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He looked at his wristwatch—an expensive Swiss one, Skye couldn’t help noting. “A break at four-thirty in the afternoon? Aren’t you about to leave work?”
So she was busted. “I finished all my Dynalux work, okay? Now don’t you have a car to go wreck or something?”
He gave her a look. “I wonder how your boss would feel about your slacking, or the fact that he has a probable criminal working for him.”
Her manager, Nelson Rudderman, whose favorite words were maximize and strategize, would have a cow if he found out she was doing something besides maximizing her time and strategizing how she’d contribute to the future success of Dynalux on company time.
“I’m not a probable criminal,” she snapped.
“I don’t know that. I think either you tell me where Martin disappeared to, or I’ll have to tell your boss about your dirty little secrets.”
“I don’t have any dirty little secrets, and I have no freaking idea where Martin went.”
“You’re lying.”
Nico might have been hot, but he was a world-class jerk.
“I can call security. You’re not even supposed to be in here.”
“Go ahead. I’ll make sure I talk to your boss on the way out the door.”
“What makes you think I’m Martin’s accomplice?”
“He talked about you constantly. ‘Skye’s so hot. Skye’s so smart. Skye’s gonna write the next big craze in kids’ books.’ Why would any of that drooling adoration have been an act?”
“Because he wanted you to think he was a nice guy?”
“He could have accomplished that without being so damn annoying. I don’t think he would have taken off without a plan to hook up with you again in a few months when the police have forgotten about the two of you.”
“Why wouldn’t I have just disappeared with him?”
“He’s trying to protect you by making it look like you weren’t involved.”
Skye looked at the bra on her desk. Clearly not hers and apparently not one Nico recognized as a garment he’d removed from any recent dates.
It was just her luck that when she found a guy who was crazy about her, he was also crazy enough to clean out her savings account—not to mention that he was a crazed sex hound who would hump anything in a skirt.
“You’re wrong. He was so crazy about me he just couldn’t resist taking some other woman’s bra off.”
“Look, I never said he wasn’t a scumbag. But he didn’t talk about other women. He talked about you. Constantly. Until I wanted to puke.”
Skye blinked away an unwelcome dampness in her eyes. She’d been crazy about Martin, too. Crazy stupid. It was the story of her love life: Skye meets a guy she thinks is great, Skye dates said guy, then said guy takes off with all her money or, at the very least, her dignity.
She’d learned her lesson this time though. Now she knew for absolute sure that all her instincts about men were dead wrong. And she’d vowed that from now on, whenever her instincts told her a guy was right for her, she’d better run in the opposite direction.
For the rest of her post-Martin life, she would live by the rule of opposites. Whatever her instincts told her to do about a guy, she had to do the opposite.
“I don’t know what to tell you.”
“You’re not getting off that easy. Don’t you think your employer ought to know what kind of person is working here? Either you cooperate with me, or—”
Skye’s temper flared. She hated being backed into a corner, but the truth was, she needed her job, and recent cutbacks at Dynalux surely meant she was being looked at. Sooner or later, the powers that be were going to figure out she wasn’t exactly essential to the company. “Or what? You’ll get me fired?”
He leveled a gaze at her that was neither friendly nor hostile. “I don’t have any control over what your employer decides to do with the information I have.”
“What did Martin steal from you?”
“About twenty grand and my favorite motorcycle.”
“Isn’t that like a drop in the bucket for a racecar driver with a house in Malibu?”
“Former racecar driver. And twenty grand is twenty grand.”
No point in arguing that. She could, after all, understand his frustration.
He continued. “It wasn’t what he stole so much as how he stole it. He acted like we were friends, and he lied to me.”
“Tell me about it.” He’d lied his way into her bed and into her heart. “So what? You’re going to hunt him down and demand an apology?”
“I’m going to hunt him down and get my money back, then turn him over to the cops, since they don’t seem all that interested in the case.”
“He’s probably left the state.”
Skye dropped her handful of papers back on her desk, giving up the ruse of having work to do elsewhere.
“You want to know the truth? I think I know where he is. But you do, too, don’t you?”
“Right, because I’m his accomplice. I’ve been looking all my life to hook up with a guy who has five wives in three different states.”
Nico shrugged. “I just need some more information to be sure I’m looking for him in the right place.”
Dottie Kuzoski got up from her desk three cubicles away and came toward them, her permed ash-blond hair taking on a weird green tinge under the fluorescent light. She slowed her pace as she passed, staring in unabashed lust at Nico. Just when Skye thought she’d leave, she stopped in her tracks and turned around.
“Skye, is this our new rep from the southwest region?”
“No,” Skye said and shot Dottie a look.
“Oh. Well. You know, we’re not supposed to have personal visitors on company time.” She gave Skye a snotty smirk, then smiled at Nico in what must have been her attempt to look seductive. He continued to stare at Skye. “But I won’t tell Mr. Rudderman if you don’t.”
“Thanks, Dottie. I’ll be sure to put you in my will.”
Skye and Dottie were natural enemies, mainly because Dottie didn’t like anyone who got higher sales numbers than her on a regular basis. Not that Skye had ever tried—it was simply a fluke that, without much effort, her mediocre sales numbers consistently topped Dottie’s.
Dottie flashed Nico another smile and scurried off, her brown skirt bunching over her ass in an entirely unappealing way.
“Rudderman—that’s your boss?”
Skye sighed. “I believe his official title is Big Kahuna.”
“I’ll give you one last chance to tell me what you know.”
He expected her to grovel, to do whatever he demanded? He was messing with the wrong office drone. Dottie had wiped away the last shred of Skye’s good humor.
“You can’t march in here and accuse me of being an accomplice to a crime and expect me to do whatever you want.”
“Maybe I’ll just go have a talk with that Rudderman guy then.”
He stood and left the cubicle, heading straight for the office Nelly—as she referred to Rudderman when he was out of earshot—occupied near the entrance of the office suite.
“Go right ahead,” she blurted to Nico’s back, sounding as ridiculous as she felt.
Across the aisle, John was pretending to work, but for a talented wannabe actor, he wasn’t doing such a good job of faking it. He had on his headset but hadn’t said a word to a customer since he’d returned to his desk. He glanced over at her, and she turned away, ashamed of the misery he might see in her eyes.
Alone in her cubicle, she noticed the red lace bra lying on her desk, mocking her in all its full-figured splendor. She was a 34B on a bloated day, and normally she couldn’t have cared less, but at that moment, the bra made her feel somehow inadequate.
She flopped into her chair and saved her manuscript to a disk that was already in the floppy drive, then removed the disk and put it in her bag. She deleted the document from her hard drive, thus eliminating the evidence of her misuse of company time.
So much for her characters finding happily ever after today, or even next month, for that matter. At the rate she was going, she’d end up having to go back to the waitressing work she’d done in college and never again have enough energy to write anything more creative than her yearly holiday see-my-life-doesn’t-suck-that-badly newsletter.
Who had come up with the idea of happily ever after, anyway? Probably some giddy lovesick girl back in the Middle Ages when people lived to the ripe old age of thirty-five, and “ever after” wasn’t such an ambitious concept. These days, happily never after was far more realistic.
2
“MS. ELLISON, I’d like to see you in my office.”
Skye recognized that tone. It meant Nelly was drunk on his own power, ready to maximize his opportunity to be a dictator and strategize how he’d make her life miserable. She looked up at him hovering at the entrance of her cubicle and wondered if he practiced making her miserable at home in the mirror in his spare time.
But instead of spouting any of the snarky responses she’d practiced herself in the mirror a time or two, she said, “Um, okay,” as her stomach clenched into a cowardly little ball.
She followed him through the maze of cubicles, ignoring the curious stares of everyone they passed. Instead, she focused on Nelly’s backside—his saggy posture and the hint of a bald spot on his crown, his wrinkle-free-fabric shirt and the oddly empty seat of his pants.
Had the man been born without butt cheeks? Was that an actual medical condition?
By the time they reached his office, she’d come up with at least five crippling insults to spew at him if he decided to fire her, but she knew she’d never use a single one. Much as she might dislike Nelly, she had a feeling he probably disliked himself even more.
He closed the door and cleared his throat. “Please have a seat.”
He walked over to his desk and sat, playing the reigning king of no asses.
“I’ve been given some unsettling information about you.”
“That wasn’t my bra,” Skye blurted. There were more intelligent things she could have said.
“I’m not talking about a bra, Ms. Ellison.” His neck turned hot pink, and Skye wondered if he had a girlfriend, or if having no butt cheeks made romance impossible. “I’m talking about recurrent acts of job delinquency that have been reported to me by a trustworthy source.”
“What did that man say to you?” Skye asked, unable to stand the pregnant silence any longer.
“What man? Oh, your visitor on company time? He simply asked where the restroom was—odd, since he could have just asked the receptionist that.”
What the hell? Nico hadn’t reported her? Or was Nelly lying to her now?
An image of Dottie scurrying around the office appeared in Skye’s head, and suddenly she knew for sure who the “trustworthy source” was.
“Have you been monitoring my computer on the LAN again?”
“No, Ms. Ellison. I didn’t think I needed to. I thought you understood that company time is reserved strictly for work benefiting Dynalux Systems.”
“I do.”
“That does not include writing children’s stories on my clock.”
“I was doing it on break time…sir,” she forced herself to add, hoping to gain a few respectful girl brownie points.
Except, if he was lying about having monitored her computer activity, he’d know she’d spent a lot more than her break time writing.
“I’m afraid I have evidence that proves otherwise.” Nelly assumed his grave, all-important look.
“Do you know how slow business has been lately?”
Skye’s job consisted of, among other pointless and mind-numbing tasks, answering incoming sales calls. People called for information about Dynalux’s networking equipment, and Skye’s job was to answer their questions and try subtly but swiftly to urge them toward purchasing as much as possible. Sometimes they just asked for brochures or information via e-mail, and sometimes they already knew what they wanted, and she simply had to key in the order.
The job was slightly too complicated for a monkey, but not quite stimulating enough for the average human being to enjoy.
But the powers that be at Dynalux—including Nelly—liked to convolute the process by sending their employees to sales seminars and then urging them to employ the latest covertly pushy techniques to increase revenue.
Skye was so not into it. But it wasn’t as if she didn’t try. If someone was clearly in need of a router, she’d make sure they got the right one. If, however, they were a clueless grandma from rural Appalachia, who somehow had gotten the mistaken notion that they needed a Dynalux box to connect to their AOL account, she was not going to talk them into buying anything.
She had a conscience, which possibly disqualified her from ever becoming a wildly successful salesperson.
“I’m fully aware that we’re not dealing with a seller’s market at this time. But when your incoming calls are slow, there are a number of proactive measures you could be taking.”
Right. Follow-up calls. The bane of her slacker salesgirl existence.
“I’m sorry, I’m not doing follow-up calls. If someone needs networking equipment, they’ll call us.”
Nelly’s blood pressure was rising. She could see it in his disturbingly rosy cheeks. “Are you refusing to perform your job?”
“No, I’m just not willing to hassle people in their homes.”
“Let me remind you of your job description, Ms. Ellison.”
“That’s not necessary…sir.” Okay, so being respectful wasn’t one of her strong points.
In her fantasies, this would be where she’d quit. She’d stand up and fling off her headset, which was now dangling around her neck like a high-tech albatross. She’d tell Nelson Rudderman exactly what he could maximize and strategize, and she’d walk out the door. But in her fantasies, she’d be earning enough money from writing to pay the rent and wouldn’t be suffering this shit job.
And that’s why they were called fantasies. She couldn’t afford to lose her job right now. She needed to suck it up and appease old Nelly.
“I’m disappointed in your recent performance, Ms. Ellison. You’ve dropped from being one of our mid-performing sales consultants to hovering in the lowest quarter.”
