Joshua offers to give her a ride to the bar. In a fit of panic, she approaches Danny and asks him out. She lies that she does, and Joshua says he’ll be at the same place at the same time. She dresses in a sexy black dress that morning to throw him off his game, and he asks whether she has a date. That night, she has an erotic dream about Joshua, awaking aroused and disturbed. They ask about Joshua making her work life miserable, and she tells them about another coworker, Danny. Lucy video chats in the evening with her parents, the only people she talks to because she has no friends. Joshua and Lucy begin a competition for the job. Bexley announce that they’re creating a new position of chief operating officer, and Helene encourages Lucy to apply. Joshua teases her about her upbringing on a strawberry farm, unintentionally reminding her of how homesick and lonely she feels.Īt a staff meeting, Helene and Mr. The mail courier brings Lucy a package containing a hard-to-find Smurf figurine to add to her collection, and Joshua accuses her of caring too much about what others think of her. The following day she snoops at Joshua’s desk for information to use against him, finding codes she can’t decipher in his day planner. Lucy notes that one of the most important things to know about her is her hatred for Joshua Templeton. Lucy and Joshua are executive assistants to the co-CEOs, Helene Pascal and Richard Bexley. She engages in the “Mirror Game,” one of the many “hating” games she plays with Joshua Templeton, who works at the desk opposite hers. The novel opens with 28-year-old Lucy Hutton at her desk at Bexley & Gamin Publishing.

The hating game book