Slave to Love - Julie A. Richman Page 0,1

king, Tony and Kemp’s very hot and loyal admin, Angela.

“So, I’m sure you saw my memo on Friday.” Kemp’s demeanor is serious. The man is all about business, all the time, unless you are in the inner circle, then he might share tidbits from his personal life or cut-up over drinks. “Laura is no longer part of the team. It’s no secret that if changes were not made, we were in jeopardy of losing our entire west coast sales force.”

Laura was my other counterpart. She ran sales in the west. I’ve got the center of the country and Cuntessa runs the east. Three women going head-to-head in sales has its ups and downs. While it’s very competitive and results and sales tend to be very strong, three alpha bitches in the pack means claws are sharp at all times and blood-letting is a regular occurrence. And Laura was a damn control-freak nut job. And I don’t mean that in a good way.

“I received calls last week from our Top 5 performers in the west and it appears Laura insisting her staff stay out with her in bars until two to three in the morning when they were traveling together, has not been going over well with them. And it seems there was an incident last week where she kept pulling a waitress into her lap all night.”

Cuntessa and I roll our eyes at one another. Laura’s insanity is one of the few things over which we actually bond.

“Will we be hiring a new west coast sales director?” Cuntessa jumps right in.

Kemp makes a face, “I would if I didn’t think you two bitches could handle it.”

The man actually called us bitches. Which is probably an accurate assessment. Laughing, I lock eyes with him, “You’re a fucking HR nightmare.”

Yes, there I am in my short turquoise pencil skirt, and oh so hot, Christian Louboutin Pigalle Follies aquarium colored glitter pumps, and I drop the first F-bomb of the day, opening the window for a veritable shit storm which will undeniably follow.

“I think you got me beat, babe.” Kemp is amused, his sexy smile making its morning debut.

Bitches. Fucking. Babe. Yeah, we’re quite the crew. The funny part is, we’re a highly profitable division of a Fortune 100 company. It doesn’t get bigger than that. And we work our asses off. Work hard. Play hard. We are the definition of high risk, high reward.

“So, is that the answer,” Cuntessa presses, “we get more work?”

“Pretty much.” He smiles at her and I know her panties are wet. She’s loved the man since the day he hired her whiney ass as a territory sales rep and climbed the ranks with him. His evil little protégé.

“Are we going to be compensated for this extra responsibility?”

I sit back, letting her do the dirty work.

“What do you think?” He gives her the “don’t be stupid” look.

“I don’t know, why don’t you tell us.” She’s now somehow lapsed into something between a whine and baby talk and I want to slit my wrists. I have not had freaking caffeine yet, damn it, and I have to listen to baby talk. Kill me now. Please just kill me now.

“Yes, you’ll both be nicely compensated. I’m taking her base pay and splitting it between you two bitches.”

Cuntessa and I are now smiling at each other. Without even knowing exactly what crazy Laura’s base pay was, it’s safe to assume we each just got a six-figure raise or something close to it. Oh happy day!

Kemp looks around at the guys (the rest of his team are men), “The things I have to do to keep these two happy.”

“So, how is this splitting up?” I ask, anxious to get every last detail.

“Well, since you’re down in Texas and Susan is here in New York, I thought we’d do a north/south split. You’ll take on Arizona, California, Nevada and Utah. Susan, you’ve got Washington and Oregon. We don’t have much in the other states up there.”

“She gets all of California? San Francisco should be considered the north. After all it is Northern California.”

The greedy bitch is already trying to poach from my territory. “You picked up Washington State. You just got Microsoft and Boeing, so stop bitching.” I know I’m sneering at her and I’m not even attempting to hide it.

California. I’m trying not to show how thrilled I am, but I am jazzed and want to get up on the conference table and do a happy dance in my sparkly shoes. I