Read Online Knitting Under the Influence by Claire LaZebnik - Free Book Online

Kathleen said calmly. “Just you wait and see.”

II
    W hen Kathleen's job interview went well the next day (once again she wore her responsible clothes, which were starting to seem lucky as well as responsible), she was immediately hired to start that very week, which convinced her she had been right to tell Lucy she was going places.
    On the downside, the job wasn't exactly what you might call high-powered. On her first day at work, she discovered that she wasn't the assistant to Jackson Porter, CEO of Porter and Wachtell, as she'd been led to believe in her interview with the head of personnel, but was, more accurately, the assistant to
his
assistant, sixty-year-old Luisa Rivera.
    Luisa was Jackson Porters secretary, assistant, confidante, advisor, personal shopper… whatever he needed, she had been, for twenty-five long years. Kathleen was Jackson's twenty-fifth anniversary present to Luisa, the idea being that the new girl would take over any duties Luisa no longer enjoyed.
    As it turned out, Luisa was fairly proprietary about her boss and not all that interested in giving up any of her access to him, so Kathleen spent most of those first days fetching coffee, typing the occasional memo, answering the phones, and organizing drawers of stationery supplies.
    She considered being disgruntled but decided it wasn't all that bad. For one thing, her job was pretty easy, since Luisa wasn't used to asking anyone to wait on her and didn't like other people to wait on Jackson. For another, the central position of Kathleen's desk—in front of the wall outside Jackson's office—allowed her to observe and eventually meet anyone at the firm who caught her interest.
    Kathleen was good at meeting people. The first few days she was there, she wore bright-colored silk tops and called out cheery hellos to anyone who came within a few feet of her desk. It wasn't long before a lot of the guys at Porter and Wachtell were finding excuses to wander by the new girl's desk. Even the women were happy to discover there were new and enthusiastic ears to pour old rumors into.
    She learned very quickly that three of the top businessmen who were always rushing around in suits and ties were not just Jackson's employees but also his sons. And that, while the older two were married, the youngest one was not. “And he's the nice one,” one of the secretaries had added before tossing down her third Ultra Slim-Fast chocolate shake of the lunch break.
    “Is he straight?” Kathleen asked.
    “Why wouldn't he be?” The secretary sounded almost insulted, so Kathleen quickly said, “No reason. I just dated a guy once who turned out to be gay.”
    “I guess that can happen,” the woman said. “But Kevin Porter's had tons of girlfriends since I started working here. And”— as if it settled the subject—“they're always
very
pretty.”
    Well of course they were, Kathleen thought. The guy was worth hundreds of millions—he could pick and choose. And if Kevin Porter were the kind of guy who cared what a girl looked like, Kathleen was the kind of girl who was realistic enough to know that meant he was bound to notice her sooner or later.
    It was sooner. Kevin came walking up to her later that same day to introduce himself and welcome her to the team.
(Literally
—that's what he said—“Welcome to the team.”) He had a nice face and good posture and met her eyes when he talked to her. Kathleen had gone out with far less appealing men. And he was wildly rich. Hadn't Sari told her that a rich guy was her fastest path to a happy future?
    Which made her think she was really growing up—here she was, thinking about her
future.
What better sign of maturity than that?

III
    S ari had a less pleasant week.
    Monday morning she was woken up by a phone call and there was her sister, Cassie—who hadn't spoken to her in over three years—saying, “Sari? You're up, right? I couldn't remember the time difference, but I figured you're probably the early-bird