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It wasn’t a joke, it was a sabotage attempt mixed up with Garrett’s professional suicide.
“Did you take it as a joke, Rachel?” Tony asked.
Industry old-timers like Tony were known to suffer the odd lapse in judgment themselves; Rachel figured he was following up more because he had responsibilities under the New York City Human Rights Law than out of genuine disapproval.
She opened her mouth to say, Of course, no problem. Because she was a team player, and this wasn’t about her, and anyway, she knew Garrett was playing some game of his own.
But what game was that, exactly? She needed him to quit.
Inspiration struck, inspiration she could only credit to the presence of the man who’d accused her of being unable to seize the moment.
“Actually, Tony, I was uncomfortable,” she said. She stifled a twinge of guilt at the lie. Garrett was the guy who’d told Piers she was trading sex for no breakup, who’d lied about his mother’s death for competitive advantage. If he needed a push to leave, she was happy to help. Who said she couldn’t think on her feet! Feet that happened to be attached to “damn good” legs.
“What the hell?” Garrett’s outraged expression showed in the mirror.
Even Tony looked taken aback. It wasn’t as if she was a powerless junior; he knew she relished fighting her own battles.
“I’m not saying I feel sexually harassed,” Rachel assured her boss. “Not exactly.”
“Good, good,” Tony sputtered. “Not that I’m trying to discourage you from making a complaint if that’s what you want,” he added, in a confused but valiant attempt at political correctness.
“For Pete’s sake!” Garrett wrenched the steering wheel to the right as he twisted to glare at Rachel. Clive murmured a protest. Garrett cursed and returned his focus to the road.
“Oh, no, definitely not,” Rachel assured her boss. “I think it’s just that Garrett has trouble relating to women. Part of his team skills problem.”
“I don’t have trouble with women,” Garrett said ominously.
“Just last week Natasha was in the washroom in tears after Garrett told her off.” Rachel didn’t mention Natasha had stuck her mascara wand in her eye at the same time as she mentioned her run-in with Garrett. She was pleasantly surprised how easy it was to be devious when you had the right inspiration.
Garrett said, “Natasha left the office to check on her boyfriend’s broken foot—”
“Torn Achilles tendon,” Rachel interrupted.
“—and completely forgot about the Sheraton pitch,” Garrett growled.
“On Friday, after our breakfast, Garrett touched Julie on the shoulder,” she reported to Tony. “I could see she was confused about what it meant.”
“You’re evil,” Garrett said conversationally.
Rachel picked up on the underlying anger and felt almost sorry for him. But she’d done that once before, in the elevator, and look how he’d played her. And the catch-phrase of his … Do it on your terms … No way would he consent to what she was about to suggest. He’d be out the door, voluntarily, before she could say chicken.
She smiled beatifically at Tony. “So I’m offering to educate Garrett.”
“You what?” Garrett snarled.
“I’m willing to make time to get involved with Garrett’s team,” she said. “To monitor his interactions, particularly with female staff, and advise him how to handle situations better.”
“She’s kidding,” Garrett said.
Rachel rather liked that edge of desperation. She knew Garrett would hasten his inevitable departure, rather than have her overseeing him. She’d observed his natural abhorrence for authority. Quit, Garrett, quit.
“You’ll recall I scored a clean-sweep perfect ten in my team’s appraisals of my management skills,” she reminded Tony.
“So you did,” he said. “First time anyone’s done that. You’re a good girl, Rachel. Uh, I mean, a smart woman. But do you have time to help Garrett?”
“Tony!” Garrett near shouted.
“I’ll make time,” she said generously. “Not for my sake, but for women everywhere.” For a moment, she worried she’d overdone it; in the front seat, Clive’s enormous shoulders shook.
But Tony appeared to be in the thrall of an image of multiple harassment suits being filed against KBC.
“Thanks, Rachel,” he said. “That’d be great. You should start right away.”
“My pleasure,” she said, and meant it.
Quit, you ill-mannered, manipulative, motherless Shark!
CHAPTER SIX
GARRETT TOOK THE STAIRS to his condo two at a time, powered by frustration and a buzz of adrenaline that caught him by surprise.
Rachel.
The woman he knew to be as predictable as yesterday’s weather had picked up on his intention to quit KBC, then gone all out to push him into action because it was what she wanted.
He hadn’t known she had it in her.
Garrett rounded the second-floor landing and kept going. Sure, it had taken Rachel until they were leaving Brightwater to click that his remarks were the screw-you salute of someone who didn’t plan to stick around. Even if they were true … particularly the one about her legs, which he’d never noticed before were sensational. But neither Tony nor Clive had worked out where he was coming from. They’d assumed Garrett was being his usual self, the guy who could never be accused of toeing the party line.
As he passed the black-painted number three on the third-floor landing, he wondered how he’d given himself away to Rachel. Quick thinking on her part, to come up with that sexual harassment stuff in an attempt to force his hand. She was a whole lot more devious than he’d given her credit for. Tony couldn’t see she was playing games, it seemed. Eight years of Goody Two-shoes had finally paid off.
Too bad her attempt to manipulate Garrett had triggered his natural resistance. Instead of resigning when they got back to the city, he’d sat in his office mulling over what he wanted to do. To his annoyance, he’d failed to reach a decision.
It was this time of year, that was all. Made it hard for him to Let it go. Tomorrow. He’d quit tomorrow.
Garrett fished his keys from his pocket as he pulled open the door to the fourth floor.
Right away, he saw the woman.
At least, he figured it was a woman, going by the ponytail of brown hair.
She sat huddled on the floor next to his door, a small backpack beside her, her head buried in her arms on jeans-clad knees. A light-colored trench coat pooled around her. There were only two condos per floor; she must be a friend of his neighbor’s, must have turned the wrong way out of the elevator.
“Miss?” he said.
No reply. He hoped she wasn’t drunk, or ill. Or if she was, he hoped his neighbor was home.
He touched her shoulder. “Excuse me, miss?”
She jolted awake with a cry of alarm and lifted her face.
Not a miss. A Mrs.
Mrs. Stephanie Calder.
“What are you doing here?” Garrett asked. Shouldn’t she be whipping up a pot roast in New London?
“Garrett—damn, I fell asleep.” She rubbed her eyes, then blinked up at him. “What time is it?”
“Why don’t you check your watch?” Yeah, it was churlish, but he’d decided years ago never to give his father’s wife anything.
She consulted the slim white-gold Piaget on her wrist. “Nine,” she muttered. “Do you always work so late?”
“Is Dad all right?” He didn’t think he’d ever seen Stephanie in jeans outside the house before. And the ponytail was positively sloppy compared with her usual elegant grooming.
“Your father’s your father,” she said, her voice clipped. “I gather your birthday celebration didn’t go too well last week?”
Celebration wasn’t the word he’d have chosen. Garrett shrugged.
She tsked. “Did your father tell you … anything?”
Crap, his dad was sick. “He mentioned something about me getting a real job.” Garrett feigned casualness.
She groaned under her breath and rubbed her eyes again. Her makeup was smudged; she looked haggard. She stuck out a hand. “Help me up?” Then, before he could refuse, she dropped her hand again. “Don’t worry, I’ll manage.”
Standing proved a strangely awkward process. She rolled onto all fours then pushed herself off the thick carpet designed to cushion the tread of noisy neighbors.
When she was finally upright, the floor seemed to shift beneath Garrett, forcing him to put a hand to the wall.
“You’ve been overdoing the pizza,” he said, eyeing Stephanie’s enormous, round belly.
“The baby’s due in June.” She planted her fists on her hips, as if defying him to disapprove. The movement thrust her belly out even farther. “I’m seven months along. We would have told you sooner, except we haven’t seen you since Christmas—” he’d spent the holiday with them only because his brother had been home on leave from his naval posting “—and we didn’t know I was pregnant then.”
“And Dad was meant to tell me about this last week.”
“Among other things.” She bent at the knees to scoop up her little backpack. “Do we have to do this in the hallway?”
“Where’s Dad?” Garrett glanced around.
Stephanie slung the pack over one shoulder. “I left him.”
Once again, Garrett’s world tipped on its axis. “You mean, left him out in the car, right?” But he hadn’t seen a Hummer parked in the street.
“I mean, left our marriage.” She plucked the key from his suddenly nerveless fingers. “Let’s go inside.”
In the condo, Garrett used the time spent disarming the burglar alarm and turning on lights to try to get his head around this bizarre new development. Nope, he couldn’t do it. “Does Lucas know about the baby?”
“Of course.” Stephanie set her pack down next to the sofa and sat. “I wrote to him a few months back.”
Garrett wondered what his brother had made of the news. He’d tried to convince Lucas that Stephanie was the enemy, back when their dad had married her, but Lucas had been twelve years old and he’d wanted a mother. He hadn’t seen the wrongness of their dad marrying again so quickly after Mom died, without consulting them, without listening to Garrett’s protests. The wrongness of Dwight expecting them to welcome Stephanie and her clumsy attempts at stepmotherhood.
“Aren’t you too old to be doing this?” He waved at her stomach without looking. “Is it IVF?” He couldn’t imagine his dad submitting to the invasive process.
“I just turned forty-five—it’s within the bounds of possibility.” She cupped her hands over her stomach protectively. “Though it was certainly unexpected. Your father and I tried for a long time to have a baby. When this happened … the symptoms … I thought I was menopausal.”
Too much information.
Garrett headed to the kitchen area. “Coffee?” he said over his shoulder.
“Do you have decaf?”
“No.”
She sighed. “Okay, but make it a weak one. You’re supposed to cut back on caffeine in pregnancy—though since it took me four months to figure out I was pregnant that didn’t quite happen.”
Away from that telltale stomach, Garrett pulled his thoughts into order. Okay, Stephanie was pregnant, a little fact that everyone except Garrett had known. Due in June. At which point he would have a half brother or sister.
“Is it a boy or a girl?” he called.
“I don’t know.” Stephanie spoke from the other side of the island, making him jump. “I want it to be a surprise—your father wanted to know but it turns out the mother’s wishes prevail in this sort of thing.”
She sounded almost amused. Probably hadn’t been too many times her wishes had prevailed since she’d married Admiral Dwight Calder. Wait a minute …
“Did you say you left my father?” How he could have lost sight of that detail?
“That’s right.” She eyed the amount of coffee he was scooping into the press with misgiving.
“Is he upset about the baby? I would have thought he’d be delighted to have another chance at a son he could mold in his own image.”
“Dwight would never expect this baby to replace you,” she said. “Or Lucas.”
Mention of his brother was an obvious afterthought, presumably to make Garrett feel less left out of his father’s affections.
“I don’t care if it does, if it takes the pressure off me.”
The kettle began to whistle. Garrett poured water into the press.
“I asked Dwight to come see you because I don’t want him making the same mistakes with this baby that he made with you,” Stephanie said.
Garrett’s head jerked up; boiling water sloshed over the side of the press and onto his thumb.
He cursed and turned on the faucet. He stuck his thumb beneath the running water. Stephanie moved into the kitchen and took over the job of putting the lid on the press. She was so big with that—that thing in her stomach, Garrett felt as if he couldn’t get away from her.
“So now you’re concerned about me and Dad?” he asked. “Shouldn’t you have thought of that, say, fifteen years ago, and not married him two minutes after my mom died?”
She ignored his dig. “Dwight’s been supportive of this baby in the obvious ways….”
“But not emotionally,” Garrett said.
