Show and Tell

by Jasmine Haynes

  “That’s why I need you, Trin.”

  “Me?” she mouthed, her hand to her chest.

  “Talk to him.” He swirled the cubes in his glass rather than looking at her. “Tell him I know what I did was wrong.”

  “That has to come from you.” If she opened her mouth, her father would simply shut her down.

  “I’ve tried. Verna’s tried for me. He won’t talk to me.”

  “Send him a letter.”

  “He’d tear it up.” A lock of dark hair fell across his forehead, and he looked quite boyish. Two years older than her, he suddenly seemed several years younger.

  “No, he wouldn’t. He might not read it right then.” She considered exactly what her father would do. “He’d put it in his desk drawer. And every day he’d open the drawer and look at it. Then one day, he’d take it out and read it.”

  “Trin, I’ve already waited six months. I don’t feel like waiting weeks for him to get around to reading a letter.” He grimaced. “Besides, I don’t even know what to say.”

  “Say you’re sorry.”

  “I have said I was sorry from day one.” Surging forward, he slammed his glass on the coffee table. “He doesn’t listen.”

  She hated that he was so upset. “I wish I could change it, Lance, but I tried, and Daddy won’t listen to me, either.” Her mother would have been able to bring them back together. Moisture clouded her eyes, and her temples ached. “I swear, he’s like one of those little monkeys with its hands over its ears.”

  “Then talk to Faith.”

  She pulled her head back. “Faith?”

  “She can talk to her father. If Jarvis were to go to Dad and tell him enough’s enough . . . ,” he trailed off with a sad droop to his lips.

  She swore tears gathered at the corner of his eyes, but still. “That’s worse than me talking to him.” Faith didn’t like Lance, not one bit. Nor would Trinity use their friendship to get something done that she was nervous about doing herself.

  “I miss my family, Trin. I miss you.” He bit down on the inside of his cheek as if he didn’t trust himself to say more.

  And she gave in. “I’ll try another talk with Daddy.” She wagged her finger at him. “But I’m not promising.”

  “You’re a doll.” He rose out of his chair, grabbed the back of her neck, and planted a kiss on her forehead. “Look, I gotta run ’cause I know it’s late and you need your rest.”

  She followed him to the front door. “Call me?”

  “Sure, hon. And let me know what Dad says.”

  Ug. Daddy’s blood pressure would skyrocket. “I will.” Kissing him once more on the cheek, she shoved him out the door and locked up.

  Wonderful that he was home, but Lord, what was she supposed to do about Daddy? She’d think about that tomorrow.

  In her room, she punched a key on her computer, and the screen popped out of sleep. She’d forgotten to turn it off this morning after checking for any Scott messages.

  Logging into e-mail, lo and behold, exactly what she was looking for. Her heart tripped all over itself.

  Not one message, but two. She opened the first. “You are like no woman I’ve ever known before.”

  She got an incredible thrill. Covering her mouth with her hand, she read the second. “I am madly, deeply head over heels in lust with you.”

  He didn’t use the word love. She wouldn’t have believed it anyway. Lust was so much better. He wanted her. Badly. She’d never been wanted in quite this way. She’d been admired from afar. Men had certainly wanted to have sex with her. But Scott wanted her in the dark when he couldn’t see her. He wanted her over the phone. He’d wanted her when she was just a voice.

  And he was madly in lust with her. It made her problems with Inga, Lance, and Daddy a little easier to take.

  “WHY would I want to go to lunch with you?” Inga’s red lips curled in a sneer.

  Trinity held her breath, counting to three. She would not blow up at this woman. She would not give Inga the satisfaction. “It’s not just you. I’m inviting all the AP and AR girls so we can get to know each other.” It was Friday, her first full week complete. Lunch could actually be called a celebration.

  Inga snorted, turning back to her computer. Her cubicle was the antithesis of the woman. Pictures of fairies and mythical creatures dotted the cloth-covered walls, secured with decorative butterfly and bumblebee pinheads. A crystal unicorn reared its forelegs on the hard drive beneath the monitor. Hanging from the arm of a desk lamp, a winged horse readied itself for flight.

  She should have had a Valkyrie’s battle ax instead of this menagerie of delicate creatures.

  Inga glanced over her shoulder with a telling look. Are you still here? “I see enough of you all at work.” Inga’s overly loud voice carried through, up, and over the cubicle walls, dispersing through the entire Accounting bullpen for maximum humiliation. “I don’t need to socialize at lunch as well.”

  Trinity clearly remembered the AP girls, including Inga, going out to lunch on Wednesday. The all in “you all” didn’t apply. It was Trinity she didn’t care to socialize with.

  “That’s too bad.” Trinity gritted her teeth for a moment before easing the tension from her jaw. “Everyone else can make it. We’ll miss you.” Not. Except that the whole point of the lunch was to placate Inga. Then again, Inga was only one of her five employees, and they deserved a welcome lunch.

  “I’m sure they’re dying to have lunch with the boss’s daughter.” A tick appeared at the corner of Inga’s mouth.

  The sneer did nothing for her. She’d be pretty if her attitude didn’t suck. Trinity was darn glad she hadn’t asked Inga first. The others might not have agreed without their de facto leader’s consent.

  “Now if you’ll excuse me—” Inga tipped her head. Animosity shimmered around her like a halo.

  Eyes narrowed and lips decidedly pinched, a look she knew was not her best, Trinity exited the cubicle. Just outside, she almost tripped over Boyd. Pity sparkled in his eyes as he leaped out of her way. On the other side of a cube partition, she was sure she heard a snicker. Whispers. Finally a phone rang, then another, and the bullpen returned to its normal din.

  God. She craved a mocha in the worst way. Extra chocolate. With a shot of orange. To be the object of pity, well, Trinity couldn’t quite fathom it. Inga’s rudeness went beyond anger that she hadn’t gotten Trinity’s job. Inga hated Trinity herself.

  In her own cube, Trinity checked her in-basket. The morning’s list of received cash transfers and auto deposits still topped off the stack. There must be a binder or a folder to file it in, but she had yet to find it.

  But why did Inga hate her? Figuring that one out was like trying to find the fix for global warming, but she would not give up. At least she’d figured the system out herself. It was like shopping at her favorite online wholesale hair product sites. Right now she couldn’t do more than peruse customer and vendor profiles, addresses, phone numbers, and balances. But she was getting the hang of it despite Inga Rice.

  Yet she could feel herself getting hot under the collar just thinking about Inga. Maybe she needed a cold water splash on her face. In the restroom mirror, she did seem a little flushed. Her cheeks almost matched her bright fuchsia shift.

  Trinity sucked in a breath.

  Good Lord. Her stomach had a bulge she hadn’t noticed this morning when she stepped into the dress and zipped it.

  “I’m fat,” she whispered. Just as Lance had said last night. Too many late-evening bowls of ice cream, not to mention that whole piece of bread pudding. How many calories were in the brandy sauce alone? Oh God.

  Breathe. The sudden anxiety was all about Inga and nothing to do with her dress. She sucked in her belly, turned sideways, and smoothed a hand down the flat plane of her tummy. All she had to do was hold her breath and everything was fine.

  “And look at those breasts.” She marveled at how she filled out the dress’s darts. Wow. She’d always had to stuff a litt
le extra cotton in there. But not now.

  Scott said she had gorgeous breasts. He’d also said he was madly, deeply, head over heels in lust with her. He thought she was perfect. So there. She stuck her tongue out at the mirror, then laughed like a child.

  Hmm. Why would he give her that kind of power, though? Perhaps because lust wasn’t the same thing as love. A man could turn it off as easily as he turned it on. Unlike love. Yet Harper had said he loved her and it hadn’t meant a thing. Yes, being the object of Scott’s lust was so much better.

  Behind her, the restroom door squeaked on its hinges. Trinity let out her breath in a whoosh.

  Christina Lee appeared in the mirror’s reflection. Her black hair in a pageboy style, she tucked an absolutely straight lock behind her ear. “You mustn’t let it get to you.”

  How had the girl known about the weight gain?

  “She treats everybody like that at first.” She spoke perfect English with a hint of foreign diction. “But she’ll get warmer the more she knows you.”

  Oh. Christina meant the b-i-t-c-h. Trinity debated how to handle it. Could she trust the girl? After all, Inga might have sent her in here to further tighten the screw.

  Since when had she become so suspicious? In the mirror Trinity didn’t like what she saw, and it wasn’t the extra ice cream, orange mocha, or bread pudding drenched in brandy sauce.

  A silly, frightened woman with dark circles under her eyes stared out of the mirror. Her confidence and self-assurance had circled the drain the night she found Harper with his lover. He’d washed it down with the pulse of the showerhead.

  She swallowed her emotions and smiled at Christina. “Thanks. I appreciate it.” It was noncommittal, devoid of any slam against Inga, yet it acknowledged the girl’s kindness.

  Christina nodded, and still observing her in the mirror, Trinity realized she wasn’t a girl at all but as old as Trinity herself. She was, however, slender as a will-o’-the-wisp and a head shorter than Trinity.

  “Have you girls decided where you want to eat?”

  “Anything but Chinese food.” Then Christina smiled and disappeared inside a stall.

  Trinity washed her hands and returned to her desk. On the way, Mr. Ackerman—she still had trouble thinking of him as Mister— waylaid her in the hall. “Can we talk in my office?”

  “Certainly.” Jeez, what had she done wrong? And wasn’t that a negative thought?

  Mr. Ackerman rubbed the top of his head as she entered the office behind him. In the chair opposite his desk, Trinity sat and crossed her legs. He tapped his upper lip where a bead of sweat sprouted like an ingrown whisker.

  “What can I do for you?” she said brightly.

  “I wanted to see how your first week with us has gone.”

  “It’s been fine, thanks.”

  His office walls were covered with an impressive array of certificates. He’d successfully completed a SOX seminar. To do with baseball? On his desk, blobs of fired clay held down stacks of papers. “Is that a turtle?”

  Anthony beamed. “My daughter’s taking a pottery class.” He brought the turtle to eye level, staring cross-eyed at it. “I think it’s a frog.”

  “She’s very talented.”

  Anthony barked out a laugh. “The next Rembrandt, by Jove.” He looked so much less harried talking about his daughter.

  “Now, why did you really call me in here?”

  He grinned, a sheepish sparkle in his blue eyes. “Your father wanted to make sure you were happy here.”

  Her father? “I’m very happy. Are you happy?”

  “Oh, infinitely happy.”

  “Then we can both tell Daddy how happy we are.” She smiled, yet it felt brittle on her lips. It was a bit like being in college and still needing your mom to call the teacher for your homework assignment. Trinity didn’t need the humiliation.

  “Anything else?” She smiled as sweetly as possible and rose to her feet.

  “No, no.” More moisture gathered on his upper lip. “Keep up the good work.”

  She hadn’t done any real work to date. Christina handled most of the AR calls. The AP girls handled the vendors. Inga did the check run. All Trinity did was review. She didn’t even know if there was anything wrong with whatever she reviewed. She’d played incessantly with the computer system, slogged through the AP/AR procedures manual, studied the wire book in preparation for sending a wire transfer, but had yet to do even that task.

  “Well, everything is fine and dandy, Mr. Ackerman. You can tell my father that, then we’ll all be happy.”

  Why did it feel so demoralizing?

  Because no one else in the entire work world had their father checking up on them. Not even Lance. Which had been a problem. If Daddy’d checked, he might not have screwed up.

  Lord, thinking about Lance reminded her she had to plead his case. She couldn’t do that now. Not today.

  She backed out of Mr. Ackerman’s office with all its certificates and unrecognizable clay animals. “I’m taking the girls to lunch,” she said. “I feel we should get to know each other.”

  He stood. “Good idea. Wonderful.”

  Rah-rah. Go Trinity. It sounded like a high school cheer. If she screwed up and cost the company a ton of money in late fees on a past-due bill, she had the feeling Anthony Ackerman would still tell her father she was perfect. She wouldn’t get fired, because she was the boss’s daughter.

  She should have gotten a job somewhere else. Where she could make a real first impression. Where she wasn’t Herman Green’s daughter. Or Harper Harrington’s cast-off wife.

  “Take an extra half hour at lunch, too.” Waving a hand in the air, Mr. Ackerman pulled a folder close and opened it.

  How was she to show everyone at Green that she could actually do the job and do it well?

  Dead center in the hallway outside his office, Trinity put her fingers to her lips. She sounded like a whiner even inside her own head.

  This was bad. She’d morphed from normal to whiner within the space of two weeks. Dammit, she would get over it. And she’d wow her employees with bread pudding at Vatovola’s.

  “MEET me.”

  Damn, he loved her voice over the phone, especially when she was demanding. “When?”

  “Now.”

  It was Friday. He glanced at his watch, a habit, since he already knew it wasn’t quite five. “Where?”

  “I don’t care, you pick.” A note he couldn’t identify laced her voice. She spoke quietly, as if she were somewhere she could be overheard, but it was more. Defeat? Depression?

  Scott didn’t like to think of those emotions where Jezebel was concerned. “My house.”

  “No.”

  “You said I got to choose. And I want you in my bed.”

  “How badly do you want to see me?” she asked.

  Ah, he understood. She’d had an off day, and she needed an ego boost. “So badly that I’ve got a ton of paperwork on my desk, and I’m willing to walk away from it this minute.”

  He had a Monday morning audit committee meeting to prepare for, but he didn’t care. Neither of the girls was coming home this weekend, so he’d work through it.