“Okay, folks,” he said. “Show’s over. Scott, Lily will be with you in a second. Vivienne, I’ll want to see you in my office in ten minutes.”
And he shut the door in their faces.
Turning to Lily, he took one of her hands in his and used a finger under her chin to tilt her head up.
“Don’t you let me see you staring at the ground like you’ve done something wrong —” he began.
“This was totally wrong,” she said, and to his horror tears swam into her eyes. “Totally wrong on a personal level and totally unprofessional. I’ve never been so mortified in my life.”
“Lily —” he began, but she cut him off.
“Don’t say anything else,” she said, and stepped away from him, shaking her hand free. “And don’t touch me.”
With that, she darted around him, pulled open the door and was gone.
The room felt more than empty, somehow — with her gone, it felt funereal. He had an imp to discipline and his mother to yell at, so he had very little time to stop and think about what it meant that he didn’t want to be in a room if Lily wasn’t in it.
But one thing he definitely would think about — she’d responded to him without any extra-human effort on his part. He hadn’t pulled her, not even unintentionally; there had been no drain of energy, no exertion of effort. The night before, he’d made her dance with him — and yes, he’d sworn he was done with that and he wasn’t thrilled with himself for breaking his promise. But today, for whatever reason, he’d not had to coerce her at all; she’d come into his arms a willing participant, and — knowing she could choose to leave if she wanted — that had been the sweetest thing of all.
It would bear further consideration, that was for sure.
Chapter 6
LILY SERIOUSLY CONSIDERED calling in sick the next morning, but the thought of lying to her boss nearly made her actually sick, so she dragged herself into the office. Whatever Scott’s problem had been, it wasn’t her problem. She was a grown woman and if she wanted to make out with someone she barely knew, so what?
Make out? her own sardonic voice asked inside her head. Is that what we’re calling it now, when we’re caught with some guy’s hand up our dress?
Whatever. The point was, she was a grown woman and Scott’s reaction — he’d literally ignored her all the way back to the office and then didn’t speak to her for the rest of the day — was ridiculous. She’d been a little unprofessional — okay, a lot unprofessional — but it was also not his place to judge her. He wasn’t her boss.
Gerald Stone, who was her boss, had left a note on her desk, though. He wanted to see her as soon as she got to work, which — she noted with a wince — was supposed to have been twenty minutes ago.
In her defense, it had been another long, hard morning. There had been another cat fight outside her window by the dawn’s early light and she’d been unable to go back to sleep again. Then she’d been waylaid in the lobby by old Mrs. LeFevre, who wanted her to know at least one of the new cats hanging around looked to be rabid, by the condition of its fur and ears, and on and on until Lily thought she might shoot either the cat or Mrs. LeFevre. Bad news for Mrs. LeFevre, since the cat was nowhere to be seen.
Still, she didn’t think being twenty minutes late was going to be a huge deal, and she was in fairly good spirits as she dropped her stuff on her desk and headed for the elevators. It wasn’t until she stepped off the elevator and saw Scott that she started to get a bad feeling.
He and Mr. Stone were standing in the doorway of Mr. Stone’s office, and Scott was clearly upset, shaking his head and saying something as he turned toward the elevator. They both looked up and saw her, and Scott froze in place for moment, looking at her a little vaguely, as if he wasn’t quite sure what she was doing there.
Oh, no, she thought. Oh, please, Scott, don’t have said anything. I thought we were friends.
Mr. Stone clapped Scott on the shoulder and Scott came down the hall toward her. She got her feet in gear and headed down the hall toward him. They passed without saying a word, and then she was standing at Mr. Stone’s office door herself.
“Ms. Randall,” he said formally, which was probably not good, since he usually called her by her first name. His tone was cold, his posture rigid.
She had a feeling she was about to be made very unhappy.
“Mr. Stone,” she said. “I got your message.”
“Come in, then,” he said, though he sort of sounded like he really wished she wouldn’t. He gestured her through the door ahead of him; she took a seat on the visitor side of the desk and waited for him to seat himself on his own side.
“Well,” he began, and said nothing more for a moment. Then, again: “Well.”
“Yes, sir?” she said.
“I’m at a bit of a loss as to how to begin,” he said. “This is not a conversation I find myself having often, and I like it that way.”
She said nothing.
“I guess it’s best just to get directly to the point,” he said. “Are you aware, Ms. Randall, that the contract you signed with us has an immorality clause?” he said, and opened the folder sitting beside his coffee mug. Taking out a sheaf of papers, he passed them across the desk; she glanced down and saw it was a copy of her contract.
Deep breaths.
“I don’t need to see it, sir,” she said. “It was a lot to read, but I did read it and I know what I signed.”
“So, knowing what you signed, I’m sure you can see, then, that this is very problematic for us,” he said.
“I don’t, actually —” she began.
“Ms. Randall, my understanding is you were caught in some sort of intimate contact with a client, during work hours.” He looked at her sourly. “Have I misstated the situation?”
She wished so fervently that she could lie — tell him Scott had misunderstood what he saw, something, anything to stop this from happening. It would be his word against hers. But of course that wasn’t an option; just thinking about it made her queasy.
“No, sir,” she said, “But I think—”
“Additionally, apart from the immorality clause, there are several subsections of your contract dealing with conflicts of interest, which I’m sure you can see comes into play as well.”
She shook her head. “I’m sorry, sir, but I don’t see that. I barely know the man; I can hardly have developed a conflict of interest in such a short time.”
“One gets the impression the two of you were … getting to know one another, quite well,” he replied, and tucked her contract back into its folder.
She could feel herself flushing with equal parts embarrassment and frustration. Damned if I do and damned if I don’t, she thought. If I don’t know him I’m violating the stupid immorality thing, and if I do know him, it’s a conflict of interest.
“I don’t know quite what to say to that,” she said. “It seems a defense against one is an admission of the other.”
“Precisely. So.” He pulled a sheet of paper out from underneath the folder containing her contract, turned it over and gazed at it for a moment.
Up to this point she’d had nothing but commendations at work, and now she would have a reprimand. All because, for no reason she could see, she fell apart every time this one particular guy touched her. What was wrong with her, messing up her career this way, over a guy she didn’t even know?
Mr. Stone pushed the piece of paper across the desk and handed her a pen from the jar next to his inbox. “You’ll need to read and sign that, and then I’m afraid company policy dictates someone must accompany you while you clean out your desk.”
She was so taken aback she swayed for a moment in her chair, blinking. “I’m sorry — what?”
“It’s company policy,” he said smoothly. “I do understand it can be seen as insulting, and certainly I personally don’t think you would —”
“Are you saying I’m fired?” she asked, incredulous.
He looked at her like she was spe
aking Swahili. “What did you think I was saying?” he asked.
“I thought — I thought I would get a warning, or a reprimand of some kind,” she said. “I’ve worked here for over a year and never been in trouble for anything.”
“I’m afraid that’s not the point,” he said. “This is a serious breach of ethics and decorum. It’s all in the contract, if you’d like to review —”
She hastily scrawled her name across the bottom of the paper and stood, cutting him off mid-sentence. “No, thank you. As I said, I read the contract when I signed it. If you’ve nothing further to say, I think I’d like to clean out my desk now.”
He nodded stiffly, and rose, pushing a button on his intercom. “Stella, please call for Security to escort Ms. Randall to her desk and out of the building.”
***
She didn’t cry while she cleaned out her desk, and she didn’t cry when Security walked her to the 23rd street entrance and took her badge and swipe card. She didn’t cry on the subway, sitting there with her sad little shopping bag of personal items in her lap, and she didn’t cry even when she finally reached the shelter of her apartment building.
She did groan a little as she pushed through the big glass doors into the lobby, because Mrs. LeFevre was standing there in the foyer, gathering her mail out of the mailbox. It was only the threat of imminent collapse — a collapse she did not want to have in a public place — that forced her to smile wanly at the old woman and head for the elevator, hoping against hope for a clean getaway.
It was a rookie mistake.
“Girl!” Mrs. LeFevre shrilled across the lobby, and slammed the door to her mailbox. “You are holding that elevator if it comes, eh?”
Lily sighed and hit the Up arrow. According to the lights, the elevator was on the 25th floor.
“Yes, Mrs. LeFevre,” she called back. “You’ve got time.”
The old woman made her laborious way over, planting her four-footed cane carefully with each step. She'd taken a nasty spill down here in the lobby a few months ago, and since then she'd been about as swift as a snail on a glacier — though she hadn’t exactly been speedy before.
“That elevator,” the old woman said, a little less loudly now that she was making some progress across the room. “Never seen anything slower and that’s a fact.”
Lily refrained from making any remarks about pots or kettles, and simply waited, wondering if she was going to make it to her apartment before she broke down in tears and very much fearing the answer was no.
The elevator had made it to the 10th floor and Lily had started to have some actual hope she might hold it together just long enough, when Mrs LeFevre looked her up and down and said, “You peaky, girl? How come you ain’t at work? Have — oh!” And she broke off, staring wildly over Lily’s shoulder. “Now who went and let that cat right in the building?”
If the woman had had any pearls to clutch, she would have; instead she pointed a tremulous finger. Lily turned listlessly around, but there was no cat to be seen and the question about work destroyed what little of her composure there was left.
“I’m terribly sorry, Mrs. LeFevre,” she choked out, “but I can’t really talk about this right now. I’m feeling very poorly. If you’ll excuse me?”
And she fled to the stairwell, rather than risk being followed into the elevator. It was only fifteen floors to her apartment and the old bat wouldn’t be able to keep up with her on the stairs.
She somehow managed not to start crying until she hit the fourth floor.
Chapter 7
WHEN THE DOORBELL rang, Lily was so immersed in her own misery she didn’t hear it. It must have been going on for a full minute before she finally became aware that, yes, it was her doorbell ringing, and she should probably answer it.
The clock above the television said it was 5:45, which meant she’d managed to spend the entire day wallowing in self-pity. Probably a trip to the unemployment office would have been smarter, she thought, but that just made her start to cry again. Did they even give you unemployment when you got fired for being a skank?
She supposed she’d find out tomorrow, since she was going to have to at least try.
She shuffled to the door, a wad of tissues in one hand, and opened it to find Miri on the other side, carrying a liquor store bag.
“I told you not to come over,” she said, sniffling.
“Yeah, like that was gonna happen,” Miri said, pushing her aside and stalking into the apartment. “Don’t tell your best friend you don’t need her when you just got canned. It doesn’t work that way and you know it.”
“But you had plans with Matthew —”
“And Matthew is a big boy who can handle a little disappointment and can cook himself dinner,” Miri said sternly, and set the bag on the counter. “Get me the blender. I brought booze and cake.”
Lily did as she was told, retrieving the blender from the high shelf in the bathroom cabinet. Miri gave her a little side-eye and Lily shrugged. “Creative storage. I live in a shoebox.”
Her apartment wasn’t bad, really. She had a huge closet in her bedroom — for that matter, she had a bedroom — and a nice set of built-ins in the living/dining area. But the kitchen had clearly not been a priority, and space was at a premium.
“It’s summer,” Miri said, dumping the ingredients onto the tiny counter. “We’ve got three months of frozen mudslides and margaritas ahead of us. Put the blender on the counter, and the mixer can go in the bathroom.”
“What if I want to make cookies?”
“Exactly how many cookies are you going to bake in the next two months?”
“Potentially quite a lot, now that I’ve got nothing else to do all day,” Lily said, and felt tears welling up again. “Then after that, who knows, because I won’t be able to pay the rent.”
“Stop it,” Miri commanded. “Get me some ice cubes.”
Ice cubes she had in plenty, so she dumped a couple of trays into a bowl for Miri and tried to stop leaking as she watched her quickly and efficiently start measuring out Kahlua and Bailey’s. Matthew might be boring and a pothead, but he’d certainly taught Miri how to make drinks. “Miri, what am I going to do?”
“You’re going to put some chocolate syrup on the bottom of these,” Miri said, reaching into the cupboard over the sink and handing her two heavy tumblers, “and get the vodka out of the freezer, and I’m gonna blend us up some creamy grownup Slush Puppies and we’re going to go sit on the couch and watch Buffy on Netflix and drink until we can’t feel our toes.”
Lily thought about arguing, but since the alternative was sitting alone crying about her job and wondering how she was going to pay the bills, it actually sounded like a fabulous plan.
Her toes went away after the third mudslide but she drank another just to be sure. Somewhere along the way, Miri heated up a frozen pizza and they ate that plus an entire bag of salt-and-vinegar chips — and most of the cake, which was triple chocolate — but the food didn’t do a whole lot to soak up the alcohol. Miri matched her drink for drink, so by ten o’clock they were both truly and completely tanked.
“Do you want me to stay the night?” Miri asked, boozily.
“What? No.” Lily used the remote to switch off the TV and rolled her head to the left to look at Miri. Some time between mudslides three and four her best friend had become two best friends — which was awesome, if you thought about it. “Matthew would hate that.”
“Matthew is, as I said, a big boy,” Miri said, then giggled. “And I mean that in every possible sense.”
Lily giggled, too. “Stop it!” she said, flapping her hand weakly to ward off the information. “I have to be able to look him in the face and talk to him, you know, and I can’t do that if I’m thinking about —”
“I can hardly think about anything else, sometimes,” Miri confessed, then laughed even harder.
“Tramp,” Lily said affectionately.
“Look who’s talking,” Miri said, then, immediately: �
��Oh my God, I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean —”
Lily waved her concern away. “I know you didn’t mean. And anyway, you’re kind of right. I mean, what the hell, Miri? When have I ever acted like that?”
Miri shrugged. “That guy — I don’t know. He’s … exceptionally hot, yeah. But it’s not like you’re a manatee, Lily. You’ve dated hot guys. What’s the deal with this one?”
“I don’t know,” she said, miserably.
Neither of them said anything for a minute, then Miri broke the silence.
“Listen … and this is just a thought, okay? But when I told Matthew what had happened, he said … well, he asked me if I kept a good eye on your drink.”
Lily looked at her, shook her head. “That’s crazy. No way.”
“Maybe,” Miri said. “Maybe it is. I just — you know, I can’t swear I had my eyes on your drink the whole time we were there. And yesterday — I mean, did he give you anything then?”
She thought about her bottle of water, how she’d wandered away and left it on the bar. “Yes,” she said. “Yes, he did, and yes he had access to it when I wasn’t around.”
Miri shrugged again. “I can’t say, I mean what do I know? But it’s something to think about. Because it wasn’t like you, that’s for sure. You were practically humping him on the dance floor, and then —”
Lily closed her eyes and held up a hand. “Yeah, I know.”
“Maybe we’re way off base,” Miri said.
“And maybe you’re not.”
But she couldn’t think about it right now; she had to think about updating her resume and how to spin getting fired. She bundled Miri into a cab, with promises to call tomorrow as soon as she was done at the unemployment office, then drank an enormous glass of water in the hopes of staving off a hangover and tucked herself into bed.
One Hell of a Guy: The Cambion Trilogy, Book 1 Page 4
