Page 1 of Irresistible
Chapter 1
Scarlet Higgs trudged through the snow toward the cold, grey door of the bank lobby. She was scheduled to open the branch today, and she would be handling the first customers of the work day. Leaving the house with wet hair was a mistake. It froze halfway between her car and the door, and it was starting to give her a headache. That was just the thing to get her day started off right. It took everything in her power to keep from viewing it as a bad omen.
See, Scarlet was generally an optimistic person. Her mother always described her as her “bundle of joy”, even well into adulthood. That’s a term that’s usually reserved for babies, but that’s what Scarlet would always be to her mother. Her father always told her that she lit up a room every time she walked in. Even as he slid into his retirement years, a long cubicle career becoming more and more evident by the look in his eyes, he always beamed whenever she walked in. That’s the kind of person Scarlet was to anyone she met.
It was difficult for Scarlet to be in a good mood this morning. The CEO of the bank was visiting, and she had hardly put any thought into how to make a good first impression. She thought that maybe it wouldn’t matter as long as she didn’t make an utter fool out of herself. After all, CEOs have much more to deal with than front-line employees. She knew that she just had to get through the day so that everyone in her branch could release their collective tension. Everyone had been wound up for a week. The manager called in a cleaning crew to make sure everything was spotless. All employees were “strongly encouraged” to press their dress shirts and slacks. The manager quizzed everyone on basic aspects of their jobs to ensure that no one would look stupid. It was a real ordeal.
Scarlet wasn’t too concerned. This was more of a bump in the road than anything else. Her performance reviews had always been good, and she was the manager’s first choice to replace him if he chose to take another job. All things considered, her professional life was fairly stable. She just hoped that her love life would follow suit for a change. For every year she had been at this job, there was a guy who hurt her. First, there was Andrew, a lovable IT nerd who worked at a company down the street. But apparently he was too lovable, because she walked in on him having phone sex with another woman while he thought she was out getting groceries.
Next there was Phil, a tall, dark, handsome restaurant manager. Theirs was a passionate romance right off the bat. They even slept together on their first date. Scarlet really thought that Phil was the one. He was a smoldering hunk, but also had the tender heart she so craved in a partner. He volunteered at the humane society and gave liberally to charities that helped the homeless. But it was all for naught after she found out from a friend of hers that Phil was busy having an affair with a waitress at the restaurant. Scarlet was so hurt that she considered telling the restaurant that it was employing a scumbag. Phil would have almost certainly lost his job. He would have had to run back to his new honey with his tail tucked between his legs. But Scarlet was a better person than that. She resolved to just take the pain, turn it into a lesson and move forward with a new perspective.
But before too long, Greg entered the picture. Greg was a teacher who seemed dedicated to making the world a better place one class at a time. By all indications, he was doing just that. His coworkers and his students loved him. Unfortunately, one of his coworkers loved him a little too much. Before long, rumors started swirling that Greg was sleeping with a fifth-grade teacher in the school. Those rumors proved to be true when the principal caught them in action in the teachers’ lounge long after school hours. He was fired on the spot and struggled to find another teaching position after. The last time Scarlet heard, he was working in a pet store unloading boxes. Sometimes karma was swift, after all.
All of this happened within about eighteen months, and Scarlet had been single ever since the incident with Greg. She told herself and her friends that she had sworn off guys for the foreseeable future. To her credit, she had kept her promise. During a few holiday parties, she admittedly flirted with a few coworkers visiting from other branches. But before anything went too far, she quickly cut off contact. She just couldn’t let herself get hurt again. Her last three relationships were a collective sign, and she wasn’t ready to expose her heart to a man again. Every time she thought about it, she just told herself that she would know for sure when the right person came along. Until then, there was nothing to fret about. The universe had her back, and if a sign never came then that would be a sign in and of itself.
Her work was stable despite being far from thrilling. It provided her with enough money to get by and to build a modest savings. But it hardly fulfilled her passions. She used to use relationships to fill that lingering space in her soul. But every time a man hurt her, the space was left bigger and more obvious than it ever was before. Discipline became her focus, as opposed to spontaneity. She began exercising daily, eating better, and trying to make whatever strides she could at work. The best she could hope for was to become a manager of one of the local branches whenever an opening came up. Her job wasn’t any more stressful than the average job, but it was incredibly boring. Just imagine what an average bank teller does. That’s what she did, day in and day out. She couldn’t help but daydream about something more.
The bank door clicked as she turned the lock. Scarlet scrambled inside to allow the water in her hair to melt and release her from the vice grip of the headache the winter had forced on her. The fluorescent lights buzzed to life, and the bank lobby looked the way it always did. That familiar blend of sterility and everyman hospitality coursed over every inch of the bland space. There were posters offering low interest rates on loans and high interest rates on savings accounts. Scarlet had all of these memorized by now, to the point that she could practically recite the terms and conditions of each financial product at will. It was all incredibly banal.
She logged in to her computer and saw an email flash on her screen.
“URGENT: The CEO of Local Citizens Bank, Richard Grant, will be visiting our branch this afternoon. Please ensure that all of your accounts are in order, the teller services are at their peak, and that customer interactions are above and beyond their usual quality. There’s no room for error here. You’ve all done a great job to date, and we just want to make sure that our branch does Local Citizens proud. Please don’t hesitate to reach out with any questions or concerns. Sincerely, Jim”
It was funny to Scarlet to see Jim, the branch manager, write such sterile and corporate-sounding emails. Jim couldn’t be any further from that in his personal life. She knew for a fact that he was at the club with his partner, a hilariously flamboyant guy that everyone knew as “Sunshine”, almost every Friday and Saturday night. A few of the employees had joined them one of those Fridays, and suffice it to say that nothing that went on in there could be described as “sterile” or “corporate”. Scarlet chuckled to herself as she closed the email. So far as she knew, she wouldn’t need to change much if anything to accommodate for the high-profile visit. But, while getting herself ready for the day, she wondered exactly what a bank CEO would be like. She had never even seen a picture of Richard Grant. In her imagination, she could only picture a stuffy, eighty-something year old man with white hair coming out of his ears. In all fairness, that’s how she pictured most billionaires.
Unable to stifle her curiosity, Scarlet whipped out her phone and looked up a picture of Richard Grant. He was cute. He had well-coiffed, black hair and a handsome jawline. His steel grey eyes were simultaneously intimidating and intriguing. It was no wonder that he became a bank CEO, she thought to herself. He looked like just the kind of person a bank would want on its brochures. Yet, she had never seen this man on a brochure. Scarlet couldn’t help but think the bank was missing out. She locked her phone and proceeded to the employees’ lounge to get a cup of coffee. Upset with the quality of the bank-supplied coffee, she had taken to hiding a can of her favorite coffee under her spot at the tellers’ station. The branch filled with the smell of the brilliant dark roast while Scarlet let herself slip off into a pre-work reverie. Richard Grant featured prominently in this one. She had only seen him from the shoulders up, but she invented a torso and legs for him all too easily. Just as her mind’s eye started to truly ogle the handsome stranger before it, Scarlet snapped herself out of her daydream.
“Idiot! You have to stop doing that. Focus on work and focus on yourself. That’s what we agreed to,” Scarlet hissed angrily at herself.
The handsome CEO crept into her imagination at least one or two more times before the bank opened at 9:00AM. A few of her coworkers had to snap her out of yet more daydreams. Scarlet worried that she wouldn’t be able to contain herself when he actually arrived. As much as she wanted to swear off men for good, she knew she had a weakness for confident, self-assured men. Sometimes that came back to bite her when they were a little too self-assured. But she concluded that those were good traits to look for in a potential partner. Nonetheless, she promised herself that she would be on her best behavior when Richard Grant came to visit the bank. Jim was one of her best friends, and she shuddered at the idea of doing anything to make him look bad in front of the boss. In any event, she was sure that Richard Grant was married with four kids and a glorious white colonial overlooking a lake or something. As much as she wanted to make herself fit into that picture, she knew she couldn’t.
A few hours passed, and there was still no sign of Richard Grant. A few well-dressed caterers came to set up a lavish-looking spread of breakfast food for the entire branch to enjoy. Apparently, this man spared no expense, particularly when it was on the bank’s dime. Scarlet looked forward to availing herself of the splendors of the rich for a change.
It was difficult to remain focused at work with the boss coming to visit, and everyone seemed to be on edge. Jim was pacing nervously around the bank, his new tie fluttering back and forth with each turn. It was clear that he had purchased it at some department store over the weekend and paid entirely too much money for it. Scarlet was sure that if she ribbed him about it, he would call it an “investment”. She loved her group of friends, and she adored the fact that she got to work with them every day. She just wished the work were more inviting. At least this day would be a change of pace.
