It’s almost here! The Sole Scheme releases on October 21st on Kindle, paperback, and to read with your Kindle Unlimited subscription, so I thought I would go ahead and post the first chapter. If you’re interested in preordering the book, it is 99 cents here.

It can be read as a standalone, but it’s funnier if you read The Panty Plot first.

Blurb:

Chantel – I blame my old roommate, Laney, for all of this. She moved out, taking her half of the rent with her, and the government just jacked up my student loan payment. I’m broke as a joke. There’s also the problem of a “consultant” at work shadowing me and making sure I’m necessary to the company. I could lose my job, and a girl has to do what she can to survive in this economy.

There’s one asset I’ve never thought to use before. I have pretty feet. At least, the lady at the pedicure salon raves about them.

Once my friends give me the idea, I make thousands of dollars a month by sending men pictures and videos of my feet. No face. Nothing too weird. The best part is that there’s absolutely no way in hell that Jerico Merris, the grumpy and gorgeous man I have to sit with every day and invite to every meeting at my marketing job, will ever find out.

Jerico– I stay stern and professional around her, pretending I don’t notice the way her pencil skirts fit her hourglass shape or that her glasses give her the hot librarian vibe. I wish I could keep my mind off of her, but she’s everywhere. Her perfume. Eating lunch in the break lounge. I should keep my eyes to myself while shadowing her and not look at her phone notifications coming in, but I’m curious about her, and the phone is right there on her desk for me to see. What does she do in her free time? Does she have a boyfriend?

I never expected to see the app I see when her phone lights up at her desk. I also never expected to be the guy who’s now anonymously asking her for some twisted things I would never have thought about before I laid eyes on her. It would be bad for business if she ever finds out it’s me using the fake name and asking for videos of her feet. I just can’t help myself when it comes to her.

She’ll never know…

Chapter 1-

Chantel

I hate my fucking job. My coworkers are boring and mostly nearing retirement, the coffee could be compared to tar, the printers never work, and even the walls are gray. Yeah, they’re the color of prison bars. What kind of company uses gray paint and thinks the employees will find it motivating?

A home improvement materials company run by Hugh Anderson, that’s who. The same one I’ve been working for since college, and the one that pays my bills.

It’s the bill thing that keeps me here and will keep me here for the foreseeable future, if the screen in front of me is any indication. I scroll through my student loan’s payment website while holding my lips together, lest my breakfast yogurt come back up. Someone please explain to me how I took out loans totaling forty thousand dollars for my state university marketing degree and now owe forty-two thousand dollars after already paying on the damn thing for eight years. Does anyone get ahead on these, or do they keep burying us under interest rates until we die? Due to recent legislation, my loan repayment has gone from five hundred dollars a month to seven hundred. I can’t pay an extra two hundred a month on the loan, especially when my roommate moved out!

Stupid Milo Coulson. This is all his fault, stealing Laney away from my apartment like that. I now have double the rent until I can find someone to move into her old room, my landlord just raised the rent a few hundred bucks, and I owe the government loan sharks an extra two Benjamin Franklins a month.

This office may not be decorative, fun, or even have good coffee, but it keeps me off the streets, and I’m still able to afford luxuries like a cart of groceries and water coming straight from my tap. Well, I may not be able to buy the groceries anymore because I’ll still be paying for the degree I should have already paid off if predatory interest didn’t exist.

My desk phone lights up, and I squint at it. I can’t remember the last time it rang, probably when Hugh, my manager and the owner of the firm, wanted to see me in his office. Most people communicate through text chats and have only used chat since I started working here eight years ago.

I pick it up like I’m not sure what to do with it. “Uh, hello?”

“Chantel, can we have a conversation?” Hugh asks in a scratchy voice.

Chills instantly move up my spine. My boss is ancient, coming in at around ninety. At least, that’s what the office betting pool has his age set at when we discuss Hugh over happy hour drinks. He doesn’t come out of his office often because he takes at least three minutes to completely straighten when standing. Hence, he calls us on the phone when he wants to speak with one of us, even though my desk happens to be four cubicles away from the door to his office.

“Right away, sir,” I say, already standing and grabbing the work tablet I use to take notes in meetings. Well, that’s what it’s supposed to be for. I downloaded Libby and now read as much smut as I can find on my lunch hour.

I smooth my black pencil skirt, slip out of my retro Strawberry Shortcake house slippers to put on my basic black work heels, and walk the ten steps to Hugh’s office before knocking on the door as loudly as possible.

“Wanted to see me, sir?”

Hugh claps his hands and focuses his eyes, which takes a second. Was he napping? “Chantel! How is my favorite brand manager?”

“I’m your only brand manager, Hugh,” I say, sliding into the leather chair across from him.

The chair and all the other office decorations are as old as the man in front of me. Thankfully, mahogany wood is timeless, but the leather of the chair under my ass is cracked and could use a good oiling. The room itself still smells of cigars from the old days when people could still smoke at work, and the bar cart in the corner containing rum and vodka squeaks like hell when you move it.

Hugh looks at me with the relaxation only old men know. A smile is perpetually on his face, he stoops a bit in both sitting and standing positions, and he clasps his weathered and age-spotted hands in a steeple position on the desk in front of him.

“Why do I have a feeling this isn’t good news?” I ask. “Is this about my overdue performance review?”

“I guess I do owe you one of those, huh?” he chuckles.

I could use the money. Maybe I’ll get a two-hundred-dollar raise each month? Fat chance of that. We all get raises around here, but as soon as we cheer, “Yay, I got a raise,” we get the email from HR that says, “Yeah, health insurance costs are going up, so it’ll probably cancel out any pay raise. Happy New Year.”

“This isn’t about my review?” I ask.

“It’s an interesting opportunity to help the company improve.”

Shit. Mother fucker. Fucking hell. The kiss of fucking death. Opportunities can suck my ass.

“That sounds lovely, sir. I love opportunities. How can I help?”

I straighten in my seat and paste on the smile I know Hugh loves. He likes it when the ladies in the office smile through whatever corporate hell we’re experiencing. He uses the word “pleasant” to describe “his girls” when we show our teeth.

“We’re bringing in a consultant for the company. He’s going to observe our processes for the next few months. I know he’ll be specifically interested in what you’re doing to protect our branding and may discuss options for a new logo.”

I scoot to the edge of the chair, my heart now pounding. “How, exactly, will he be looking into our processes?”

“He’ll be having meetings at first to get a scope of what everyone does. Then, he’ll be shadowing employees for the next few months. You could probably expect him to shadow you personally for a couple of days. Maybe more, but that’s at his discretion.”

Shadowing? Well, there go my lunches with Laney that may run a few minutes over, and I can forget slipping out for coffee. Will he monitor my bathroom usage?

“How will he be shadowing us? Will he be sitting at our desks with us or asking us to provide daily reports?”

“Probably both. He’ll do whatever he needs to do to get a good understanding of how things run and some changes we can make to streamline operations and cut spending without cutting morale or quality for our clients. Consider it a hard audit of our processes. I trust Jerico with making the correct suggestions.”

“Jerico?” I ask, blurting the name like I’m yelling the F word after stubbing my toe. “He’s named after a Biblical battle?”

Hugh sniffs. “Kind of a cool name. You don’t hear that very often.”

I inhale deeply and let the breath out slowly, trying not to show Hugh that I’m peeved. I run my hands through my medium-length brown hair in frustration, then give it a little pat like I’m just fixing my waves that can get unruly halfway through an office day. I adjust my black glasses that I only wear to work, preferring contacts at home. I get little excitement in my life, and glasses at the office while wearing contacts when I go out make me feel like Clark Kent.

“Hugh, that sounds a lot like that old movie, Office Space. Is this guy firing people? Is this a staff slash and burn?”

Hugh sucks on his teeth. I’ve always wondered about that term when people say it, but in Hugh’s case, he literally sucks on his teeth. His dentures often come loose, and they move freely in his mouth as he considers my question. He isn’t worried about it enough to push them back into position. Maybe it’s because we’ve all seen him get buzzed at the office Christmas party and entertain us with a reading of How the Grinch Stole Christmas without his dentures.

He makes a sucking noise, adjusts his glasses, and finally reaches into his mouth, pushing the fake teeth back onto his gums before saying, “I’m not getting any younger, Chantel.”

Gee, you think?

“Come on, Hugh.” I wave my hand like I’m swatting a fly away from my lunch. “You have twice the energy of the guys in the mail room.”

I’m not exactly lying there. It’s a compliment to make Hugh feel young. What he doesn’t know is that the mailroom guys are usually high by ten in the morning and don’t move much the rest of the day.

He smiles a sarcastic, lilting grin, and I’m thankful his teeth stay in. “I want the place streamlined and in good order for my last two years until retirement. Then, I’ll turn the firm over to my kids, who will then trash any progress, so we’ll be back to square one. At least it will be a wash.”

I clear my throat. “That doesn’t really answer my question. Will there be cuts? Will there also be promotion opportunities?”

I close my eyes for a brief moment and send good thoughts to whatever deity controls my fate. I make a mental note to add volunteer dog walking at the animal shelter to my calendar this weekend. I’ll ask Laney and Samantha how I can improve my karma, too. They’ll know something.

“We’ll have to see what recommendations Jerico makes. You’ll listen to his advice and loop him into meetings?”

I give a short nod. “Will he be my boss now or something? This sounds pretty serious and like someone I need to impress. This doesn’t sound like I should just go about my business.”

Hugh chuckles, and a drop of spit shoots from his mouth, landing on his desk. He doesn’t bother wiping it away. “I’ll always be head honcho around here, but look at him like a middle manager who will report to me and make suggestions on how you can do things better.”

“So…a boss?”

“Sure, we’ll go with that. But a temporary one. Just be the Chantel I know and love, and I’m sure you’ll get along with Jerico just fine.”

I stand and nod, ready to get back to the safety of my cubicle and get back into my pink house slippers that smelled like strawberries when I bought them. Now they smell like the office carpet.

Shit. I’ll have to wear real shoes all day. That’s in addition to no longer looking at random news articles during my work time. It’s always been my process to work for twenty minutes, flip to a news page or something else I need to look up on the Internet, and then go right back to working a couple of minutes later. It’s like my own mental break, allowing me to go for long stretches of working, even into the evening hours after everyone else has left. It’s just how I work best. Something tells me that this consultant guy won’t approve, and I’ll actually get less quality work done.

Jerico is a problem in other ways. I have to show him that my job is necessary and not something that can be rolled into the social media manager’s role or some random department that doesn’t handle marketing at all. It’s not unheard of for departments to take on work they have never handled, nor know the first thing about handling, all in the name of rolling up the company sleeves and pitching in. All one of our accountants needs is to suddenly find themselves in charge of managing our brand. Given my current financial situation, I need this job more than ever.

Should I pick up a side hustle to pad my bank account and get some footing on my student loans? Laney sold her underwear to pay off hers.

I walk back to my cubicle, fumbling with the waistband of my skirt as I think about the possibility the entire way. I couldn’t sell my panties. No way. Especially not dirty ones. I don’t think Laney did anything unethical, especially given her financial dumpster fire after she lost her job. It’s just not something I could personally do.

No matter what happens, fuck this Jerico guy. He sounds like a real prick.