NICE GIRLS FINISH FIRST
Copyright Alesia Holliday, 2004
Coming from Berkley Trade, July, 2005

Chapter 1 – Kirby

Posso presentarmi?  (May I introduce myself?)

It’s hard to meet nice guys when you sell sex toys for a living.  Not that I actually sell them personally.  I mean, I work for a company that sells them.  I’m a vice president, even.  But, still, guys are intimidated by this.  They think I’m secretly comparing them to our product line:  Well, he’s got better girth than the Alexander the Great model, but nothing beats the StudMuffin SuperTurbo for sheer staying power.

Like I’d compare an actual guy to something that takes four Triple A batteries to operate.

Still, if they can get beyond the comparison problem, there’s the Mother Factor.  In other words, am I somebody they’d take home to meet their mother?  So far, it’s never happened. 

Not even once.

It’s not so much that I’d want to meet some guy’s mother.  I’m not sitting around wistfully perusing the pages of Bride magazine and taping episodes of A Wedding Story on TLC, then daydreaming about the Kirby Green and Insert-Groom’s-Name-Here wedding.  I’m not interested in being stuffed into some man’s definition of what a wife should be.  I know all about the wife-as-doormat transformation.  Hell, I grew up with doormat.

Still, it would be nice to be asked.  Not to get married.  Just home to somebody’s Mom’s for Sunday dinner.

Even once.

* * *

“Hey, Kirby, what’s going on?  Still practicing those Italian tapes?  When’s your vacation?  Going to Rome?  I always wanted to go to Italy.  It’s so romantic.  Did you have a good New Year’s?”  Brianna the chatterbox, my new secretary, steps on the treadmill next to mine and shatters my reverie.  Plus, does anybody have the right to be that gorgeous at seven a.m.?  Blue eyes shining, glossy auburn curls bouncing.  It was hard not to hate her.  Or at least wish she’d joined a different gym. 

I sighed.  Loudly.  And, no, she had not talked so much during her interview, or I never would have hired her.  I needed somebody pretty quickly, though, after I fired the iron-jawed female warden type that I inherited when I took the job at Whips & Lace Manufacturing (new corporate motto:  Enhanced Pleasures with the One You Love; the old one – Your Pain is Our Pleasure – was way too S&M and one of the first things I changed when they hired me as marketing VP five months ago).

Old Iron Jaw was one of those people who think they’re too good to work for – the horror! – a younger woman.  She lasted almost a week with her little tricks of bringing coffee to everyone else in a meeting but me, ignoring my overflowing out-box, and all of her other stupid games designed to let me know she was really in charge.  But I hit my limit when she said “that’s not my job” about something. 

It was the morning I’d been in the office since four a.m. trying to get a draft shareholder report ready for the board meeting; it proclaimed the brilliant success of our recent IPO (no color photos of vibrators or nipple clamps, though – there’s only so much that corporate shareholders can take).  I’d run sixteen sets of copies since six a.m., working my way through about a thousand copier jams, when Iron Jaw finally arrived at eight-thirty.  I asked her to bind the sets of materials as I double-checked the collating.  And she had the nerve to look me right in the eyes and tell me I had to wait until the copy dudes arrived at nine-thirty.

You can bet your ass that she was history before nine.

I realize that Brianna is staring at me.  “Oh, right.  Yeah, my best friend, Jules, and I are leaving in thirty-one days for three glorious weeks in Italy.  I can’t wait.”  I’ve nearly finished my daily three miles; all those endorphins bombarding my brain must be causing my uncharacteristically chatty mood.  

Brianna’s steps slow on her treadmill, as she looks at me in astonishment.  “Three whole weeks?  I’ve never been on a vacation longer than a week.  And I’ve never been out of the U.S.”

She grins, and her face flushes a little.  “Actually, I’ve never been out of Washington state, except for the time my girlfriends and I went to Las Vegas after graduation.”

I look at her in disbelief.  I know from her application that her only graduation was from high school, so she hasn’t been out of the state of Washington for about seven years?  What the hell is wrong with her?

“How can you not have been out of Washington for seven years?  Don’t you like to travel?  Don’t you feel trapped just staying in Seattle all your life?”  Jules accuses me of not having a tact filter for my mouth, and she may have a tiny point, because Brianna suddenly raises her chin and glares at me.  Or at least it started as a glare, but then faded away to a shaky smile.  I get the feeling that sweet little Brianna doesn’t have much practice standing up for herself.

“I’m not trapped, and I didn’t say I stay in Seattle.  We go up to Whidbey Island every summer for a week, and I visit my Mom and Dad in Spokane all the time.  I’ve even hiked Mt. Rainier.  So I’m not trapped.” 

She turns away from me and fiddles with the program on her treadmill.  She’s obviously not paying attention to what she’s doing, because she just set it for the approximate difficulty of running up the side of her precious Mt. Rainier with leg weights strapped to her ankles.  I don’t bother to mention it, as I step off my own machine.  She’ll figure it out.  I’m her boss, not her buddy, anyway.  I’m not a big fan of socializing with the staff.  First you go to lunch, and then you chat over lattes or something.  The next thing you know, they’re telling their secretary friends that you slept your way up the corporate ladder, and then they’re calling in sick four times a week and expecting you to understand since you’re their friend.  Not that I’m the type to cry about being used by people I thought were my friends. 

Not much, anyway.

I’m not that gawky thirteen-year old any more.

I sling my towel around my neck and head for the shower.  I’m glad this gym opened up in my office building, because it saves me the three-block hike to my old gym.  I never exercised a day in my life until I turned thirty and gravity began its vicious attack.  Isaac Newton only had to deal with apples falling.  Yuck.  I’m only thirty-three and don’t intend to look like I’m middle-aged.

Not even when I am middle-aged. 

The way I see it, I work hard to afford all of the plastic surgery I might need.  It’s the Kirby Green retirement plan.  It’s not like my 401K is going to cover an eyebrow lift in twenty years or so.  A girl’s gotta look to the future, right?

As I step into the shower, I try not to wonder if I’ve convinced people that I’m as tough as I act.

When will I convince myself?

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NICE GIRLS FINISH FIRST
Copyright Alesia Holliday, 2004
Coming from Berkley Trade, July, 2005