Heart to Heart

by Meline Nadeau

  Edie snarled. “Now you listen here, you b — ”

  “If Mr. Kirk were here — ”

  “Mr. Kirk,” a deep voice rang with power, “is here. And I want to know what, precisely, is going on.”

  • • •

  To: ED@mythicmail.com

  From: ThePrez@serenityrangers.com

  Subject: Re: Internet Jokes

  Dear ED,

  Well, you’ve done it again. Just when another date fizzles and I’m laid low, when the fifth power play of the week pummels me black and blue, when and I’m at my wits’ end and think I’ll never smile again, your email pops into my inbox and I’m laughing. How did I ever get along without you?

  I know we agreed at the start of our relationship that we’d stay anonymous-cyber-friends-with-benefits. But it’s been a year since we met on that Colorado social site. I’d like to know you better. You shouldn’t give out personal information over the Internet, so if I send you my phone number, will you call?

  No, on second thought, never mind. I don’t want to ruin our friendship.

  I bought a DVD the other day. “3.14159 out of 5 stars!” was written on the box. I think it was pirated! (Pi - rated :D )

  — Prez

  Filling the opening of Edie’s cubicle was a blood-red silk tie, snow-white shirt, and perfectly cut pinstriped suit — elegant packaging for the raw breadth of an exceedingly masculine chest.

  Edward Everett Kirk.

  Charleton Heston would have been jealous of Kirk’s high forehead, straight nose, strong mouth and square jaw. The gleaming wingtips and foil-thin gold watch were just added insult. Mr. Ultra-Executive.

  Except for a neat chestnut ponytail and square workman’s hands.

  Edie found those elements a startling … intriguing … annoying contradiction. She shivered, stifled it. Something about Kirk pushed all her buttons.

  “Mr. Kirk!” Bethany smoothed her skirt. “I’m so glad you’re here. Edie is totally out of control — ”

  “One moment. Edie.” Kirk stepped into the cube and suddenly Edie couldn’t breathe. His gaze bored into her like a silver-blue drill. “The whole department is rumbling over an out-of-tune rendition of Hundred Bottles and a cat fight. And whom do I find at the center of it? Edie Rowan.”

  Edie chewed her lip. “I know it looks bad, Kirk. But — ”

  “Mr. Kirk.” Bethany sliced an evil little look at Edie. “Let me remind you, company policy requires that HHE officers be called by their courtesy titles, to show our respect.”

  “Respect isn’t ordered.” Edie gritted her teeth. “It’s earned.”

  “Mr. Kirk, it’s high time you do something about her.” Bethany jabbed a finger at Edie. “Not only was she at the center of this disturbance, she proposed this whole absurd contest.”

  “Contest?” Kirk’s flashing eyes, in another man, might have been amused. “Edie. What contest would that be?”

  Edie opened her mouth.

  “She bet lunch,” Bethany jumped in. “On the company credit card, if you can believe it. Lunch for any of her hooligans who — ”

  Kirk raised his hand. That was all it took to chop Bethany off mid-tirade. “Excuse me, Bethany. I asked Edie.” His nod gave Edie the floor.

  She was impressed despite herself. Which teed her off. It wasn’t impressive, it was the Great Man allowing the Poor Servant to speak. Her chin kicked up. “My team needed a stress valve. We’ve been putting in twelve-hour days, and — ”

  “A project manager,” Bethany chirped, “should make the project manageable.”

  “What are you, the Sphinx?” Edie said.

  “Can’t stand the truth? Bad manager, bad manager … ”

  Edie came around her desk so fast her curls snapped. Her head barely cleared Bethany’s shoulders, but her blazing temper towered. “Can. It.”

  “I certainly won’t — ”

  “You will — ”

  “Conference room. Now.” Kirk effortlessly sliced through their tirade. He strode away without a backward glance.

  Edie exchanged a murderous look with Bethany. But they both trailed Kirk to the conference room.

  As soon as Edie shut the door, Kirk whirled and snapped, “You two bicker like small children. You’re managers. Act like it.”

  Edie jerked straight as if she’d been slapped. “Yes, sir. My apologies, sir.”

  “No sarcasm, please.” His narrowed eyes could have sliced steel. “You’re pushing the line already.”

  Bethany said, “If you ask me, she’s not only pushing the line, she crossed it and rubbed it out after her.”

  “Nobody asked you,” Edie and Kirk said at the same time. Edie gave him a surprised look.

  He simply nodded. “You were explaining the music. Please continue.”

  Edie took a calming breath. She wasn’t trying to get fired but tact wasn’t her strong suit. Honesty was. “My team is working really hard with an impossible deadline. They were burning out. So I made up a little contest to re-energize them. I challenged them to write a music program before I did.”

  Bethany broke in with undisguised glee. “She should spend less time playing at programming and more time working at managing.”

  Kirk cut her out of the conversation simply by turning his shoulders on her.

  Edie was grudgingly impressed. Not by the breadth of those shoulders. By Bethany actually shutting up. Although those shoulders, besides blocking Bethany’s scowl, obliterated half the conference room. No. Not gaping at his shoulders, or his strong lithe body, or his clean, rugged jaw. Definitely not falling under the spell of the gleaming intelligence in his eyes … She slammed hers shut.

  Only to drag in the scent of male heat and power instead.

  She tried to stop breathing. Choked. Her eyes snapped open.

  He was watching her, irises so bright they were almost silver. Steel blue, emphasis on steel — Kirk used his eyes the way other men used swords. That gaze made her want to cower, to run for cover … bed covers, rolling under them in the dark, hot and sweaty … She covered her face with both hands.

  “Tell me the rest.” His voice was a buzz of pleasure along her skin.

  “There’s not much more to tell, Kirk … I mean Mr. Kirk.” She uncovered. “I needed a diversion for the team. It was perfectly innocent. If Jack’s music had played after hours, no one would have cared.”

  “But it isn’t after hours, is it?” Though Kirk’s tone was gentle, his eyes, sharp and demanding, held her to a higher standard. “Other people work here, Edie. There are other people to consider, besides your team.”

  “It was just a song or two.” Edie’s cheeks heated. “No big deal.”

  “The whole department was ruffled and distracted. I felt it just walking through. Didn’t you sense it, right in the middle as you were?”

  “Um … eye of the storm?”

  “Bethany was kind enough to inform you of the disturbance in person. Didn’t you listen to her, even a little?”

  “She was gloating, not informing!”

  “Edie.” He shook his head, sadly. “You haven’t learned a thing about cooperation and compromise in the workplace, have you?”

  Edie’s blood drained. That killing tone of voice … this was it. She was going to get fired. Again. “Look, I’m sorry. I’m doing the best I can for my team. Sometimes that means I lose sight of the big company picture.”

  Kirk frowned, his silvery eyes mirrored surfaces, unreadable.

  A lifetime’s silence passed. Edie chewed her lip. She wanted to scream.

  Through it all, muffled by the conference room’s walls, Jack’s computer cheerfully took down bottles of beer and passed them around.

  Her lip was in tatters when Kirk’s frown finally eased. “Very well. Yo
u have a choice.”

  Okay. Not fired yet. Though, from the wicked curl to his lips, she wouldn’t like his “choice.”

  “There’s a management seminar in LA on Monday. Either attend it, or … ” His steely eyes finished the sentence for her. Attend the seminar or get in the unemployment line.

  “What kind of choice is that?” Bethany’s pinched face peeped around Kirk’s massive shoulders. “A week of half-days at a gorgeous ocean resort? It’s a fantasy vacation, not a choice.”

  “What’s the catch?” Edie said.

  “No catch,” Kirk said.

  “Right.” Edie grimaced. “Since it sounds like I take it or leave — I’ll take it.”

  “Excellent.” He smiled.

  His smile caught Edie off-guard. Sparkling white teeth and gently crinkled eyes zapped her for ten points of damage before she could even think of getting her shields up.

  His smile widened.

  Fry her motherboard. He even had a killer dimple in his left cheek.

  Belatedly her shields raised. The teeth were probably capped. The dimple was … unfair.

  “That’s settled,” Kirk said. “I’ll pick you up at six forty-five tomorrow morning.”

  She blinked. “What?”

  “Your seminar is on the way to my conference. I’m driving anyway so I’ll drop you off. No sense wasting the company’s money.”

  “You’re driving from Colorado to California?” No catch? A two-day drive through the mountains alone with Edward Everett Kirk? Sealed in with those shoulders, that chest, that smile? Huge catch. “I can drive myself.”

  “You could.” He stepped closer, so close she heard his tie rustle against his shirt, felt his heat. So close she could shut her eyes and lean forward and raise her face … she snapped straight. “But why should you, when I’m already driving?” His voice deepened. “Let me do this for you, Edie.”

  “Is that … ” Her voice was breathy. She swallowed, tried again. “Is that an order?”

  “An order.” He sighed. “If I must. Now go home and pack.”

  “Now? But it’s only Friday and my team — ”

  “Will be perfectly fine for a few hours.”

  “But what about Project Pleiades? The deadline — ”

  “Mr. Kirk!” Bethany wedged a sharp elbow between Edie and Kirk. “While Edie’s gone, why don’t I take care of her team?” She shoved.

  Kirk was a mountain and didn’t move, but Edie got drilled in the diaphragm. She managed to gasp, “Over my dead — ”

  “No need, Bethany,” Kirk cut in smoothly. “I think they’d be best off without both of you for a while.”

  He smiled, unleashing the dimple. And while Edie stood stunned, he sauntered out.

  Chapter Two

  To: ThePrez@serenityrangers.com

  From: ED@mythicmail.com

  Subject: Re: Re: Internet Jokes

  Dear Prez,

  My grandma warned me against giving out my phone number on the web, so you shouldn’t send me yours either. Unless you’re a pervert? Then I guess it’d be all right :)

  A year already since we met? Have you ever felt from the first moment you met someone that you’ve always known them? I feel like I’ve known you my whole life. Silly, when I don’t even know your real name.

  Two hydrogen atoms walk into a bar. One frowns and looks around. The other asks, “What’s wrong?” The first says, “I lost an electron.” The second asks, “Are you sure?” “Yes,” the first replies. “I’m positive.”

  ;)

  — ED

  Out of sight of the conference room, Everett massaged his temples. Pain sliced his skull behind his left eye, despite two extra-strength ibuprofen. His last girlfriend, who’d lasted all of three weeks, thought the headaches signaled an imminent stroke. She insisted he see a doctor. The wait for an appointment lasted longer than the girlfriend did — she broke up with him two days later.

  Well, she’d always been more interested in his Lambo than him anyway.

  The doctor told Everett he was suffering from stress. Surprise, surprise. Not only was HHE awash in stress — and carpeted, wallpapered and tastefully furnished in it — he’d become the rope in a corporate tug of war.

  On one end was the mastodon of senior management led by Houghton Howell III, COO by way of being the son of the chairman and the founder’s grandson. Most HHE senior management came up through Nepotism ’R Us. Not to say Howell Junior was out of touch with the worker, but he’d stepped right from his exclusive school into the executive wing and now played with management productivity tools in his air-conditioned corner office, shuffling positions on the company chart as if they were paper dolls instead of real people.

  On the other end was a 110 pounds of Edie.

  Despite his headache, Everett smiled. The day they’d met, she’d been filling the cafeteria napkin holder — backwards. When he told her she was doing it wrong, she calmly handed him the holder and told him to do the job himself. People laughed at her for treating him like a janitor, but none of them dreamed he’d done jobs even more menial to get where he was.

  Edie was a beacon for employee rights — no, a bonfire. How appropriate that one small fireball of a woman balanced a whole org chart of self-entitled one-percenters.

  Well, not balanced, exactly. Even with her fire, the tug of war would have been over long ago if the rope hadn’t been secretly siding with her. She’d never know how many times he’d come to her rescue.

  Pain stabbed Everett’s brain, abruptly killing his smile. He detoured to a water fountain to wash down another pair of ibuprofen.

  Hanging onto the basin, he willed the pain to recede. A good, brisk workout at his health club took care of his worst headaches, but he hadn’t been there in weeks. Countering murderous rumors and sabotage had a way of eating into “me” time. And now he had to smooth Edie’s path of self-righteous destruction yet again.

  He massaged his aching forehead. She was the best team manager he had, but so young. True, he was only three years older, but he’d learned long ago that not everything could be solved by simply being right. Being effective was much more important.

  Effective and quiet. In corporate America, the squeaky wheel didn’t get the grease, it got the boot. Companies were like parents — they didn’t care what you did, as long as you were quiet.

  Hopefully camp would open up Edie’s eyes. Her fine, dark eyes. His headache receded, thinking about those beautiful eyes. Thinking of them watching him as he drove through the mountains. Even fighting with her would be more fun than the boring, lonely trip he’d originally envisioned. With her sunny red curls, her lovely pink mouth, her pert breasts that bounced so prettily as she trotted down the hall … his groin tightened.

  He didn’t dare massage that ache away.

  In fact, he hadn’t taken care of that particular ache for some time. Thank you, grueling schedule. Nearly two years now since he’d had time for a relationship outside the company.

  Although if he was honest with himself, it was also due to his standards. He wanted, not a bed buddy, but a companion.

  Finding a mate for his corporate self wasn’t a problem, not with so many board bunnies opening their, ahem, wallets. But he fiercely wanted a woman who could complement all of him — even the part he kept well hidden.

  Edie’s special light attracted that hidden side of him, nourished his secret self. She might not be the companion for Corporate Everett, but he’d wanted for some time to get to know her better anyway. If not for her prickles, he’d have made his move well before this. Well, prickles and the company policy of no fraternization.

  He was of a mind to give it a try despite company policy. If, after management camp, she still worked here.

  If he still worked here.

  That br
ought his headache back. The enemy who was trying to oust him from HHE would gleefully use this latest mess as ammunition.

  He pushed away from the water fountain. Resumed his usual purposeful stride, camouflage for the crippling headache. He’d find another job. But Edie … there was the rub.

  Without him here to protect her, she was vulnerable. Blinded by her self-righteousness, she’d thrust her neck onto the corporate chopping block, unseeing until it was too late.

  Picturing HHE without that fiery hair, that bouncing enthusiasm, that beacon of light … No. Unacceptable.

  So. Goal: keep Edie at HHE. Dodge the attacks of the unknown enemy, stay president, get Edie to the seminar in one piece.

  Hope she actually learned something and could begin to protect herself.

  Savagely massaging his temples, he wondered which impossible task would prove hardest.

  • • •

  Blinded by his headache, Everett nearly ran into Bethany outside his office, tête-à-tête with a tall, classically handsome man whose red breast-pocket flourish and gold everything was overdone. Houghton Howell III, aka Junior. His father was technically Howell Jr. but with the founding Howell gone to the great stock market in the sky, Junior and Senior were more fitting for III and II.

  Bethany shot Everett a triumphant look and sauntered away.

  Delightful. She’d run straight to Howell then, to kick the confrontation up the ladder. Dear Bethany. Everett rather understood how she’d earned the vulgar nickname he wasn’t supposed to know.

  Well, better deal with this now, on his home turf. He nodded Howell into his office.

  Howell neutralized Everett’s advantage by planting butt in Everett’s leather chair. For added insult, Junior kicked his feet onto Everett’s desk.

  Everett heaved a silent sigh. They’d been playing pinstripe apes since day one, beating chests and baring teeth in displays of corporate dominance. All because Everett was hired for the presidency Howell wanted. Everett was getting tired of it, but it went with the job. And he did his job damned well.