Chapter 19
Chapter
Nineteen
Thomas was still brooding in his office when Kate showed up.
Yagi had given him the… whatever the hell it was, magic scroll or paper or whatever.
It was tucked into an interoffice envelope which was currently sitting on his desk.
The thing made him feel nervous, like he was sitting with dynamite sweating nitro.
If I touch that thing, it’ll kill me.
What made it worse? If he died, he knew where he was headed, and had a small foretaste of just how painful that was going to be.
I could be sentencing Kate to that.
He closed his eyes. He was up against the wall. He only had a year to do what he needed to do. If she had signed her soul to somebody else, and was working here under false pretenses, odds were good that she deserved exactly what she was getting.
Just like you, huh?
His eyes popped open when he heard a knock on his door. “Come in,” he rasped, then cleared his throat.
Kate walked in, looking frazzled. Her wavy dark hair had mostly escaped from the pony tail, and her smudged glasses were slightly askew on her face.
Her khaki skirt was dusted with dirt and her sweater looked like it had a coffee spill on it.
Her eyes, those brilliant emerald eyes of hers, looked exhausted.
“Found five today,” she said, nodding. “Things slowed down a little after lunch.”
“Sugar coma?” he teased. “Did they need naps?”
He didn’t know why he found it fascinating, the way her full lips pulled into a stern line of disapproval.
She looked like a teacher with a need to discipline.
She also went straight around his desk, not sitting across from it, and got into his face.
His body tightened as she got closer, even as he grinned at her gumption.
“They needed a break. A lot of them have been working on no sleep.”
Guilt sliced at him. “Sorry. Bad joke. It’s been a rough haul, but trust me when I say the work they’re doing—you’re doing—is vitally important. Besides, the conditions might be rough, but they’re temporary.”
“You don’t want me to work overnight, do you?” she asked, her expression aghast.
The vision of her, reporting to him alone in his office late at night, suddenly rocked him. She’d have a pencil holding up those curls in a loose bun, and she’d take off her glasses and maybe shake her hair down, and it would sort of cascade in slow motion…
Annnnnd I’ll stop myself right there. He shook his head, trying to clear out the image. She’s an employee. And this isn’t porn, for Christ’s sake.
She was looking at him like he was some kind of slave driver, and he realized he hadn’t answered. “I’ve had people pull all-nighters, and yes, the guys stay here,” he said, leaning his weight against his desk. “But no, you don’t need to work overnight.”
Kate bit her lip, and he found himself staring at the innocent little gesture. “Why do they stay here?” she finally asked, her voice hesitant.
“They’re a long way from home,” Thomas said. “The other reasons are, well, not illegal—but not something I want to discuss.”
She nodded but didn’t look convinced. She probably thought he was the biggest bastard on the planet.
Ordinarily, that wouldn’t bother him. He was used to a lot worse judgment from a lot harsher people, and outside opinion tended to give him a raging case of the fuck-its.
But he didn’t like seeing the disappointment in those pretty eyes of hers.
“I didn’t want them to be treated that way initially,” he heard himself say.
“Oh?” She sounded unconvinced. She crossed her arms, refusing to sit down. “But somehow, you just let it happen?”
He frowned. “They hurt some temps, actually.”
Kate’s eyes popped wide.
“I need them, because they know the language and because I signed a contract with them,” Thomas said, keeping as close to the truth as he could. “But they crossed the line. They want to act like animals, they get treated like animals.”
She stared at him, then her skin went pale. He cursed himself. Why was he telling her all this? He’d brought her here to test her, not get on her good side. Or, at this point, scare her.
“I just can’t believe it. Some of them are really sweet…” Her sentence trailed off as her eyes clouded, her throat working as she swallowed hard.
She must’ve been remembering something. He felt his anger rise. “But a few of them aren’t, right?”
She nodded. “I’ve had a bad run-in, yeah, and some of them are a little macho. But Slim’s kept them in line.”
“I’ve made it clear what happens to them if another woman gets hurt on my watch.”
She quirked up an eyebrow. “Only women, huh?”
Thomas frowned. “Well, anybody,” he amended. “And Al… well. I’m not even going to get into my working relationship with Al. All this isn’t why I asked you up here, anyway.”
She finally sat down. “Why did you ask me up here? You said you had something to discuss?
He’d thought carefully about how he was going to pull this off. He didn’t want her to get suspicious. Saying Hey, could you touch this piece of paper? and then sending her off if she didn’t drop dead in the middle of his office would probably seem a little questionable.
“I wanted to ask you about continuing work when this contract piece is done,” he said instead, leaning back in his chair.
“No.” The word was out of her mouth before he finished his sentence. He quirked an eyebrow at her interruption. “Sorry. I don’t think I’m cut out for working for a big corporation, like I said.”
“That’s such a cop out.”
Now her eyebrows jumped to her hairline. “Excuse me?”
“Come on. You can handle everything I’ve dished out at you and then some,” he said, forgetting momentarily that this was a ruse. “You’re one of the most competent women I’ve ever met. I think you could not only handle this job, you could knock it out of the park.”
Her hard expression softened. “Really? You think so?”
“I really do.” He sighed. “I think you could be amazing.”
She smiled, and it was like sunlight through honeycomb, warm and bright and sweet. He straightened in his chair, grinning back at her.
“What would you want me to do?”
“Huh?” He blinked. “Oh. Right. The job. It’d be, uh…”
She stared at him expectantly, but also a bit amused at his lack of focus.
Snap out of it. Get in the game.
“Executive assistant,” he finally said.
“Oh. To whom?”
“To me.”
She stared at him for a second, in shock.
Then she burst out laughing.
He struggled not to feel insulted. “Problem?”
“No, no. It’s just… I don’t know. I think that you’d need someone more…” She gestured at herself, from shoulders to toes. “Together.”
“It’s not the package, it’s the performance,” he said, feeling a little smug and even more relieved. “Although you’re right, there would be certain, ah, image elements that would need to be maintained.”
“Image elements?” Now she sounded irritated. “Like what?”
“Wardrobe, for starters,” he said, and saw her face get into that stubborn expression that he perversely enjoyed.
It was the enjoyment that reminded him—stick to business.
The job offer was the cover. The real issue was tucked in an envelope on his desk.
“Well, I just wanted to introduce the concept to you, have you mull it over.”
What the hell was it about this woman?
She was cute, no question. Still, he was around attractive women fairly frequently.
He owned a fashion line, a movie studio, had ties to expensive and lavish resorts, hobnobbed with celebutantes.
So why did he keep letting himself get sidetracked by a short, surly, oddball of a temp?
Even his attraction to her didn’t explain his reticence.
Why couldn’t he just hand her a damned envelope?
The answer hit him like a thunderclap.
He could be going from flirty banter one second to a dead temp on his floor in the next.
I’m distracting myself because I don’t want to kill her.
Yagi would call it a weakness. If Kate was a spy, or signed… he had to be ready to kill her. There was no other way.
“Okay,” Kate said, starting to get up, ready to walk away.
He swallowed hard. Then, he took a deep breath.
“There’s a job description in the envelope over there,” he heard himself say, like a disembodied voice he barely recognized as his own. “On the corner of the desk.”
She picked up the interoffice envelope. “This?”
“That’s the one,” he drawled. Then he watched, unable to look away.
She opened the envelope, pulling out the red sleeve. She frowned. “This?” she repeated.
He frowned. Did she need to hold the scroll itself?
“Huh.” He swallowed again, then forced out the words. “What’s in it?”
Her fingers touched the ivory parchment.
He gritted his teeth.
She flipped the page over. “It looks like something from Lunar New Year, maybe,” she said, her expression baffled. “Or maybe a Shinto or Tibetan Buddhist temple, actually. Is that Japanese?”
He felt like all the breath exploded out of him, and he forced himself to sound calm. “Weird. Must be something of Yagi’s.” It was supposed to sound casual, but it sounded strangled to his own ears.
She held it out to him.
“No!” he barked, then winced at her shocked expression.
“I mean, just put it back in the envelope. That job description should be around here somewhere.” He made a big show of going through the mess of folders on his credenza — which, unfortunately, was not just there just for show — until she got the deadly scroll thing back in the envelope.
Then he sighed. “Sorry, I can’t find it.
I guess you can see why I need an executive assistant. ”
“Yeah, no kidding,” she agreed, instead of politely demurring. Which didn’t surprise him, now that he thought about it. “How does a guy like you, super billionaire guy, manage without an assistant? Travel, meetings, stuff like that?”