Chapter 10: Jared's Elevator Kiss

Katelyn Bishop

The sky opened in front of her as a sapphire trinket to the day. Rippling silky clouds split the sky in curly chunks. It was as if God was using shaving cream up there. The sun ripened ahead of her against the plastered brick buildings that went on for miles. Katelyn's heels clacked alone on the pavement as she made her way to her real job. Annie had left her side a long time ago. Katelyn was alone, once again reveling in the fixtures and facets of a city of strangers and concrete.

Katelyn went on autopilot as she headed into the subway cars.

Her head was clear, but her heart was overbearing and smudged in permanent ink.

She liked Flint Morgan.

With that thought, the subway screeched at her, echoing a beg for her to hang up her feelings at the door. A frown creased her soft dimples as she slid out of her seat. She wasn't wearing work attire but she supposed that this was a new age. A new Katelyn. She stood up straighter as she rushed to the towering empire of fertilizer that was her job.

Katelyn finally got to the door and instinctively pushed the pull door.

Every one of the employees inside were chuckling and her cheeks blushed a cherry pink as she corrected herself.

You ever feel like its going to be a bad day before it even begin?

She swam in this feeling as she entered HP with a permanent frown lighting her cherry lips.

Katelyn was immediately greeted with the scent of fresh ink from the printers and someone's expensive cologne.

She could almost pick it out immediately. It smelled fancy and expensive. Kind of like the scent of grated dollar bills and wasted money.

As Katelyn made her way to the metallic elevator, the scent wafted closer and closer to her.

Surprisingly, the elevator didn't seem as cluttered as the sardine box before.

Katelyn took that as a blessing as she pressed her floor with impatience.

However, as she turned around, she bumped into a man who in return spilled his hot coffee all over her.

The liquid began sizzling away on her skin as she shuddered and winced at the pain.

A scream involuntarily bolted from her lungs as the man's eyes widened.

Looking at her ruined and now bark brown shirt she yelped, "hey! That hurt. Goddammit. This was a new shirt. You would've thought this was a slippery ice rink the way that you spilled all of your low intellect over me-"

Katelyn was interrupted in her scowling by a pair of steel eyes wrapped in tight amusement.

A smirk pulled at his perfect chiseled cheeks.

Dark hair cut across in forehead and Katelyn immediately knew who it was.

It was Jared.

Yes.

That Jared.

Jared Goddamn Morgan.

And he was looking damn handsome in a black business suit and devilishly tempting black slacks. He could make even the best of the "good girls" to turn bad. Jared's eyes crinkled in knowing that she recognized him. Jared waited patiently for Katelyn to continue with her barrage of snarky and entertaining comments.

When Katelyn didn't offer up more comments, Jared teasingly said, "What? Do I look different than my pictures?"

Katelyn looked into those deep steel wall eyes, she was distracted momentarily by his figure.

Holy moley did they grow his muscular physique in a lab? Even under that thick suit, she could tell that he was hiding a six pack, and not of the beverage variety. There was only one world to describe this man; damn.

Katelyn felt herself staring at him and she shook it off trying to refocus herself to answering his question, "no, the ego and conceit is probably just photoshopped out, that's why I couldn't place you at first."

Jared's eyes narrowed but his mouth rested into an easy smile, " you got a lot of spunk in you, I'll give you that."

He chuckled but Katelyn just walked closer to him, her eyes were narrowed and there was no joking in her tone as she said, "and you got a lot of skunk in you. What is that cologne? Shredded gold bars? Your Ivy League buddies? Tell me, did you buy and sell a small country just to smell like a mud pit in a forest?"

And just like that...he went speechless.

Her work was done and the elevator door chimed open as she smirked back at him walking out.

As she walked out however, she tripped backward on the transition between the elevator and her floor.

Her arms dove out, but she could feel herself flailing through the air like a fish out of water.

Suddenly, a pair of muscular arms caught her and held her up while she was still leaning trying to get a handle on this gravity thing.

Of course, it was him.

Jared's steel gaze settled on Katelyn's wide icy blue eyes.

A strange heat flushed a thorny rose color on her face as Jared's steel gaze locked on her lips.

Slowly he lifted her back upright, but in doing so, he pulled her to his height so that Katelyn was now looking at him on her tippy toes.

His steel gaze swirled over her lips but was completely transfixed on her alone.

Quickly, he brushed a piece of her charcoal hair out of the way and began caressing her cheeks with his thumb.

His other hand was dipped at her waist as he took her silence as means to continue.

His lips dove into hers smashing into her ironclad will along the way.

He too attempted to claim her lips as his own. His lips forced a quiet unwanted moan out of her lips. This was different than Flint's kiss. It took time to know her lips but was as equally surprising as Flint's was.

At the mention of his name in her thoughts, she immediately pulled back from him.

Jared shone a face of confusion wanting an answer to why she stopped their brief heaven.

She turned back to him saying, "you're married."

As Katelyn scurried off ashamed of herself, a voice trailed behind her saying, "for now."Jared had passed by her and said that in her ear with a wink, a spine chilled through her with the tone of his voice.

As Katelyn finally made her way back to her cubicle, Lewis looked at her with his spindling brown hair and his deep brown eyes framed by a pair of bookish glasses.

Lewis's eyebrows shot up at Katelyn, "so first you're standing up to Carter, then you're coming in coffee stained pedestrian clothes, and now you're making out with the man set out to destroy out this company?"

Katelyn's eyes shot over to Carter's office which, sure as the day was bright, had Jared Morgan sitting in it.

Katelyn gulped and began clacking away at her keyboard trying to ignore Lewis.

"mind your own damn business, Lewis. Can't you tell I have the 'do not disturb' sign always stamped on my forehead before my morning coffee?"

Lewis backed away from her. Lewis was sort of a know-it-all and mean about it too. Like okay we get it you read the dictionary once, so what, Katelyn once tried to alphabetize her alphabet soup. Well, she ate it before she could fully organize the letters, but its the thought that counts.

Ahh man was she grouchy today. Making enemies and taking names. Her name now being Oscar the Grouch, obviously. It was likely the lack of coffee and the abundance of clumsiness...

And maybe...just a little bit...the fact that Jared Morgan kissed her.

After she had called him cocky, egotistical and...ohh yeah... and a skunk.

Kill me now.

She banged her head against the metal wall separating the cubicles.

Lewis looked over at her funny with a judging look on his face, but she just gingerly applied the one finger rule.

And my bet is that you can guess which finger that was.

As her fingers focused back on her inky black keyboard, her eyes couldn't help but be filled with the image of Jared's chiseled features as his brow furrowed at Carter. Katelyn opened a fresh pack of her twizzlers and started to nervously mow down on them as she watched the whole scene unravel in Carter's office.

Of course Carter always looked like a steamed lobster or potato so it was hard to tell at times, but it was clear now that Carter was angry.

He wagged his fingers and tried to dig them into Jared's chest.

Jared only smirked a response back at Carter.

So far, watching their argument had made her go through roughly eight twizzlers. Well, she didn't bring popcorn to the show so she had to settle for the next best thing; red sticks o' sugar. Unhealthy? Yes. Delicious? Hell yeah. Katelyn took another twizzler out of her bag as Jared pulled away from Carter, got his things, and then slammed the door in Carter's face.

Katelyn's eyes were suddenly locked across the room with Mr. Steel eyes.

An evil smirk perched on his lips and a she shudder chilled her as he walked past her.

As she was distracted by him walking past her, a ring pierced her delicate ears.

Katelyn's eyes were still locked on Jared and she was unsure if it was an angel he had to shoot down to become that gorgeous or something else.

When the ring pierced her ears again she looked over at her desk, surely enough, her phone was ringing.

Katelyn didn't care who it was, all she knew was that the aound had to stop and the coffee had to flow to her mouth before she could process anymore of life.

She picked up the phone in a lazy but annoyed tone, "Hey, if you're a telemarketer I'm already in debt, thanks for the call though."

A voice on the other practically yelled at her to stay on the line, "Wait!"

Katelyn looked skeptically looked at her phone in curiosity, "Annie?"

Annie sounded out of breath over the phone and Katelyn could hear her gasping for breath.

"What is it Annie? Is this about Dr. Phoenix?" she questioned.

Annie slowly caught up to her winded breath and said, "No...nothing like that."

Katelyn was growing impatient, "Come on, out with it. If I'm going to die soon then I'll need to pick out my funeral clothes on my way home."

Annie nervously breathed into the phone as she replied ominously, "I think that you'll need to pick out mine first."

Katelyn's brows rose, "What is this all about, Annie?"

Annie took a deep breath before she said in a small voice, "I kissed Flint."

Katelyn was immediately taken aback, "oh...you kissed him?"

Annie agreed with a even smaller voice, "Yes."

Katelyn paused on her side of the line, as her heart began constricting and twisting in place.

Annie interrupted the silence again with a nervous and shaky voice, "I kissed him as you, Katelyn."

Katelyn damn near dropped her phone out of her hands when Annie said that.

"What? Annie! What did you do?"

Annie's faltering voice on the other end of the line attempted to explain it, "Well...I may have shapeshifted into you so I could kiss him."

Katelyn's ocean eyes went wide, "What? Why? Annie! How could you do this? Are you crazy?"

While Katelyn asked all those questions like a streamlined jet, the dial tone sounded that signaled that Annie had hung up on her.

Katelyn slumped in her chair as her head hit the hard metal dividers once again.

Dammit. Dammit. Dammit, with a hot side of Damn this.

As Katelyn internally screamed out, another phone call came.

Why couldn't they have just waited for the morning coffee?

Katelyn quickly picked up trying to get this over with, "If you want my left kidney you're going to have to get in line. My student loans people have first pick."

A gruff and confused voice sounded from the phone, "What?".

Katelyn put her phone closer to her ear, "Flint, is that you?"

The tired voice answered sorely, "In the disappearing flesh."

"Why are you calling Flint, and how did you get my number?"

He rattled off the name like it was nothing, "Nikki." He paused and then continued, "Look, I'll give you and Nikki a chance to save me. That kiss convinced me that you may want me around for a reason."

Katelyn tried to cut him off, "Listen that kiss...it wasn't...I mean...I didn't-"

Flint cut her off instead, "Look, you make me not want to disappear. I never felt that with Wynn and Jared. You can try to save me, but after you do, we need to talk."

Katelyn bit her tongue.

No. No. This was all wrong.

As she analyzed it, she thought about that night she couldn't get out of her head.

The sound of a shotgun blast berated her eardrums as she was reminded of it.

A tear trailed her cheek as she returned to answer him.

"Okay Flint, we'll talk."

Flint sounded beyond ecstatic about it and ended the call by saying, "Great!"

Katelyn slumped back down in her chair.

First she had kissed Flint's brother, then she agreed to talk to Flint afterwards about getting together.

She was in deep. Way too deep to make her way out. Her heart twisted and convulsed in her broken chest.

Katelyn was broken, trying to make promises to broken hearts like Flint's.

What she didn't know though was; if you break someone's heart, you can cut yourself with the shards.

Thank you for reading! So Jared kissed Katelyn... and Annie was actually the one to kiss Flint. What will happen with that? Will they actually be able to save Flint? Has Katelyn's feelings already been compromised by Flint...or does she now have a crush on Jared? Also what is happening in Wynn and Jared's realtionship. We know they both have cheated on each other, but is there any depth to them?

Also, a huge thank you goes out to my readers for reading this far and just know I usually continue and write chapter at around 5-10 views. Love you guys ❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤