Chapter 5
Chapter
Five
Kate walked into Fiendish at eight-forty-five on the dot, feeling only a little draggy. To try and counter the slump, she’d indulged in a frothy pumpkin spice latte at Jung at Heart before she walked into Ms. Ginny’s office.
“Good morning, Ms. Ginny. Did you get a chance to go over my notes?”
The woman didn’t even look up from her breakfast—an egg, bacon, and cheese laden bagel thing almost as big as her head—or her phone, which dinged with the destruction of jewels.
How the woman remained that stick thin was a bit of a mystery, Kate thought with envy.
Ginny finally swallowed, then registered Kate’s presence.
“What are you doing here?”
Kate thought she was kidding, but Ginny’s cool stare obviously wasn’t a joke. “I finished the personnel directory you requested,” Kate said.
“You didn’t do what I asked.”
Kate froze. “Excuse me?”
“I asked for a phone directory,” Ginny said, with slow, condescending exaggeration, somehow emphasized by her Southern drawl. “I don’t see anything on my desk that looks like a phone directory.”
With all the crap on your desk, how would you know?
Kate gritted her teeth. “It’s electronic,” Kate returned, in the same slow, insulting cadence.
“It’s completely searchable, a true personnel database.
If you’re going through annual reviews and need to assign raises, you’ll have everyone’s pay rate.
If you need to get a password, it’ll be right there.
Everything that’s on the questionnaire is included, so you can change one thing without filling in or crossing out anything.
Finally, it’s electronically secured.” She paused.
“But, if you absolutely had to, you could print off a phone list. Although I’d talk to HR first, since it has social security numbers on it. ”
“Yes, but is it what I asked you to do?” Ginny stood up, brushing crumbs off her skintight suit, this version in black. “I’m afraid I don’t tolerate incompetence.”
“Incompetence?” Kate bristled, half in shock, half in fury.
“Ginny?” Thomas stuck his head into Ms. Ginny’s doorway, frowning. “Listen, I need one of the guys from IT… oh. It’s you.” He shot Kate a small, surprised smile. “We meet again.”
Kate blinked, some of her anger ebbing. Whatever else they might say about the guy, there was no question why Thomas Kestrel routinely led the Most Eligible Bachelor category in so many magazines.
She didn’t have a thing for cowboys, but the combination of his drawl and his dark, intense blue eyes caused her stomach to do little flip-flops.
She hadn’t had a reaction like this to any guy since she’d crushed hard on Matt Waller in junior high.
Not that she wanted to hook up with a billionaire, for a multitude of social, ethical, and simply common-sense reasons. But the guy was hotter than a black leather interior in the Mojave, so her attraction wasn’t exactly surprising, either.
“Hey, stranger. Staying out of trouble?” she said, then grinned when Ginny’s jaw dropped at the greeting.
“Actually, I was going to scout out some fine a cappella talent.” He winked. “If you were up for it, I thought I’d request some Dolly Parton. Or maybe Kendrick Lamar. You seem versatile.”
“Not much to sing about,” Kate replied, remembering the situation at hand. “I’m getting fired.”
“What?” Now he stepped fully into Ginny’s office. “Why?”
“Gi—that is, Ms. Ginny mentioned you wanted a phone list of your direct reports in the main building,” Kate said.
“Ms. Ginny?” he repeated, shooting the woman in question a look. “I thought we’d agreed that first names were fine, Gin. Preferable, even.”
“She didn’t give the assignment to me,” Ginny said quickly, blowing past his remark. “I’d already warned her…”
“I created the database,” Kate interrupted, earning a blistering glare from the woman.
“You can print off a phone directory in about five minutes. But more importantly, you can pull any information on an employee that you might need, immediately. It’s on a secured drive, and I’ve got a password for it.
Which I put in my note, explaining all this,” she added, staring at Ginny pointedly.
“She didn’t do what I told her to,” Ginny spluttered.
Thomas was surveying Kate curiously. “That’s good work,” he said, his tone thoughtful. “Proactive. Thoughtful. I know how rough that timeline was, but you still went outside of scope. God knows this’ll be useful when pay raises come up, or if there’s an emergency.”
Ginny choked. “Thom…Mr. Kestrel, you don’t understand. I don’t think we want temps simply going off on their own,” she said, with emphasis. “Doing whatever they want. Considering what we do, what we are… I simply don’t think that she fits in here!”
“Funny, neither does she,” he murmured, and Kate felt her cheeks heat in embarrassment. “Still, as long as she’s willing to compromise and work with an evil empire like Fiendish, I get the feeling she might be an asset to the company.”
“But Thomassssss….”
His glance was stern, unbending as steel. “Gin blossom,” he drawled, surprising Kate at his use of an obvious and somewhat saccharine nickname, “keep her on.”
That shut Ginny up like a coffin.
What the hell was their relationship? Despite the rumors, it hardly sounded sexy. It sounded almost familial… like he was a big brother.
“Can I see this database?” he asked Kate. “Ginny, can we use your computer?”
Kate glanced at Ginny, who nodded helplessly. When Kate turned on the screen, a post about hot bachelors came up.
A picture of Thomas with no shirt on took up the whole oversized monitor.
“Oh, my,” Kate breathed.
Ginny’s face turned an unattractive flame red, and she crossed her arms, looking away. Thomas’s expression remained blank.
Kate swallowed hard, then opened up the database file, trying desperately not to superimpose the image of hello-hot-shirtless-guy on the man who glanced over her shoulder as she quickly pulled the names of IT employees in the building.
“Perfect. Print that out for me, will you?”
“Sure,” she said, turning as she did.
He was maybe a few inches from her face. She swallowed again, as if that would help the sudden dryness in her mouth.
Why does he have to be so good looking?
Thomas locked gazes with her, and for a second, her breath caught. She forced herself to shift focus back to the black-and-white boring data on the monitor.
“This is good work,” Thomas repeated, stepping towards the printer and retrieving the names. “Gin, maybe we should turn her loose on something a bit more challenging and see how she works out. Okay?”
Ginny nodded back solemnly, trying to look like she didn’t just plaster a cheesecake shot of Thomas all over her computer.
“Good. Thanks.” He nodded to Kate, then Ginny, and left the office.
Ginny waited until his footsteps disappeared down the hallway, then turned on Kate, eyes blazing. “How does he know you?”
Kate fought not to grin. “I was working late. He was leaving, saw the light, heard me singing. He stopped by.”
“Well. Well.” Ginny held her coffee cup in a stranglehold, so tight the plastic lid popped off like a jack-in-the-box. “Damn it!”
Guess I’m not getting fired, Kate thought, with a little burst of glee.
She might not like working for big corporate, but damned if she was going to get canned by a petty, ditzy Candy Crush fiend with the metabolism of a hamster on crack.
Then, like a switch turning off, Ginny’s look of undisguised hatred smoothed back into an approximation of her usual smug, catlike smile.
“So, he wants me to turn you loose on something more challenging,” she drawled, with a poisonous sweetness. “What sort of a challenge can I find for you?”
Kate knew automatically what the new gleam in Ginny’s eyes meant. Kate had kept her job, all right. Now, her jealous and paranoid manager was going to go out of her way to make Kate’s life a living nightmare.
Wonderful. Just fan-fucking-tastic.