TWO #2
“Why? It was a simple mistake about letting Miss Warner and Mr. Reid talk to you this morning.” I sat down in the chair in front of his desk. “It won’t happen again. I’ll explain that—”
“Do you see that?” he asked sharply, cutting me off again.
He motioned to the flowers on the side table between two windows, now being pelted with rain, that I hadn’t noticed.
They were long-stemmed red roses arranged with baby’s breath, and they were absolutely beautiful.
The vase they were in was lovely too, very expensive.
“Yeah.”
“Yes,” he corrected me. He hated yeah.
“Yes,” I repeated.
“And?”
“And what?” I asked, my tone a little sharper than I meant it to be.
He cocked an eyebrow at me like he was waiting for me to say something.
I looked at him and waited. He laced his fingers slowly and continued to stare at me.
I looked into his cool gray eyes and noticed for the billionth time how beautiful they were with the flecks of silver in them, and how much darker they got when he was annoyed. And then it hit me.
He could tell I’d had a revelation, and he smiled smugly.
“Did Sonja leave you flowers again?”
“Yes.” He smiled, but it never touched his eyes. They didn’t sparkle like they did when he was actually happy. When he was really pleased, there was a warm glow there that was irresistible.
“She’s got a huge crush on you, you know,” I reminded him, because it was sweet.
“Yes, I know.”
“But that’s not—”
“I’ve told you and I’ve told her that I do not appreciate her advances toward me, no matter how innocent they may be.
I gave specific directions that the behavior needed to stop.
” He spoke very slowly, very crisply, spacing out each of his words so I’d be sure to hear them.
“It is not appropriate office behavior and will no longer be tolerated. Between the flowers and the little notes and the chocolates on Valentine’s Day, I’m done. ”
And that was where the “specific directions” thing came in. He had told her, explicitly, that he was not a fan of unsolicited gifts, but she’d persisted. It was a mistake, and I’d told her as well. Why she hadn’t listened to me was mind-boggling.
“What if I make her promise?” I asked him.
“No,” he snapped.
“But, boss, it’s just not—”
“Call Darcy and tell her that I want her moved today and a new typist in here tomorrow. I want it done before lunch.”
“Seriously?”
“Yes.”
“What if Darcy’s got no one else to send us? You’re saying you’d rather answer your own phone than have her here?”
“You answer my phone, not her. She simply greets people who are directed here from the front desk.”
This was an excellent point.
“I want her out,” he repeated.
“But what if they’ve got nowhere to send her? Maybe then she won’t be able to afford rent or—”
“I don’t care.”
“Wow. That’s a little harsh, don’t you think?”
“You and I both know that’s not how it works,” he apprised me, and I could see that his patience was at an end.
I knew instantly that there had to be something else bothering him.
He hated to be irritated, hated repeating himself, but minor annoyances never got to him.
He was a rock. “Everyone needs office help. She will be placed somewhere new tomorrow without any gap in employment. She works for a service until someone takes her on permanently.”
And I knew that. “Yes, I—”
“She goes today. I’ve had it. I will not be irritated every day for no reason.”
“But—”
“She’s gone. I gave her every chance.”
“Why should she be punished because she finds you irresistible?” I thought maybe I could appeal to his vanity.
“I’d think it would be nice to walk into the office first thing every morning and know that someone thought you were the absolute epitome of everything that was right with the world.
I know I’d like it. It would be very flattering. ”
“Unlike others—” Meaning me, of course. And I got it even before he let it hang in the air between us.
“—I don’t need my ego perpetually stroked.
She needs to go, and go now. And furthermore, I don’t think you would find it flattering, I think you’d find it to be much more like harassment.
At least I hope you would have that much integrity. ” After a beat he asked, “Do you?”
I looked down and counted to ten so I wouldn’t tell him where to go.
He could be so insufferable, so very arrogant that sometimes just thinking about telling him off made it almost impossible not to.
When I looked back up, he was staring at me with the dark scowl he held the patent for.
After a minute I squinted at him, making his head small, thinking how easy it would be to crush.
How satisfying if his eyes bugged out when it exploded.
“You’re doing that thing with your eyes.”
“Pardon?”
“The thing,” he grumbled.
“What thing?”
“That thing you do where you make my head small and then think how easy it would be to crush it.”
I grunted. He knew me too well.
“Listen, just tell Miss Lawson that I’m sure she’ll be happier elsewhere. Also,” he added, pulling an envelope out of the top drawer of his desk, “give this to Miss Warner when she comes by. I don’t have time to speak to her.”
I took it and got up to leave.
“Don’t you want to know what it is?” he asked slowly. “You’re usually so inquisitive.”
He meant nosy.
“Jory?”
“You mean nosy,” I said flatly.
“Is that what I said?” He was back to clipping his words.
“No.”
“So do you plan to be surly all day, then?”
“No.”
“I see.” He nodded, taking a breath and getting up to go to the window of his office.
“Tell Miss Warner that in lieu of my attendance at the bachelor auction next week, I’ve given her a check for ten thousand dollars.
That’s far more than she would have gotten had I participated, so she should be well pleased. ”
It was an AIDS benefit, and in my opinion, he was selling himself short.
I could just see Miss Therese Warner and Miss Lacey Collins waging the battle of the pocketbooks over who would have my boss as a dinner companion that night.
I was sure it would go well into the thousands, much more than ten.
Therese would see this as her opportunity to talk to him and convince him he was wrong about breaking it off with her, and Lacey would be in defense mode, trying to keep all other women away from her man.
She was the flavor of the month, and she did have Dane Harcourt, after all. For the moment.
“What are you thinking?”
I looked over to where he was and noticed he was staring at me again. “Nothing.”
“Tell me,” he ordered, walking back to his desk and passing me the roses. “You think it’s not enough? I’m not doing all that I can? I should do more for AIDS research?”
“Everyone should, but that’s not it.”
“Well then?” He waited, and his gray eyes were back to mine.
“I just think you’d raise more money if you went.”
“Why?”
I smiled in spite of myself. He sounded like he was fishing for a compliment. “Isn’t it obvious?”
“Not to me.”
“Okay, I see it starting off with everybody bidding, and then finally it’ll come down to Miss Warner and Miss Lawson duking it out for the privilege of your company.”
“Do you?”
“I do,” I told him. Hell, he’d asked. “And maybe Miss Palmer and Miss Smythe will want to bid too. It’ll be a feeding frenzy.”
“I see.”
“Don’t you think so?”
“We’ll never know, will we?”
“Guess not.” I shrugged, putting his car keys that I still had in my hand down on his desk.
“Also, should Mr. Reid come by, he is to be removed at once. I’ve already made my feelings perfectly clear to him on the subject of any unsolicited visitations to this office, so he should be aware of what reception to expect if he shows up here.
You should alert building security at once. Am I making myself clear?”
“Crystal.”
“Good.”
“He called me last night,” I threw out, remembering having seen the familiar number on my cell phone when I was on my way over to Anna’s to get George.
“Who?”
“Mr. Reid.” I reached the door.
“Wait,” he ordered before I could open it. “When did he call? After work?”
“Yeah.”
“Yes.”
“Yes,” I repeated, rolling my eyes.
“He called your cell?”
“Yes, but I didn’t actually talk to him. I was supposed to call him. He left a number.”
“And were you going to call?”
“Yes,” I almost snapped at him. “I have to tell him not to call me again, because if you’re not talking to him, then I’m certainly not going to. It’s none of my business whatever it is he wants to discuss with you.”
“You’re dying to know what that’s all about, aren’t you?”
He could be so conceited. Here I’d had this huge event transpire in my life and I wasn’t going to tell him, but he thought I was just burning up with a need to know why Mr. Caleb Reid had basically stalked him for the last three weeks.
“Jory.”
I looked back at him. “You’re right. I used to want to know.”
“But you don’t anymore.”
“Now it doesn’t matter so much.” And even as I realized how irrational I was being, I was still annoyed.
Logically, being mad at him for not caring about something I’d never told him was ridiculous.
Unfortunately, I got a D in logic in college.
I only passed because I had tried so hard and my professor knew it.
I could still remember her shaking her head, asking me how in the world I couldn’t grasp the material after spending time with both her and the grad student who was assisting her in class.
Half the problem had been that her so-called teaching assistant had been much more interested in sleeping with me than in helping me learn anything, but I really was so seriously right-brained that it was a wonder I could walk a straight line.
Time had done nothing to remedy the problem.
“Jory.”
“Hmmm?”
“You’re a million miles away. What’s going on with you?”
This was my opening to come clean. “Nothing.”
“Why don’t you care about Mr. Reid anymore?”
I shrugged.