Free BEAUTY and the BILLIONAIRE (Part One) by Glenna Sinclair Page B

shifting tack. “You ran out so soon. I had a list of things I was going to teach you yesterday, and another one for today. Now we have to get through both of them today—and that blasted box of documents.”
    I hid a small smile behind my hand. If Myra was going to stonewall me, fine. And if she was going to make me feel guilty for leaving her here all alone yesterday morning, fine again. I had other sources now. I was sure I could get my new friend, Sam, the receptionist, to divulge some secrets.
    “You didn’t show me the cafeteria,” I told Myra, “but that can always wait until lunch, right? What else should we be doing?”
    Myra rarely stayed at her desk, receiving an agenda of items to attend to on Roland’s behalf via email at the start of each workday. I shadowed her on her jaunts across the office and to other companies on floors below, observing the surprisingly high energy in a woman about to retire. If I’d put in as many years as she had in the workforce, I would’ve been taking it easy during my final week.
    And when she did go back to her desk to check the agenda or if there was some free time to work on digitizing between tasks, the phone would often blare, scaring us both. The only person ever on the other end of that line was Roland.
    “I’m surprised you don’t have many missed calls from him,” I said, as Myra prepared to forward him some information he’d asked for.
    “What do you mean?” she asked absently, clicking away at the computer.
    “I mean, if you’re rarely here, at the desk, always running errands around the building, then don’t you think he’d call? He seems to be really needy.”
    “There’s no need for him to call when I’m not here,” she answered, sending the email with a small sound of triumph and bringing the agenda back up on the screen. “He can see if I’m here or not for himself.”
    She pointed toward the ceiling to a small, black lens.
    “A camera?” I nearly shouted, causing several people to swivel around in their desk chairs to try and see what was wrong with me. “Sorry. But a camera? Really?”
    Now I understood my creepy feelings, the impression that I was under scrutiny. I’d felt like that when I first got here because it was true. There really were eyes on me, and they belonged to Roland Shepard. My skin crawled in earnest.
    “I don’t see why you’re so upset about it,” Myra said, shrugging. “How else do you expect the man to keep track of what’s going on in his own office?”
    “Well, he could come out here, for one,” I said. “Not lock himself away. He doesn’t have to spy on us. Oh, wait. Does that thing have audio?”
    “Of course it does,” she answered, almost crossly. “So does that one, and that one, and that one, and the one in the break room, too. How have you not noticed them?”
    Because there were too many other things to notice, like how attractive Dan was, or how afraid I was of not fitting in, or how fast I was running away from my past, or how frightening Roland was, or how mightily I was struggling to prove that I could do this job…somehow. There had been many, many distractions to keep me from noticing the cameras this place was apparently bristling with, but now that I knew they were here, I couldn’t not see them.
    Roland watching me get his coffee in the morning, or stopping by to chat with Sam. Roland watching me as I sat at this very desk, staring right back into his eyes through the camera.
    I averted my gaze.
    “There are cameras everywhere, you know,” Myra said, calm as a cucumber. “You should pretty much assume you’re being recorded everywhere you go, you know. Even our phones have video.”
    “It just seems weird,” I said, feeling defeated and cagey. Roland had heard everything I’d said about him while sitting here. I’d been true to how I felt, but that didn’t mean I didn’t feel guilty about my words. They probably weren’t things I’d say to his face, given the