The Billionaire Game(11)
And then the penny dropped.
And I started to get mad.
“Are you allergic to the word lesbian?” I asked.
Sarah sputtered like a malfunctioning water fountain. “What—I didn’t say—I assure you—don’t know what you’re talking about—”
“Lesbian,” I said, slowly, just in case she hadn’t understood me the first time. “You have heard of those, right?”
Sarah’s face was turning red, and even the HR goons were looking everywhere in the room but at me. “I really must protest the implication that I insinuated—”
“This isn’t about insinuation. This is about harassment.” An idea occurred to me, one that wasn’t exactly playing fair but which could save my ass. “You know, it is illegal to discriminate against an employee for—”
“This is not discrimination!” Sarah looked like her body couldn’t decide between a heart attack and apoplexy. “This is strictly about company policy, which you have violated repeatedly. We’re not interested in your—”
That little ray of hope died, and I could hear the funeral march starting up. I may have gotten defensive. “You’re not interested in anything I have to say, are you? You do seem super invested in this being porn, though. Which it is not. Do you get a pay raise every time you catch someone?”
Sarah was propping herself upright with one hand now while she fanned herself with the other. “That’s not what’s happening!” She took a deep breath. “Kate, you’re deliberately getting this conversation off course. Regardless of whatever we’ve discussed—which has been closely monitored by my colleagues here, and will not be ammunition for you in any sort of civil suit—this is inappropriate material for you to be looking at on your workplace computer.”
And she had me there. I mean, I thought the really inappropriate part was the third picture from the left, because whoever had the idea of making a bra out of polyester should have been burned at the stake. Preferably while wearing polyester themselves.
“You’re right,” I said. “I didn’t think, and I misused company resources, and I’m very sorry. I’ll sign whatever stuff I need to and take the appropriate punishment—”
“That won’t be necessary,” Sarah interrupted. There was a hard hateful gleam in her eyes. I began to regret some of my less professional word choices during this conversation. Whatever this punishment was, it was going to be a doozy, probably a pay dock or maybe even a suspension—
“You’re fired.”
“But—” and then the argument withered on my tongue. But what? But my best friend is running this company, and how dare you deign to fire me? But I will get Grant Devlin on your ass if you think you can treat me this way? I’d be just as much of an entitled * as any other entitled * if I thought I had a right to pull anything like that.
FOUR
Dumped and fired, all within the same week. So basically I was batting one hundred, right?
Don’t tell anyone, but I don’t actually understand baseball.
(And who needs to, am I right? The way those socks grip those calves, I understand all the things I need to. Dear Santa: please send me Derek Jeter, and a spoon to eat him all up with.)
Some girls wallow with chocolate ice cream. Some girls wallow with soppy romantic movies. Normally, I like to wallow with a sexy ex-boyfriend of mine named Jorge, but unfortunately he got an investment banking job back home in Brazil, so booty calls were not an option.
I did the next best thing and wallowed by clicking through fabric websites and binge-buying every bolt of cloth that had the word ‘decadent’ in the product description.
Thankfully I had a fitting on Monday, so after two days of pouring my bank account into the black hole that is the Internet, I turned off my computer, dragged myself out of bed, and began to make both myself and the apartment presentable for clients. Oddly enough, this actually made me feel better than anything I had done—or more like, not done—all weekend. I was moving around, being active, accomplishing things! Okay, so the things I was accomplishing were on the scale of ‘getting that nasty stain out of the bathroom tile,’ but still. It was something. It made me feel like I might be able to do even more.
The bell rang just as I put the finishing touches on the living room, the black babydoll draped just right over the mannequin. “Coming, Julie!” I called.
And I opened the door right in the face of Asher Young.
#
I am nothing if not a smooth professional, and I responded in a classy and accommodating manner.
“What the hell are you doing here?”
Well, for a certain value of classy and accommodating. A low one.
Asher looked startled for a second, but then, when you’ve got a face that looks like the real project that Michelangelo was slaving over while he knocked off the Pieta as a fun distraction, you probably don’t get a lot of people angrily demanding that you explain your presence. When he showed up, most people probably took one look at him and decided, you know what, life is short and this guy is beautiful, let’s just not question it.
“I’m here to see you, of course,” Asher said. He looked my body up and down slowly through those knee-weakening eyelashes. “Somehow, you just keep pulling me back.”