Mundane

Richard had no problem waking up the next morning in time for work and going through his normal routine so that he wouldn't be late despite the decrease in his normal sleep schedule. Somehow, this was becoming more common for him recently.

The firm that he worked at for an account was a small hole in the wall place but one that thrived because of the good business that they did. The boss of the place, Michael had never really had a desire to increase the number of employees beyond the four (including Richard) that he had hired once he began to maintain positive revenue. At least not any time soon. This worked fine for Richard. It meant more work, but made it easier to keep everything organized and held less of a concern for stepping on someone else's toes when it came to dealing with new clients.

He could've made more money if he applied at a larger firm, but that came with more of a hassle and most of the larger firms he was interested in had been further away from where he lived than he was willing to drive. Thus, decided to apply to this small place and it had worked out well for him for the last few years.

It could be a bit of a mundane job at times. Rarely did anyone ever come in with a serious problem that needed more than just a little bit of help with and if they did, it was generally a user-error based upon the placement of a certain number being wrong.

The mundane was good for his day life and the club balanced out the spice that he was looking for in his night life. Not having a partner also made this balance easier because there was less of the expectations that came from a committed relationship. Richard could make his own schedule and the only person he was imposition or frustrating was himself or on a rare occasion Charlotte when she was going to be stopping through and wanted to spend a night with him. He accommodated her when he could or felt like it, but other times he simply couldn't change his schedule.

Richard was also going to have to decide what nights he was going to be at the club to do the training. He wouldn't be able to get away with doing it every night, he knew that would be too much of a hassle for him but he also didn't want to give up his entire weekend night be at the club when there were better things he could be doing at home away from other people.

At least the work for Tuesday wasn't heavy so he was able to go through the motions of what he needed to do even though his mind was buzzing with a number of other things that he needed to figure out. As long as he didn't have to crunch any numbers or look over anything serious, he didn't have to put his full attention or anything else he was doing in the office. Richard had worked there long enough that everyone knew he wasn't much of a talker unless there was a meeting or he had to report something to Michael or ask one of the other three employees if they knew about a client or so that he wasn't in charge of but needed access to.

His attention was drawn away from what he was doing when his phone buzzed indicating that he had gotten a text. He kept the volume down but never turned off the vibration unless necessary. He had forgotten he had texted Valentina the night before so he wasn't expecting to see the message from her until he opened it up and read.

Typical of her, it was both a thank you and an apology before she actually answered him as to how she was doing and why she didn't ask someone else to pick up what she was missing. The only complaint that Richard could ever find about her was that she tended to lean towards being more nervous about normal things than any of his other partners. Richard had tried to insist that she build up confidence before because she didn't have anything to be nervous about either at work or in her personal life, but it had never really stuck with her.

He sent her a quick message back and asked if she would be at the club. He knew that he couldn't take too much time away from work, but took a second longer to also message Juliet and make sure that she understood that her weekend nights were supposed to be clear so that they could go over everything as a trial before they actually got to work.

He hadn't been expecting a reply back but the response he received from her amused him ever so slightly.

'If I survive today, I will make sure to put a reminder in my calendar. If not, you can find yourself a new assistant.'

It took him a moment to understand why Juliet gave this reply and once he did, he shot back that perhaps she shouldn't drink if she couldn't handle her alcohol.

'bite me. I can handle alcohol fine on my own.' he couldn't deny that she did have an interesting fire about her, but not one he was certain that he would want to spend time playing with because she wasn't used to the same type of world that he was. That didn't mean however that he couldn't tease her about it.

'Don't tempt me little ember before we even start anything. You still don't know what you're getting into.'. He somehow wasn't surprised that he didn't get a reply back from her after he sent this message. It made him smirk as he shut his phone screen off and went back to work.

The interaction somehow only built on his desire to get everything he still had to do to finish and be ready for the training to start over the weekend. While there would be absolutely nothing sexual going on between them per his desire and the contract he set up. It didn't mean that there weren't other ways that he could have fun with the job and the fact that Juliet really didn't understand that much as to what she was getting into.