He frowned instantly. “I owe you one dress, so here it is. Please take it,” he stated as he zipped up the bag and held it out to her.
“No, thank you, Mr Hayes, but if that is all you asked me to come here for, I’ll be going.” She told him and turned for the door.
“Are you so rude that you won’t accept my apology gift to you?” he grated out.
She smiled at him. “Hmm, an apology gift? I don’t think that is what this is. I dare say your father told you to replace it, and gifts from Alpha bloods… they often come with strings attached, so again, no thank you. Feel free to gift it to another or just return it to the store for a full refund.” She nodded to him and walked to the door.
He didn’t stop her, but she could feel his eyes on her the entire way, and she had a feeling he was more than a little unhappy that she wouldn’t accept his gift. It wasn’t likely many would turn down a gift from an Alpha, but she knew his father was quite the devious man, and she didn’t think his sons would be any different.
They’d grown up in his presence and knew how to do things that likely seemed polite to most around them, but were only doing so, just so they could get their own way, and still look like a gentleman or trying to in her case. She could see through that.
The elevator door opened, and she saw Carlotti standing in there, she stood and waited for her to get out of the lift, as was the custom, people exiting before entering, and the she-wolf stepped out and waved a hand about her as if she was dispelling an awful smell. “What is that smell?” she muttered.
Wynta ignored it and got in the elevator to go home. It wasn’t the first time she’d heard it, and likely wasn’t going to be the last time either. She didn’t care about that she-wolf and her thoughts, she didn’t even make her own way in the world, just hung of Ernesto and had an allowance. She was just a spoiled, entitled she-wolf that thought the sun shined out of her ass.
One day, that she-wolf could find herself on the receiving end of a ranked member from another pack that she’d offended or a Mate that didn’t like her attitude, and she’d get her ass kicked, or rejected and have no one to blame but herself. But knowing Carlotti, she’d find a way to blame it all on someone else.
Wynta would likely laugh when she heard about it. Karma was a b***h to the right people, wolfen or human alike. Carlotti would get her comeuppance in due time.
She walked into her office the next day and there hanging on her coat rack was that dress bag, that Jared had tried to hand to her yesterday. She shook her head at seeing it and sat down at her desk, to find there was a note card sitting on her laptop. She read it: “You’ll accept the dress, there are no strings attached to it, Jared.”
She sighed as she stared at it and then picked it up and placed it in the bin next to her desk, as Jamie, one of the other marketing team supervisors, leaned on her door. “I see you’ve got Jared Hayes’ attention. First he brings you a dress and picks you up for his brother’s wedding, and now he’s buying you clothes too. I saw him personally drop that off this morning… Are you two dating?” she asked almost too casually.
Wynta knew this woman was just there for office gossip and nothing more. “I barely know him, and we are not dating.” Wynta stated simply, “My dress got ruined before the wedding, and he is replacing it, nothing more.”
“He ruined your dress, huh?” Jamie nodded with a knowing smirk and Wynta knew from that one thing, she shouldn’t have said anything. Jamie was going to turn it into some dirty thing and spread it through the office. Wynta needed to put a stop to it, she didn’t need rumors like that getting about.
“Mr Hayes, put me out of his car before we even got to the wedding, and I got injured, and the dress was ruined. It’s that simple, Jamie.” She told her the truth of the matter. “You know I was off work after being in the hospital and having surgery due to injury, yes.”
“Yes,” the woman nodded. “But Wynta… why’d he put you out of his car? Don’t tell me you were rude to that handsome devil of a man? Your own employer’s eldest son who’s a confirmed bachelor.”
Wynta held in the annoyance and smiled at this woman, who was clearly still digging for gossip. “I treated him no differently to how I would treat everyone else, yourself included, Jamie.” She made a point with her words “Did you actually need something or are you just here for gossip?”
“My my Wynta.” She clicked her tongue. “You really don’t know how to catch a man, do you? You’re supposed to smile at them, flirt and flatter them, boost their ego, not dismiss them or try to humble them… Flattery goes a long way, you should try it sometime, and maybe you’d get a date once in a while.”
Wynta raised an eyebrow at her, “And maybe I just don’t care to date, and be a slave to a man’s every whim. If that is go ahead and do it, but it’s not the 1800s you know.”
She saw Jamie glare at her and then turn and stalk away, and she rolled her eyes, why she thought that was the way to get a man she didn’t know? It was probably just best to be oneself, so they know who you were.
But she could see that dress and that Jared, having dropped it off personally, was going to cause her an issue. She was going to have to go and give it back to him to stop the office gossip. She didn’t need that kind of trouble. Gossip like that could lead to one getting fired unjustly. She knew that’s how she’d lost her last job.
Been fired because a man in a higher position than she was, took an interest in her, and she’d rejected him, politely but firmly, and he’d not taken kindly to it. It had seen him start rumors about her when she’d confronted him. He’d had the hide to tell her if she bent over his desk, he’d stop them all.
To which she’d slapped him, and he’d complained to HR that she’d been sexually harassing him in the work place, and now she’d gone one step too far and physically assaulted him. He’d been a long-standing employee in upper management with apparently a blemish-free career, and she’d been new she’d been ousted, her word against his.
Though she now always had a camera in her office, that recorded not only visuals but audio as well, it sat behind her on the middle shelf and just looked like a mantle clock. It was the only thing she had brought into this office, and it had sat out there on her desk when she was just a marketing specialist among the team.
So none of her team ever mentioned it, it was just a simple personal item of hers, and those that didn’t know that just thought it was part of her office d?cor, a nice decorative clock. She stood staring at that dress for a solid minute and then just walked over and picked it up and took it upstairs to the tenth floor, and handed it over to Stacey, Jared’s secretary.
Who frowned at the bag and then at Wynta herself and asked for an explanation, which Wynta stated “Please give that back to Mr Hayes, I don’t need the gossip it’s causing in my department. Please also remind him that I declined the dress yesterday, and I am still declining it today. That I also don’t want him to personally drop things to my office unless they are work-related.”
“You’re rejecting the Alpha’s gift?” Stacey looked at her and seemed a bit on the confused side.
“Yes, I told him yesterday I didn’t want it, nothing has changed overnight.” Wynta nodded and had just walked away from the desk when Carlotti stepped into the corridor and stared at her for a moment before walking past her and over to Jared’s secretary. Wynta moved along; her business was done.
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