Don't Move Your Desk: Chapter Eleven
In which Ace should stick to looking pretty
A summary for you on what to expect in this edition in case you want to scroll down to the interesting bits: vote updates; incentives; Chapter Eleven of Don’t Move Your Desk; and the progress report with an update on my week-on-week sales and writing progress.
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First, an update on the vote from last week: opinion was split between posting now on Wednesdays or posting in 2025. I guess this means I have to make a decision myself! Making decisions is my least favourite thing to do, so give me a minute, I guess, ha.
There’s a fair few of you who are new around here, so it’s probably a good time to remind everyone that every time I hit five new paid subscribers, I’m going to release a chapter early. I’ve finished queueing all of the chapters up, sort of - because there are seven chapters that don’t fit in our original schedule! So, it would be kind of great if I could hit 35 new paid subs. Anyway, our first milestone to aim for is 5, and I’m at 2/5 already, so it’s getting closer and closer. This is a great time to subscribe to get a real, tangible, and potentially immediate benefit! Plus, if you’re signed up as a founding member, you’ll get the ebook version of Don’t Move Your Desk for free before anyone else.
As a quick reminder: this chapter will go behind the paywall 60 days after publication. Don’t miss the chance to read the next chapter for free by subscribing for email updates! Chapters 1 to 3 are always going to remain free, but for context, chapters 1 and 2 are now more than 60 days old. That means it’s a very short time now until the posts start going paid. You can read them indefinitely with a subscription.
On a personal level, I’ve been busy this week pitching for a potentially huge project. It might tie up my time for a few months at minimum if I get it. Keep your fingers crossed for me! It won’t affect anything here, since the whole of Don’t Move Your Desk is already done.
Okay, that’s it! On with the chapter!
Keaton
“Keaton,” a familiar voice greeted me. “Are you alright?”
I looked around and quickly tried to calm myself, pretending I had just been looking out of the window. “Oh, Fernando. Yes, hi, how are you?”
He frowned at me a little, but if he suspected I actually wasn’t fine, he didn’t say it. His expression cleared. “I haven’t seen you since you got the job. Congratulations, by the way.”
“Thanks!” I said, but my enthusiasm quickly tapered out. Who knew how much longer I would have the job for. Mr. Harvey had summarily sent me away, and he hadn’t even tried to hide how angry he was with me. I realized my hands were still shaking and quickly clasped them behind my back. “I’m just on my way out to get some co- some snacks. Do you know what kind of pastries he likes? He wasn’t specific.”
Fernando gave me a long, slanted look. “Harvey doesn’t eat pastries.”
“Right.” I let my head droop on my shoulders. I should have figured that out for myself. “It must be for guests. I’ll just get a selection.”
Of course, I wasn’t going to get any pastries at all. I just didn’t want Fernando to know that I was going out to get coffee because that would invite the inevitable question: why I was going all the way across town when there were multiple coffee machines within this very building.
“Okay, well,” Fernando said. “See you later.”
He headed off back down the hall in the direction he had been going, one hand in his pocket and the other loosely holding a printed document, whistling as he moved away from me.
I didn’t want him to ask too many questions about why I was shaking, why I had been standing in the hallway alone, and why I had very obviously been blinking back tears when I first turned around – but, still. It would have been nice if he’d noticed.
I shook it off as best as I could and headed to the elevator, riding it quickly down to the lobby. I was about to walk smartly across the marble floor and leave, but someone called out my name before I could take so much as two steps.
I looked up at the clerk at the front desk – a pretty young woman who was sharper than she looked. She was watching me expectantly, and an older woman stood in front of her. She was perfectly made-up, with greying hair dressed up in a bun on top of her head that swirled like something a film star would wear, a chic beige overcoat, and a very prim expression.
“Hi,” I said expectantly, looking between the clerk and the woman, waiting for someone to explain to me what was going on.
“This is Helen,” the clerk supplied meaningfully. Seeing that I wasn’t there yet, she added: “Helen Alcori.”
Oh! Mr. Harvey’s last secretary – the one whose phone stand I had found. She looked a little on the older side to have been using a phone stand, but what did I know?
“Helen,” I greeted her, trying my best warm smile. I stuck out a hand which she shook reluctantly as if she was touching something distasteful. “It’s nice to meet you. Did we miss something of yours that we should have sent along?”
Helen glared at me and pursed her wine-colored lips. “You should not have sent along anything,” she said in clipped tones, her voice at least two income brackets more correct and precise than mine. “How rude of you to simply dispense of my items without so much as a phone call.”
I blinked, taken aback by how furious she was. “I… I’m sorry,” I said. Was she seriously that old-fashioned? “I thought it best to make sure you had your things as soon as possible. I would have called, but it was very late when we found the stand, and I wouldn’t have liked to have disturbed you.”
“Sent it along as soon as you found it, did you?” she scoffed. “You didn’t stop to use it at all?”
I felt myself flush red. It was true – I had used it without knowing whose it was. A second later, though, realization struck. “How did you know I had used it?”
“It was scuffed,” she said, pronouncing the word as if it was really the word dead and the object in question was her beloved pet dog, not a phone stand.
I coughed. “I’m sorry about that,” I said. Had I scuffed it? Really? I couldn’t remember doing anything so strenuous. But maybe it had gotten roughed up in the mail.
She sniffed and turned up her nose a little towards me. I couldn’t believe I’d just witnessed someone doing that in real life. I’d always thought it was just a turn of phrase. “Well, thankfully, I am not missing the good breeding that you lack,” she said. “I came to thank you for couriering it to my door. Very kind of you. Though a waste of company resources, I should think.”
I almost choked. First, it was rude of me to send the item on without warning, and now it was also a waste of company resources to politely make sure she had it as soon as possible? I felt like I was being thrown from one side of the ropes to the other. “Right, well, my apologies for that,” I said. My head was reeling. What else? “Oh, and thank you for coming all this way. Was there anything else I could help you with?”
She glanced me up and down and sniffed slightly. “Just make sure you keep my details on file, dear,” she said.
“Why is that?” I asked, immediately getting the feeling I was going to regret it.
“So that when you are fired, you can easily call me to come back in and take up my position again,” she said imperiously. Somehow she managed to come off as both commanding and supercilious and humble, as if she was doing me a great favor by offering her help in the eventuality of my failure. “A powerful and important man like Mr. Harvey should not be left without a competent secretary.”
“Right,” I said. I couldn’t bring myself to give her any kind of formal send-off. She’d made her position clear.
She swept away from me as if she was an old duchess in a fur coat, not an out-of-work secretary, and I watched her go with complete incredulity.
What a bitch.
It wasn’t a word I liked to use often, but there were situations now and then where it was called for.
I glanced at the clerk, who was suddenly very interested in her computer screen and the visitors’ book. No help there, apparently. I sighed and squared my shoulders. As demoralizing as literally all of this was, I had to go outside now, and I at least needed to look a little bit like I wasn’t about to have a nervous breakdown.
I tried to keep that confidence on my face as I walked across the marble at last, taking my phone out of my pocket and quickly checking the map. The café at the furthest to the other side of town was…
Huh. Exactly the same brand as the one right opposite the office.
I walked across the street, looked up to check that I couldn’t see the giant silhouette of a certain former football player framed in the window of an office up there, and then quickly ducked inside. It would have taken me twenty minutes to get to the other branch. I could get a pastry for myself and spend forty minutes sitting in a warm spot instead.
Maybe it wasn’t quite the letter of the law that had been handed down to me, but it definitely felt like it was in the spirit. Mr. Harvey just wanted me out. He didn’t genuinely care where.
I ordered the sweetest, fluffiest pastry I could find – a raspberry-filled Danish – and a hot chocolate to go with it, then sat and nursed them both as well as my head.
How was I going to fix this? Mr. Harvey clearly didn’t care about being rude to me, which meant he probably wasn’t worried about keeping me on as his secretary. I was beginning to see the edges of that legendary temper that had driven so many of his secretaries away, no doubt. It was probably going to get worse from here.
I sighed. I’d only recorded one evening’s worth of footage. I was exhausted and shaken. And this was all I had to show for it?
At least if things got worse, I could film more. But cold rage wasn’t really enough of a show. I should have had my camera on when he sent me out of the office – that was the closest to the real thing I’d seen yet. Damnit. I needed to sort out my setup and get something installed on my desk somewhere.
Thinking of the footage, I scrolled through my phone’s camera roll until I found the videos from last night. The video I’d taken in the office, and…
After.
Once Mr. Harvey told me to go home, I’d left the office – but I hadn’t gone home. Not when I had the knowledge that Ridley Angus, and a lot of the other players, were going to be at O’Finlays.
I’d gone to O’Finlays.
It was the perfect time to try and get some more footage that I could use. I wasn’t really thinking about what would come up, exactly; more just scouting for any opportunity. Again, I only had my phone camera, but it wasn’t like these undercover shots had to be perfect. I figured there was an outside chance Mr. Harvey would show up too, or I’d catch one of the players doing something shady.
I scrolled to the first video I’d taken at the bar and opened it. I’d found a spot a short distance away from where the players hung out, but significantly lower-rent – outside of their roped-off VIP area. There was a curtain hung between us and a security guard standing in the way, so I couldn’t always see a lot, but I could see some. Whenever the curtain wasn’t quite pulled back across or it swayed out of the way in the breeze from a passing body, I could spot something on the other side.
Every glimpse of Ridley was tantalizing. I’d managed to score footage of him drinking from a glass of pale liquid, joking around with one of the other players on his team, and talking to a few scantily-dressed women who had slipped behind the rope.
I watched all the footage I’d taken as I slowly sipped through my hot chocolate and ate my pastry. I’d finally left in the early hours of the morning when Ridley Angus did – he’d been falling-over drunk, stumbling and getting propped up by his teammates as they steered him toward his driver.
He looked back at me, directly at the camera; I remembered the heart-stopping moment when I thought he’d seen me filming. But he just grinned as if he was recognizing me but not fully understanding what I was doing, and then he’d disappeared into the car.
I stopped the recording and laid my phone down on the table. The thumbnail preview was a perfectly-framed shot of him looking back at me over his shoulder. I still couldn’t really believe that I was in such close proximity with the only football player whose name I actually knew – because he was the most gorgeous one who had, in my opinion, ever taken to the field.
Was he hotter, or Mr. Harvey…?
Wait, why was I thinking about that?
It was irrelevant which one was hotter. One was my boss and one was the most sought-after sportsman in the world, surrounded by hot women all the time. Oh, and they were both straight. So, completely not relevant at all.
What was relevant was the fact that I had footage of a football player behaving badly – and I’d chosen not to use it.
I couldn’t exactly say why. Part of me thought that since he’d looked right at me, selling it would be a good way to get caught, and I might get fired before I’d done what I came for. Another part of me was clinging onto this ridiculous idea that since Ridley was the hottest player I’d ever seen, and he now knew my name, it would be disloyal to sell the footage. As if I actually had a chance with someone like him.
I shook my head and drained the last of my drink, checking the time. Another few minutes and I’d go back. It was probably time to order Mr. Harvey’s coffee so it would still be nice and hot when I went inside. Although, not too hot. After all, I was supposed to have brought it from the other side of town.
I did my best to pretend that nothing at all was wrong as I entered the office building again – but I needn’t have bothered. Everyone in the lobby had their attention locked on two men standing in front of the front desk, facing each other with aggressively casual stances.
Once of them was Ace. The other… I couldn’t place him. He looked familiar, somehow, but I didn’t know from where.
“Oh, that’s right,” the other man was saying, with something of a sneer on his face even though his voice sounded almost serious. “I forgot, you’ve never had a tennis champion on your roster.”
“We don’t feel the need to diversify into other sports,” Ace countered. He studied his fingernails as if the other man had absolutely nothing interesting about him. “I guess if we weren’t the most successful football agency in the world, maybe we’d think about branching out, too.”
The other man snorted. He was handsome in his own way. There was something… dangerous about him. Like he might be the type to persuade you into investing in a scheme, then disappear before your profits were supposed to be paid out. He had dark, short hair and was wearing a black suit to match it, a contrast against Ace’s dark grey. He was wearing a leather jacket over it. The only flash of something not black came at his wrists, where his white shirt sleeves poked out of his jacket – but even then, they were fixed with round black cuff links.
“You mean you don’t have the contacts to branch out,” he said. “The Coleman Group doesn’t need to settle for being big in just one sport. We can dominate in so many others.”
“How wonderful for you,” Ace said through gritted teeth. “So, then, perhaps you have enough on your plate already and you can fuck off and leave my client alone.”
The other man gave a short burst of laughter. “Not rattling you, am I, Park?”
“No, Driver, but I do find you incredibly irritating,” Ace sniffed. Then he did a kind of double-take and sniffed again. “And you smell like a mechanic. Whoever sold you that cologne was your enemy.”
“They can’t have been,” Driver, whoever he was, retorted. “I don’t recall them looking anything like you. Which is to say, a jumped-up little model who should stick to looking pretty and combing his hair instead of trying to play with the big boys.”
Ace titled his head. “Oh, you think I’m pretty?”
Driver’s hands formed into fists at his sides. Despite the apparent bantering rhythm of their conversation, I had a sense that this was about to escalate. I quickly stepped forward.
“Oh, Mr. Park!” I exclaimed as if I had only just come in and seen him. As I suspected, both of them looked at me like they hadn’t noticed me at all. “Mr. Harvey asked me to find you. There’s an urgent call coming in from a big new sponsor. It sounds like they’re very keen to meet you.”
Ace looked at me with surprise for a moment, then a cunning look took over as he realized I was bluffing to save him face. “Oh, excellent, thank you, Keaton,” he said. “I’ll come upstairs with you. It’s not like there’s anything worth my attention down here.”
And just like that, he walked to the elevator with me, leaving Driver behind us spluttering in outrage.
As soon as the elevator doors closed behind us, I looked up to see Ace smirking.
“Who was that?” I asked.
“Brody Driver,” Ace said. “One of Caleb Coleman’s top agents. He’s an asshole.”
“Oh, right.” I didn’t really know what else to say to that. Brody Driver? There was no recollection of that name in my head, and there was no reason that I should recognize one of the Coleman Group’s employees. Maybe he just had one of those faces. “You know I was making it up about the meeting, right?”
Ace laughed. “I do. Thanks, kid.”
I bristled. “I’m probably the same age as you, thanks.”
“Thirty-one at the end of the month?”
I gaped, then outrage took over even more forcefully. “I’m older than you! My birthday was months ago!”
Ace chuckled and patted me on the shoulder, timing it perfectly to step out of the elevator and disappear behind the door of his office.
Which just left me, standing there with a to-go coffee in my hand, facing down the door of my own office at the other end of the hall.
The drama of the last few minutes faded into the background: irrelevant.
Right now, I just had to survive seeing my boss again.
I took the deepest breath I could manage and walked forward with a purpose and confidence that I certainly did not feel.
Here ends this week’s chapter! What did you think? I’d love to hear your thoughts below. I really appreciate your comments - what you like, what you don’t like, and what you’d like to see next.
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Progress Report
Don’t Move Out sales total: ebook - 731, paperback - 7, KU pages read - 313,687 (DMO = 238 pages, so the equivalent of 1,318 full-book reads), free downloads - 2,324
Don’t Go Outside sales total: ebook - 86, paperback - 6, KU pages read - 117,084 (DGO = 222 pages, so the equivalent of 527 full-book reads)
Don’t Fly Home sales total: ebook - 51, paperback - 4, KU pages read - 72,273 (DFH = 224 pages, so the equivalent of 322 full-book reads)
Don’t Leave Town sales total: ebook - 58, paperback - 4, KU pages read - 50,719 (DLT = 299 pages, so the equivalent of 169 full-book reads)
Don’t Check Out sales total: ebook - 49, paperback - 2, KU pages read - 26,813 (DCO = 192 pages, so the equivalent of 139 full-book reads)
CC 1-5 Boxset sales total: KU pages read - 11,540 (Boxset = 1,068 pages, so the equivalent of 10 full-set reads)
Don’t Move Your Desk - written and edited fully, serialisation underway, chapters queued up ready (7 ‘spare’ chapters with no set date)
Kiss The Cook cover revealed, full plot fleshed out, sent to beta readers, 3rd draft done - I’m getting more and more excited about this one! I think it’s almost there!
(Books 7+): 9 covers, themes, and titles done, Crowhill Kitchen release schedule announced, all Kitchen characters created and romances/interpersonal relationships between books set up - I’m shuffling some things around after reflection, so I may make changes to the covers (subtitles and order of books)
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By the way, please like this post if you enjoyed it and would like to see more! This helps me decide what to do for future content.
XO Rhiannon
Oooh... another great chapter!!! Could Brody Driver be on Keaton's video of Ridley??? Can't wait to find out!