I was dumbfounded. It obviously showed on my face because Dan’s expression faltered when he actually took a second to look at me. Were they out of their minds? First of all, St. Louis already had a hometown boy with an IT recruiting firm that had branched out to eight other cities and had dominated the local market for years. He was a multimillionaire and an ass. But, my personal opinion aside, Damion Alvarez wasn’t going to just sit back and let Dan and Todd Hopper push into his territory.
But that was Dan and Todd’s business. Right? They could push into St. Louis all they wanted and proudly beat their damn heads against the freaking wall. They didn’t need me to get involved with this mess! And informing the entire company that I was moving to St. Louis? What. The. Hell? No. No. Huh uh. Wasn’t going to happen.
“Let’s hear it for Kevin Landau!” Dan shouted as he began clapping wildly for my assumed future success in their doomed attempt to expand to a city without any room for expansion. “With Kevin leading the charge we will be looking at rampant success for sure!”
I stopped wearing my public face right there. Turning my head, I pegged Dan with a glare so hot and so heavy that I actually watched the idiot stumble back a step. He hated me. It was a polite hatred, but still. It was there. And right now he was using that hatred to beat me like a stick because he could. Totally unacceptable.
Todd lifted the microphone to his lips. Maybe he just knew me a little better. I don’t know. But his expression at least told me that he realized I’d been pushed far enough for one day. “All right folks, let’s go and enjoy the incredible desserts that were brought in just to finish out this fantastic evening. And remember, we are thankful for you!”
Thankful for you? Really? That was the most idiotic way to close out an evening I’d ever heard. What was wrong with these two? It was like Todd and Dan had taken a basketful of crazy pills or something. They were moving into a market that was dominated by someone else. They expected me to just up and move without even bothering to ask me first. It was all preposterous. And it wasn’t even April Fools.
“Congratulations, Kevin,” Dan said in his best hearty tone of voice. “I’m sure you’ve got plans for this new watch. Soon enough you’ll have a shelf full of them.”
I hate that fake ass tone he uses. I really do. It grates on my nerves on the best of days. Days like today? It made me want to punch him in the face. I tossed my head. My hair is black and curly as hell. I’d let it get a little on the long side and now I was sorry because it was probably going to take away from what was about to be my very firm refusal to move two hours away to run a sinking ship.
“Cut the crap, Dan.” If I could have one superpower it would be the ability to shoot laser beams out of my big green eyes. Yeah. Laser vision would rock. “I’m not moving to St. Louis. You must be out of your damn mind. And why would you even think that it was okay to announce something like that without asking me first? Are you brain dead?”
There was a pause. Dan’s smile shrank but did not disappear. A few feet away Todd wasn’t giving me any help. He just stood there and scratched his neck as though he were going to let his brother take the lead on this one. Brain dead. That was the only thing that I could come up with. These two were totally brain dead.
“Listen, Kevin,” Dan finally began in a tone of voice so patronizing that it made my skin crawl. “You’re an asshole.”
“Excuse me?”
“You heard me. You’re an asshole. Total. Ass. Hole.” Dan let that sit for a second. Then he decided to serve up the rest of whatever had been simmering under his skin for the last half a decade or more. “Nobody likes you, Kevin. You think too much of yourself. You’re arrogant. You’re selfish. You don’t give a shit about people or the company or company morale. You’d sell any one of your coworkers down the river if you thought it would get you another hire. You sniped three new hires from other recruiters in the last month alone.”
My mouth fell open. No. It would be more accurate to say that my jaw dropped. I had never been talked to like this before in my life. I could barely process what he was telling me. Everyone hated me? Why? I was the guy who made the numbers. I was the guy who picked up the slack for every other lazy ass employee who could not make their quotas. Okay. So I wasn’t a team player. That didn’t mean I was going to move to St. Louis.
“Fine. You hate me. It’s not a secret. Never has been. So what. That doesn’t give you any right to inform me that I’m going to be moving to another city. And I’m not, by the way.” I exhaled a breath and realized that it was shaky. What the hell? It wasn’t like they had hurt my feelings or something.
Dan and Todd shared a smile. Why did it feel like there was an actual conspiracy going on behind my back? It was like I had somehow fallen into a trap that they had set for me. Why? Didn’t they realize that I had moved to Kansas City from St. Louis? I was never going back there. I had reasons for that. They were damned good reasons too. I’d rather be living in a box in some alleyway behind my building than have to move back there.
“Kevin,” Todd began slowly. “You can either move back to St. Louis and oversee this acquisition of St. Louis IT Staffing Solutions, or you can find somewhere else to work.”
“You’re kidding me.” I didn’t phrase it as a question because I wasn’t asking it. They were kidding. They had to be. “That isn’t fair.”
“Yeah,” Dan snorted. “Life’s not fair. The fair is something that comes to town once a year with clowns and rides.”
He and Todd laughed as though they had just made the most hilarious joke ever. Meanwhile I was standing there wondering if they honestly thought that they had that kind of pull. Who the hell did they think that they were?
“Dan, you don’t want me to go elsewhere,” I told him stiffly. I was feeling a bit panicky without really knowing why. Probably the whole St. Louis threat. “Do you have any idea how fast I’ll completely blow your recruiting numbers if I work for another firm here in Kansas City? I will destroy your company and you know it.”
“No, Kevin. You won’t.” Dan exhaled a sigh and gave a sad shake of his head. “See, your reputation is so bad here in the Kansas City market that I think you’d be hard pressed to find anyone who would hire you. They’re afraid the rest of their workforce would quit.”
I was not that hated. I didn’t believe it for one second. And yet… If these two trash talking monkeys had been telling their fellow CEOs all kinds of nasty stories there was no telling what might happen.
“So the two of you have been telling everyone in town that I’m an asshole.” I snorted and shook my head. “Fine. I’ll go put together your office in St. Louis. And then I’ll laugh my ass off when Damion Alvarez boots you right off that stage and sends you running back home with your tails between your legs.”
“Well then,” Dan told me snidely. “That would be your failure. Wouldn’t it?”
Damn it all to hell!
Chapter Two
Eleanor
My sister is an idiot. Okay. So that’s being a little harsh. But still. When you get an invitation to a wedding—one that you had no freaking clue was going to happen—and its steampunk themed? Honestly? How old are they? Who does that?
“Eleanor? Are you all right?”
I cleared my throat and looked up from my desk. A small hank of brown hair had come loose from my no nonsense bun. It was really pissing me off. I tucked the hair back behind my ear and offered Ruth what I hoped was a very put together and super pleasant smile. She was leaning into my office as though her ability to scent gossip at a hundred yards had been tweaked by the wedding invitation I held in my hand. Can I just say here that it also pissed me off that my sister had sent the invitation to my office address instead of my house? Gee. Was she per chance making a statement about the fact that she constantly nagged me about how much I worked?
“Oh, Eleanor, you look so upset!” Ruth came all the way into my office. Then she pursed her lips and bobbed her head up and down. “Is this about the merge
r?”
I blinked. The invitation dropped from my fingers to my desktop because I had forgotten it. “Excuse me? What merger?”
Ruth put her hand over her mouth and gave me this round O look of surprise. It was such bullshit too. The woman was the gossip queen of St. Louis IT Staffing Solutions. She was an administrative assistant in the CEO’s office suite. If Lawrence Moss had a phone conversation or a letter or a memo or some other kind of correspondence, you could be absolutely certain that Ruth Powers knew exactly what it contained.
“Oh my goodness! I had no notion that Lawrence—I mean Mr. Moss—hadn’t told you yet! Since you’re head of the recruiting department after all…” The corner of Ruth’s mouth twisted into a smile.
Ruth was wearing a very vintage-looking blue and white dress today. She was a big woman but she always dressed in the height of haute couture from the fifties. The cross over dress accentuated her large breasts and the full skirt made her plump legs look slimmer. It was pretty flattering on the whole. Of course, Ruth dyed her hair a fierce red color like Ginger from Gilligan’s Island and usually wore so much makeup that she probably could have outfitted an entire modeling crew. At the moment her eyeliner seemed to reach all the way to her temples and her fake eyelashes were batting up and down at me like fat caterpillars.
I like black, white, and beige. Those are pretty much my go-to wardrobe colors. My hair is brown. My eyes are brown. I figure that I might as well just accept the plain jane card. I don’t do cute. I don’t do girly either. I wear a bun and a business suit because I am a business woman. I also have a pretty stick thin figure. I hate women like Ruth who put their boobs out there on display. Men love that shit. I’d have to buy a whole bag of socks to even come close to that. I’m thin. Culturally that works for me if you think about it. Funny though. My sister is the athletic one with some extra padding and she’s the one who snagged the millionaire. Go figure, right?
“No, Ruth, Mr. Moss has not told me anything about a potential merger.” I fingered the stupid invitation. The strange sepia colors went together in an odd way. It was distracting. “But I think everyone in St. Louis has heard the rumor that Don Pratt has been peddling in his ridiculous Gateway Business Weekly magazine.” In fact, I was so freaking tired of this rumor that I was ready to call over to the magazine and tell them to print a retraction. “You shouldn’t believe that nonsense, Ruth.”
“It’s not nonsense.”
“Yes, it is,” I told her. There was an edge in my voice. I knew I was probably being pushy and rude, but I was tired of hearing about this crap. “I’ve spoken with Damion Alvarez over at Gateway IT Staffing. There is no way he’s going to sell his St. Louis office to Midwest IT. Damion just paid over a million dollars for a new house here in St. Louis. He’s getting married to a local real estate agent. He’s not going anywhere.”
“Damion Alvarez is getting married?” Ruth’s painted on eyebrows soared up toward her red hairline. “Since when?”
I fingered the invitation but didn’t look at it. There was no reason to pique Ruth’s interest any more than I already had. “I know the bride,” I finally told Ruth just to shut her up.
“Oh my God. Your sister!” Ruth covered her mouth with both hands in a seriously overdramatic move. Then she gave a little gasp. “Well, that’s good for you then.”
“Why is that?” I had to pinch my lips together to avoid saying anything else.
Ruth smirked. “Because Midwest IT just bought this office and they’re sending someone to oversee the acquisition. The way I figure it, a lot of you recruiter types will be out on your ear. At least you can ask your new brother-in-law for a job.”
“Why the recruiting staff?” I was scrambling. There was a bugler playing Taps in my head and I was struggling to keep my composure. “That wouldn’t be a good decision on the part of the new managers. We’re the ones who know the market. Why wouldn’t they be more inclined to bring in new support staff since the ones we currently have are substandard?”
Whoops. Had I just said that out loud? Yes. I had. Ruth’s pinched expression got that much more pinched. Then she tossed her head and wiggled her fingers at me in a sarcastic little wave goodbye. “You should really be nicer to people, Eleanor. I’m the one who sits there by Mr. Moss’s desk telling him everything that goes on in this company. I imagine the new manager will be happy to hear my insights as well. You wouldn’t want that to go badly, now would you?”
“As you say, why would I care?” I licked my lips. I was not going to just give up. First of all, I didn’t believe that Ruth was telling the truth.
“Well, I’m off to lunch with the girls,” Ruth told me airily. “I’m sure I’ll see you later!”
I bit my lip. Ruth was off to lunch with the girls, hmm? Of course that meant I could run upstairs to Lawrence Moss’s office and demand to know what the hell was going on. That could be good. Right? Except that I could not help but wonder what Lawrence Moss had done to piss off Ruth Powers. There was no doubt in my mind that she had come down here with every intention of dropping this acquisition bomb on my head and then telling me that Lawrence was all mine to go harass about it.
Not that I liked being a weapon in Ruth’s arsenal. But if the opportunity presented itself, what did I really have to lose? I needed to know what was going on. If I was going to have to beg my brother-in-law for a job, I needed to know that sooner rather than later.
Ugh! I stood up from my desk and smoothed my hands down my beige pencil skirt. I was not going to go to work for Damion Alvarez. I didn’t care what happened. The man was nice enough. If you were my sister. But I didn’t want to take a handout from anyone, especially not Lena.
Our building is a two-story affair in a not so prestigious part of Chesterfield where there are more old buildings than new ones because this area is constantly growing. What was a trendy part of town ten years ago is now totally forgotten. So here we were in a two-story brown building that had been unfashionable since before I started working here.
I took the stairs because we don’t have an elevator. There are just stairs in each corner of the big squat square building and a big wide set in the center atrium. Mr. Moss’s office is right at the top of those steps. For some reason he feels like it’s some kind of status symbol to have the boss’s office be upstairs.
Since it’s just him and his team of paper copying, memo writing admins up there, it seems stupid to me. But what do I know? I’m just the one who finds and delivers the actual product that we sell, which is people. And most of the up-and-coming IT professionals think that it’s silly as hell to have a boss who sits in an office at the top of a flight of stairs so he can look down on them when they come in for their first round of interviews.
And he does. Literally. Mr. Moss will stand at the top of the stairs and address new hires as a group when they call come in en masse to fill out paperwork. It’s one of the least efficient ways to hire people that I can possibly imagine.
Hmm. Maybe our company will be better off belonging to someone else.
I knocked on Mr. Moss’s door. I could see the he was in there. His whole front wall is made out of glass. The blinds were open. The desk that Ruth normally occupies in the outer office was empty of course. And there was Lawrence Moss staring pensively out the back windows of the building as though he were lost in thought.
I knocked again. The guy didn’t even move. Was he in there having a heart attack or something? The guy was in his sixties. He had been in this business back when IT had involved computers the size of a room.
“Mr. Moss?” I opened the door just a crack and stuck my head inside his office. “Mr. Moss, it’s Eleanor. Can I come in for a minute?”
I needed to keep a lid on my attitude. One of the things about working for an old school kind of male boss is that they get pretty tetchy about the pushiness of their female employees. There was a reason that Mr. Moss adored Ruth with her fifties-style clothing, big hipped, red headed, big breasted looks, and that suck up
attitude. Lawrence Moss was a die-hard chauvinist.
“Oh Eleanor. I’m sorry. I didn’t hear you out there. Is Ruthie at lunch?”
“Yes, sir. She stopped by my office before she left.” I pushed the door the rest of the way open and stepped into the doorway. “She shared with me that you’ve decided to sell this office to Midwest IT.”
“Oh she did, did she?” He didn’t seem to care one way or another. “Can’t imagine why she would think you’d be interested in that nonsense.”
He couldn’t… I didn’t allow myself to react to that. I was just a lowly woman recruiter who should be happy to have a job and my life wouldn’t change a bit. Just the name on the building, right? Like I should just let the big boys make all the decisions and smile and nod when I had to.
“Did you just decide to retire, sir?” I tried to keep the conversation focused on him and not the fact that he was dumping all of us on our asses. “I had no idea you were ready to step down.”
Mr. Moss made a face. “Since my son decided to become a hairdresser and has no interest in this business, I figured I should just sell and retire to Florida.”
“Oh. I see.” So the guy was just walking away. All right. Did he have no idea how these acquisitions usually worked?
“Well, I hope that you and your wife will be very happy,” I told Mr. Moss. Yeah. I hoped they’d both get sand in their pants and a sunburn down there. It was mean, but then this jerk was ditching his employees and just tossing their fates to the wind. I cleared my throat. “Did Midwest IT happen to mention what they intended to do with the employees here at the company when they move in?”
“Oh, I imagine they’ll keep it just like it is.” Mr. Moss sounded as though he could barely spare a thought for that process. He was actually looking at his smart phone. “Infernal thing. I was going to tell you the name of the guy coming in. Since you’re the manager, it might help for you to at least have a word with everyone else here.”
Tangled: Contemporary Romance Trilogy Page 25
