doors ahead of me were as opulent as the rest of the building, carved wood with gold handles. Should I knock? The receptionist hadn’t said anything about knocking, but if anyone walked into my father’s office unannounced, even at home, his annoyance was all too evident. I knocked. “Come in.” The doors were as heavy as they looked, but when I pushed on the left-hand one, it swung open silently on well-oiled hinges. I took one step forward and nearly threw up. Why? Because the man sitting at the desk in front of me was the same man whose p***s I’d insulted in the parking lot less than an hour earlier.