"Hey, did you check out the new boss yet?"
It was that pain in the ass Carl Dixon poking his head into my office.
"No, Carl. I didn't."
"You should. She's really something, gorgeous.
He was rubbing it in. The Vice-President of sales job was supposed to be mine. My twenty-five years at BLF industries apparently meant little to the president, Archie Hawthorne. We'd had our differences in the past, but I had always been his top salesman. Selling his fiberglas storage units wasn't easy. Now, he passed me over and hired a woman from outside the company.
"I guess I'll go down and meet her," I said.
Hell, I'd already made up my mind to make this work. I still made a good buck, and anyway it wasn't her fault that Archie was an asshole and gave her the job. What was she supposed to do? Refuse it?
It was a short walk down a narrow hallway from my small, gray office with no window, to the oversized, luxurious VP office with windows looking out over Sunset Lake.
Ms. Hunter. They didn't waste any time painting her name on the door. I knocked.
"Come in."
And there was Ms. Hunter just sitting at her desk, yet knocking the wind out of me with her striking beauty. She wasn't "just" a woman. She was a black woman, and gorgeous, as Carl Dixon had said.
She rose from her chair and stuck out her hand, "I'm Barbara Hunter," she said.
"I'm-she interrupted.
"I know who you are. Archie pointed you out to me this morning when you came in. He told me that I should watch out for you. That you might hold some resentment."
She had come around the desk and was standing only a few feet from me. Her big, brown eyes dominated my soul and made my heart beat faster. I took her hand.
"I don't have to watch out for you, Terry. Do I?"
Her voice, gentle but commanding made me want to hear more. Ms. Hunter's hand was tiny and her nails unpainted, and long. Despite her tiny hand, she was about 5'9" with big bones and an athletic grace to her movements.
"You don't have to worry about me," I said. "You never did. Archie is just an asshole."
She laughed and motioned for me to sit in the big, black leather chair in front of her large, mahogany desk. I had trouble concentrating. She must have noticed this.
"We'll keep how you feel about Archie, between us. Still, I know it must be difficult for you to have not only a much younger boss, but a woman on top of that."
"Look, Ms. Hunter..."
"You can call me Barbara."