Martha Fletcher has only ever had one job- Executive Assistant to Sam Courtenay.
She'll schedule his diary, pick up his dry cleaning, usher girls out of his apartment first thing in the morning... nothing was out of bounds until one night, that blur...
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I never understood love songs; for many years, they were like a foreign language to me, simply words that held no meaning. Whenever I heard one play, I felt nothing. That was until Martha Fletcher walked into my life and suddenly, it was as if all those songs finally made sense.
It was impossible to be around Martha without falling in love with everything about her. Unlike anyone else I had met before, Martha's intelligence, grace, beauty and sarcasm captivated me, pulled me in and made me utterly hopeless. Within weeks of meeting her, I knew that my life would never be the same without her. Whether I'd planned it or not, I fell for her and against my better judgement, I refused to let her go. Giving her a job and making her my Girl Friday was selfish of me but sue me for being in love.
See, I thought I'd been in love before and maybe, in my own way, I had been but what I felt for Martha was indescribable, eclipsing all that I thought I knew. It happened in the most unexpected way, too, because one day she was just another girl and then boom! I saw her and she was all that I needed. All that I wanted. Forever and ever, amen.
I worry, sometimes, that I love her too much. It's like she's a storm, destined to whirl through my life and leave only destruction in her wake. She's a warm embrace and a bitter burn all at the same time. With her, I've found the missing piece of the puzzle of my life. My heart speeds up, I feel vulnerable and euphoric all at once. When you fall in love, it's like you have something that the whole world wants and it's possessive, irrational and maddening. It's a thousand secret emotions, none of which are wise, and it is the highest of highs. You feel blessed to have this person in your life.
Being in love is a safe place, where you feel comfortable, where you can dance awkwardly, sing badly, and make dumb jokes and she won't judge you. Chances are, she'll join in. Love is a formidable force, unparalleled, invisible, intangible. It's more powerful than anything and can offer you unbridled joy where time stops and everything is surreal. Life is a dream, blurry but beautiful. There is nothing but love there and it is as simple and as honest and as pure as that.
To think, if that's how I feel when we're 'just friends', what would it be like if Martha ever returned those feelings for me? I would die a happy man.
"You can't put it there," her melodic voice greets my ears, making me grin happily. Despite the fact that we're at work and Martha's got her professional facade on, I'm still falling for her every second of the day. Even the way anger seeps into her words has me thinking that there is nothing better than this. "Sam, for crying out loud, would you snap back into reality, please?"
I jump when Martha clicks her fingers right before my eyes, shaking away those indecent yet delicious thoughts of her. Focusing on the job at hand, I cast my eyes away from Martha and look up at the artwork that hangs on the gallery's wall. We're supposed to be curating an upcoming exhibition but so far, we're not getting anywhere. Martha and my newly appointed curator, Inell Whitlock, argue like cat and dog, incessantly bickering until they can no longer stand to be in the same room. It would take days for their tempers to simmer down and we could get back to work.
