Importune (verb): to ask persistently; to beg

The audacity. To pretending to be a victim of discrimination, then devilishly ascend through the ranks by her pity—that girl’s sheep clothing worked wonders. Fingers flying across her tablet long before she reached the gate, the woman swore to remove the wolf before the girl could even think about getting to work the next day.

Was she just a tool to people? First a coffee fetcher for the boss and now a stepping stone for her subordinates, she was livid enough to—

“Hey!”

The woman nearly snapped his head off with her next glare.

“Woah, woah!” Her new neighbor exclaimed, holding his hands up in the air like a surrendering soldier. A small cup rested in his fingers, and he hesitantly brought it to her face. “I got some coffee for you, that’s all.”

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“So you could solicit me into buying your cream puffs again?” She took the cup, not out of acceptance but of the splitting headache blooming in her skull. “I’m warning you. Today is not the day—”

“Yeah, yeah, I know you’re in a bad mood. I’m not here to sell those today,” he grumbled as he ran a hand through his blond hair. “But you’ve been like that since I moved in, so I thought I’d cheer you up.”

A slow sigh wrenched her lungs. Business tactic or not, it didn’t seem like he was going to let up. Better to figure him out now than later.

“What do you want from me?”

He smiled at her for a moment before pulling a case of cream puffs out of his pants pocket—to which she glared down and turned away from—and pressed them into her hands. “For free. It matches well with the coffee,” he returned her surprise with a wink.

Before she could fling both items right back and yell that nothing was more expensive than “free,” he darted away to the doors of his own home.

“You’re like that bitter coffee, you know,” his voice rang. “Try some sweets every once in a while.”