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  She gave her head a slight shake. She was interviewing for a job, not speed dating. Besides, it wasn't like Larson would ever have any interest in her, professional or otherwise.

  They continued on in the interview. It was fairly standard, as interviews went. He asked her questions and posited scenarios, and Denny answered as best she could. She even felt like she was doing a half-decent job, considering she wasn't feeling pressured to perform at all.

  “Here's a scenario,” he said, leaning forward and templing his fingers as his eyes seemed to burn holes right into Denny's skull. “I've got an important meeting in an hour, but Lola out there hasn't done any of the prep work for me, as usual. My suit isn't even pressed. What do you do first?”

  Without skipping a beat, Denny confidently said, “I run your suit to the dry cleaners, one with one hour turnaround service, then rush to the office to get your things. I have a car lined up for you before I start looking for the files you need.” She had a lot of experience in these matters, as her ex-husband usually made her run around like that as well, chasing after him and smoothing out the rough edges to whatever plans he made. She was made for this kind of job.

  Too bad she probably wouldn't get it.

  Still, Larson leaned back in his leather chair with a blink. He seemed a little thrown off by Denny's competence, something she enjoyed. She almost wished she could get the job just so she could keep throwing him off.

  As the interview drew to a close, Denny found herself feeling a little confident despite the obstacles she faced. She knew she was a competent woman after all. She might be overweight, and perhaps not the prettiest person in the world, but she was a good worker, and she would never hide or fail to flaunt that fact.

  “Well,” Larson said, standing up. Denny echoed him, lifting herself out of her chair was well. “This has been an interesting interview, to say the least.”

  Denny felt her heart leap up into her throat at that comment. Was that good, or bad? She honestly didn't know. Larson was such a hard man to read. As he reached over the vast desk to shake her hand, she second-guessed herself. Perhaps she had done a good job. Perhaps he'd invited her to interview on a lark, just for fun, but found her to be every bit as competent as any other young, beautiful woman. Perhaps he found her to be even more able than those women.

  Perhaps she had a shot at this job after all.

  She didn't want to get her hopes up though.

  *****

  A few days later, after Denny sent out her thank yous for the last round of interviews she went to, she found her emotions in a downward spiral yet again. Here she was, doing so much work in trying to get a job, trying so hard to be independent, and she was failing miserably.

  Why had she come to this city?

  It was a ridiculous idea in hindsight, but Denny had assumed that finding a decent job in the city would be a simple matter. After all, there were so many businesses here, and so much turnover that jobs flew up on search boards daily. She must have applied for hundreds, but she'd only gotten interviews for a handful of positions. And she knew what each and every interviewer thought of her the moment she walked through the door.

  She was fat. And fat meant lazy. Lazy meant she wouldn't get any work done, and that would be a terrible investment to the company. She hated the damned prejudices against her. She was a harder worker than anyone else in her old company, she got glowing reviews, but people couldn't seem to look past her weight.

  It had always been like this. Ever since she was a child, Denny struggled with her weight. She ballooned up to a tub of butter in middle school, but then the teasing and peer pressure urged her into a diet. She did all right on the diet, but she'd never truly been thin. And food was always a struggle. Every day, every meal. And she lost the will to struggle against it many years ago.

  She sighed and stared at the phone in her shabby studio. She wasn't going to let this get to her. She was much more than a number on a scale.

  But she didn't know how to convince prospective employers of that.

  For now she set up her laptop on the ragged coffee table she'd gotten from a thrift store for a whopping eight dollars, and worked her way through various menial tasks on the internet. Denny had been able to scrape up a couple hundred dollars a month on referral websites and human intelligence tasks, but it wasn't enough. It didn't even pay for the rent on this dump.

  She had to do something about this. She had to get a job. Any job.

  Denny glared at the phone once more, willing it to ring. And to not be another damned interview for her to flub, but an actual job offer.

  She nearly leapt out of her seat when it did ring. The harsh bell on the phone cut through the air like a knife, piercing her ear drums.

  “Shit!” she hissed, and jumped up from her low seat on the dingy couch – another thrift store find – and grabbed the formerly white, now dirty beige phone off its cradle.

  “Hello?”

  “Denise Richardson?” a man's voice came through the phone line, tinny, but familiar. She couldn't quite place him though.

  “Yes, this is she,” Denny replied.

  “Ah, good. This is Brandon Larson. I want to extend to you a job offer on the position you interviewed for. The personal assistant position.”

  With every word that Larson spoke, Denny could feel her pounding heart climb higher and higher. It felt like it was going to crawl right out her throat. This couldn't be happening. After all the work she did, things were finally paying off.

  “Y-yes,” she stammered. “I remember the position.”

  “So, do you want the job?” Denny could almost imagine Larson raising an eyebrow and looking at her quizzically.

  “Yes. Yes!” Denny clamped a hand over her mouth to keep from screaming into the phone. She had a job!

  “Good. I need you to come by the office tomorrow, bright and early. Dress professionally. Lola will fill you in on what you need to be doing.”

  “Yes. Yes, sir,” Denny said, then heard a click on the other side. Larson must have hung up. She blinked, confused. Was this a prank or a trick?

  But no, that just must be how Larson was.

  She had a job.

  *****

  The next morning, Denny was up with the songbirds. At least, what few of those there were in the city. She tried to make herself look presentable, she really did, but she was still feeling nervous about this so-called job. What if Larson had made a mistake and called the wrong person? But no, he addressed her by name. Unless he somehow got the files mixed up, she was the right girl.

  So she made her way back to the extravagant office building back up to Larson's opulent office.

  She blanched at what she saw.

  As she stepped off the elevator and pushed her way through into the reception area of his office, she saw Lola perched behind her own smaller wooden desk, glaring daggers at her. “He's right inside,” she said coldly, pointing with one thin, cruel finger. Denny already didn't like her.

  She pressed her much pudgier hands against the double doors, and pushed, opening them to find Larson literally surrounded by bikini models.

  “Are you serious?” she blurted out. This was ridiculous. This was worse than the worst Lifetime movie she'd ever seen. She felt like some enormous, elaborate prank was being played on her, and she just wanted to turn around and go straight home.

  “Hmm?” Larson said, barely tearing his gaze away from the obviously much more attractive girls. “Oh, you're here.” He stood and smiled at each girl in turn. There were twelve, and even though the office was expansive, it felt more than a little cramped at the moment. “I'll see you girls in the photo shoot.”

  “Photo shoot?” Denny asked, crossing her arms over her chest. What was going on here?

  “Oh yes, I decided this year that I should put out a calendar. For charity, of course.”

  Denny couldn't help but wonder at the timing of everything. She couldn't help but wonder if she was here as some sort of joke on herself.
It was some prank against fat girls, it had to be, and she wasn't going to stand for it. She's endured this kind of teasing her entire life, and she wasn't going to put up with it through adulthood, or through this job.

  As her new boss approached her, she only stared at him coldly.

  “Is something the matter, my dear?” he asked as he abruptly turned away, approaching an elaborately trimmed mahogany sideboard and pouring himself a drink of a rich amber liquid. “Brandy?” he offered.

  “At eight in the morning?” Denny retorted.

  “Of course. I need a little fuel in my tank to get me going.” He downed the drink easily, then laughed. “I suppose you shouldn't be drinking. I have a company car set up for you, and I need you to do some errands for me.”

  So this wasn't a prank, or a joke. She really did have the job. With that knowledge, Denny's anger deflated, and her arms dropped to her sides. “What do you need me to do?” she asked.

  “Sir,” he said.

  “What?”

  “You'll address me as 'sir',” he said lightly, though his expression was anything but light. His square, handsome features looked a bit dark, a bit intimidating. Denny wondered briefly if it was just the lighting, but no. He really did look angry.

  “What do you need me to do, 'sir'?” she repeated, emphasizing the added word. She wasn't going play around with him. She might need a job, but that didn't mean she was going to let herself be pushed around.

  Larson stalked over to his huge desk and picked up a piece of paper. He crumpled it up and tossed it at her. Denny deftly caught it – thankfully, she'd been a star player on her softball team in college – and smoothed the paper out again, reading through the list scrawled on there.

  She needed to get her personal information to Lola first, including her phone number so Larson wouldn't have to waste time writing out these stupid lists anymore. She squinted her eyes as she read that first item. He even wrote the part about stupid lists.

  She had to pick up his dry cleaning, then his lunch, and then accompany him to this photo shoot, and then run some papers over to a neighboring office, and then set up a meeting with his lawyer... her eyes began to glaze over as she glanced through each item. This was a lot for one person to do in one day. She wasn't sure she was up to this.

  And Larson. He seemed totally different, now that she was his employee. No longer charming and charismatic, he was cold and calculating, seemingly not caring about anything but himself. She didn't think that she was going to like him very much.

  “I don't believe we've discussed salary, yet,” he said, completely unaware of Denny's internal dialogue.

  “No, sir.”

  “What does one need to live in New York these days? I don't even know. Does a hundred thousand a year sound appropriate?”

  Denny blanched yet again. That much? She hadn't even expected half that much. “Y-yes, sir,” she said, unable to keep the stammer out of her quavering voice.

  He didn't seem to notice, though. “Good. Go speak to Lola, and meet me for the photo shoot by noon. Remember my lunch,” he added sharply as Denny turned to make her way out of his office.

  So this was going to be her first day.

  *****

  After her paperwork was finished with the thin, sour-faced blonde, she immediately dived into her task list. The dry cleaning was waiting in a company car cleared for her use, so she started with that, dashing down to the cleaners that Larson preferred and making it in record time. As she checked his garments in – three suits, one charcoal, one black, on navy blue – she got a text message from him with more tasks. There was a packet of legal documents that had to be hand-delivered to his lawyer, and he apparently had promised lunch to the photo shoot models.

  He didn't detail what sort of lunch, so Denny shot back a text asking what they wanted.

  As she made her way back to the office, fighting the terrible as always New York traffic, her phone buzzed with a reply. She scowled and whipped it out, keeping half an eye on the road as she quickly read the message.

  “Doesn't matter. Just bring enough for 20-30 people.”

  That was about lunch, she assumed. Pizza it was, then. That was the only thing she could think to get on such short notice. It was already ten in the morning and she had to get these papers delivered before lunch.

  She pulled the car into a reserved spot in the tiny parking area at the front of the building, and quickly hefted herself out of the low-slung thing. It was a BMW, which were nice enough cars but she just didn't care for them. The drivers tended to have a bad reputation. But she didn't have any room to complain. It was first time she'd driven anything at all in months.

  She sighed and felt a small pang of regret as she made her way towards the office building. Her old car had been a trusty old Explorer, one that had taken her through college, and though it was old, she had a special connection to that beast. She'd actually cried when she sold the thing, but it just didn't make any sense to keep it. Not in New York. It was going to cost more than it was worth, literally. A rented parking space would cost more than her apartment. So she'd let it go, along with so much of her past life.

  Shaking her head, clearing those loose thoughts from her mind, she continued to make her way into the office.

  Larson had said the packet was available at the receptionist's desk on the first floor, so as she briskly walked in that direction she pulled out her phone and plugged in the lawyer's address. She wanted to groan when she saw where it was. All the way on the other side of Manhattan. Of course. Larson was really putting her to the test today.

  She made it to the receptionist, and leaned against the counter, feeling slightly out of breath. Apparently this job was also going to give her a good workout.

  “Larson said there was a packet here for me to deliver,” she said.

  The woman, a different one from the first day she'd been here, stared at her with a look of pure disdain. “Excuse me?”

  Denny scowled. She was not in the mood to be looked down upon just because she was a little heftier than everyone else, so she mustered up all the authority she could, looked at the woman with an equal look of disdain, and said more slowly, “Larson said there was a packet for me to deliver to his lawyer.”

  The other woman wrinkled her nose, and shuffled a few papers on her desk. “It doesn't seem to be here,” she said in a snippy tone.

  Denny was taken aback for just a few moments, and that was all the receptionist needed. “Don't be so useless. Go up to his office and find it yourself.”

  Denny felt frozen on the spot, but she quickly thawed as she felt a seething rage rise within her. She couldn't think of a good comeback though. She'd never been good at witty retorts, so she only wheeled around and stalked towards the elevator. She was only thanking that damned woman couldn't see her flushing, beet red face.

  She was mortified.

  Five long minutes later, minutes Denny didn't have, she was rushing into Larson's office.

  “The packet,” she said to Lola.

  “What?” Lola said sharply, looking up in surprise at Denny's sudden appearance. “I gave that to Brandy downstairs, and I told Larson as much, and to relay that information to you. Did he not?”

  “He did, but-”

  “Are you thick?” Lola said bitingly. “I certainly don't have it. Go get it from Brandy.”

  Denny's flushed began to rise again, and she felt a pained shiver rush through her body as she exited the office, shamefacedly making her way back to the receptionist. She just barely heard Lola mutter as she exited the room.

  “Why did he hire that imbecilic rhinoceros, I'll never know...”

  She shut the door before she could hear any more insults.

  Tears began to well in her eyes. It wasn't her fault. That bitch of a receptionist said she didn't have the packet, and of course Denny had listened to her.

  She tried to collect herself in the elevator, wiping away her moist eyes and straightening her blazer and skirt, trying t
o look more put together than she was. Trying to look thinner than she was. Why did Larson hire her? He obviously disliked her as much as the other shrews in this building.

  The elevator dinged, and the doors opened. First floor again. Taking a deep breath, hoping it would instill some confidence in her, Denny made for reception again.

  “Oh, I found it,” Brandy smirked as soon as she saw Denny, waving a manila folder in her face. Denny nearly growled as she snatched it out of the girl's hands. She wished she could wipe that smirk off her face as well, but such an act might land her in jail.

  “A thanks would be nice!” Brandy called after her as Denny huffed away. She didn't grace that impudent remark with a response. She was in a hurry after all.

  On her way to the BMW, she pulled up a list of pizza joints between the office building and the lawyer. There were a lot to choose from, so she went with the one of the ones with a better reputation. As she opened the door and threw the packet in the passenger's seat, and promptly placed an order for half a dozen large pizzas and a few liters of soda.

  “That should be enough to satisfy a hundred models,” she grumbled as she wedged her considerable curves behind the steering wheel. That was another reason she missed the Explorer. There was plenty of room behind the driver's seat in that car. This one, not so much.

  But she worked with what she had, so she now pulled the car out into the busy traffic and made her way north, almost to the tip of Manhattan.

  It took far longer than she wanted it to, but an hour later, she was on her way to the photo studio with six piping hot pizzas in the passenger seat. He stomach grumbled the entire way; Denny had been too nervous to eat any breakfast, so she hadn't eaten anything at all yet today. Right now, she felt like she could eat a horse.

  A few slices of pizza would do as well. Perhaps there would be enough for her as well.

  It was just after noon when she finally found the studio. She thought she'd made plenty of time to get there and locate the place, but it was in a strange location, hidden and tucked away behind a massive warehouse, and she'd had far more trouble finding it than she thought she would have.