“That’s fantastic, thank you so much. What would I do without you?” I had a bad habit of getting attached to my assistants. This could be a problem. Well, maybe I should stop hiring people that were so good at their jobs. Or people I was attracted to. Or people who fit both descriptions.
“It’s my intention that you never have to find out.”
“Surely you don’t want to be my assistant forever? You could do way more with your life. You, Lilia, are headed for greatness.” I had a test sip of the coffee and I almost couldn’t tell the difference between it and regular coffee. Genius.
“And you are going to make me blush. Oh, I got those files you wanted. It was a pain to find them because they’re still working on scanning and someone had taken them without marking which ones they’d taken. But I found them in the end.” That file scanning project was taking far too long. I had the sneaking suspicion that the interns we had doing some of the work were slacking off. Granted, scanning a million files a day wasn’t the height of fun, but it was their job and we were (not) paying them to do it.
“Thanks for letting me know. I’ll do a little whip cracking and see if that can’t move things along and get them a little more organized.” Lilia had become my eyes and ears. She had a knack, like Lucah, of hearing things and seeing things without being noticed.
“Just thought you should know. How’s the coffee?”
“Perfect.”
“That’s what I aim for.” That was obvious. “Oh, and I’m very interested to see how things go with Violet. You can always text me if you want.” I could. That actually wasn’t a bad plan. If only you could text without looking like you were texting. Science needed to get on that.
I tried not to stress out about lunch, and the coffee actually helped. Probably because of the lower caffeine content. The clock ticked down the minutes until my lunch date. I wished it was with Lucah, and not his ex, but you couldn’t have everything you wanted.
“This is nice,” Violet said, looking around the restaurant. It was filled with the lunch crowd, and it was diverse, which I was pleased about.
“Yeah, I’ve come here a few times and I keep coming back.” We both ordered iced tea and then sat with our menus, studying them in silence.
I was waiting for her to make the first move. Or for her to at least tell me what she wanted to talk to me about outside of the office.
“So what do you normally get?” Her eyes scanned the giant menu, skipping everywhere.
“Um, the burgers are really good. That’s what I always get, but I pair it with a salad because then they cancel each other out and I don’t feel so guilty.” She looked up and smiled.
“I like the way you think. Have you ever had the French onion burger?” I hadn’t, but I assured her it was probably fabulous. The waiter came back and she ordered the burger and a salad. I had a cheeseburger and tomato salad. Once the ordering was out of the way, I waited some more. Waiting and seeing . . .
“So I had an ulterior motive for having lunch with you today,” she said, confirming my worst fears.
“And what is that?” I sipped my iced tea and pretended that I wasn’t terrified of what she was about to say. As if her words didn’t have the ability to alter my world, or shift its axis.
“I still feel like there’s some tension between us. I feel like we’re taking our personal lives and bringing them into the office.” Really? This again? I thought we already dealt with this. “I want you to trust me, and I want us to be friends.”
“I want that too,” I said automatically. I mean, I did, but I wasn’t THAT eager. I had been when I didn’t know who she was.
“Good. Good. So maybe we could go shopping sometime. I’m guessing you know where all the good shoes are.” I most certainly did, but I wasn’t going to share that information with just anyone. But, if I didn’t, then I was going to look like I had a problem with her. Which I did, but I didn’t want her, or anyone else, to know that. Maybe I should have asked Lucah to talk to her.
“Was that it?” I said, just making absolutely sure she wasn’t hiding anything else from me. Her eyes went from my face to the napkin on her lap and I could tell that there was something, and she was still trying to get up the guts to say it. Whatever it was.
“This would have been so much easier if you were a total bitch,” she muttered. I thought maybe I’d heard her wrong.
“What would be easier?” I asked. She still wouldn’t look at me, and I started to have a creeping sense of déjà vu.
“When they hired me, they asked me if I could become friends with you, and then . . . I don’t know, feed them information. It was all really vague so they couldn’t get busted for it.”
“Who is ‘they’?” As if I didn’t know.
Her eyes finally went back to my face and I could see tears forming.
“The Board of Directors. Mr. Marksman, specifically.” I wanted to leap to my feet, point and scream, “AHA!” But this wasn’t a crappy spy movie.
“I see,” I said, leaning back in my chair. “To what purpose?” I knew, but I wanted to hear her say it.
“They want your father, and you, out. They want to force a takeover.”
And there it was.
Silence followed her declaration as we both tried to think of what to say next. The waiter came back with our salads, unaware of the tension.
I smiled and thanked him and Violet did the same, but after he left, the silence descended upon us again. Or maybe crashed would have been a better way to describe it.
“Please say something,” Violet said after I’d taken two bites of my salad. I wasn’t going to speak first.
“What do you want me to say?” I was reminded of Lucah the other night when I’d asked him to talk to me.
“So what did you tell them?” Her eyes flew wide.
“Nothing. I swear. I’ve been telling them that it’s taking me more time than I thought it would to get close to you. They’re not very happy with me.” She tried to make a joke, but it was too soon.
“So you haven’t told them anything?”
“No. I promise.”
“Have they paid you?”
“No, but they offered all kinds of things. Or they talked about things in such a way that they would be offered to me if I gave them what they wanted.” Bastards. “I wanted to say something to you about it forever. That’s why I’ve been so weird, and I keep coming to your office, or asking you to come to mine. But it’s my word against theirs and I wouldn’t have a prayer in court. Besides, like I told you before, I love this company and it’s my dream to work here. I thought if I could put them off long enough, they’d let me off the hook and I could forget about it.”