Anything You Can Do(16)

Bailey stepped off the curb and frowned into the sun. "He seemed a little upset, but I certainly wouldn't describe him as a fool."

"No, Margaret's right, he looked really dumb," Candy contributed, puffing a little. "When you made him admit the only drink I carried was to him, his face got all red."

"Oh. Yes, well, I guess that's true." Bailey had assumed they were talking about Austin. She had momentarily forgotten that anyone else had been there.

"They'll be calling us before the day's over to offer a settlement," Margaret declared, almost bouncing down the sidewalk.

"And this'll be all over?" Candy questioned.

"No way," Bailey said, pushing through the revolving door into their office building.

"Why?" Candy asked, following her.

"The first offer is only an opening gambit. Don't worry. We'll go to court if they don't offer enough."

"But what if they offer enough?" Candy tripped along on her stiletto heels, trying to keep up.

"If they offer enough, we'll take it," Bailey reassured her. "But they won't."

"Let's go to lunch and celebrate," Margaret proposed.

"You two go ahead," Bailey declined. "I have plans."

She watched the pair totter away then went upstairs to find Paula and see how she was surviving her first day.

At the end of the office hallway, outside Stafford Morris' corner office, Bailey leaned over the side of the modular cubicle. Paula sat facing a computer screen, dictation earphones disappearing under her curls, fingers flying over the keyboard.

"You're still here," Bailey said.

Peeling off the phones, Paula turned to face her. "Back already? How'd the big deposition go? Was Austin impressive?"

Impressive? Yes, she thought. Austin was, to say the least, impressive. "I won," she said, ignoring Paula's last question.

Paula grinned. "You won? I didn't know this was a contest."

"I didn't say it was a contest, but certainly there are winners and losers in every legal battle. And I won this round."

"You mean your client won."

Bailey straightened up and folded her arms. "I won for our client. Look, I came back here to ask you if you wanted to go to lunch, but I'm about to change my mind. I was even going to offer to pay and we could go somewhere with a menu on the table instead of the wall."

Paula crinkled her nose. "Thanks, but Mr. Morris has some clients in his office, and he wants me to go get sandwiches for everybody then kind of hang around while I eat mine in case he needs me."

"Good grief." Bailey cast a malevolent glance at Stafford Morris' closed door. I'd think the old goat would cut you a little slack on your first day."

"Quite the opposite, actually. There's a backlog of things his temp didn't do that he wants me to catch up on."

"Oh, well. I guess I'll just go downstairs and get ptomaine poisoning. How's it going otherwise? Has he blown cigar smoke in your face yet?"

Paula laughed. "Once, but I blew it back at him."

Bailey smiled. "Why doesn't that surprise me?"

Paula held her earphones out, ready to pop them into her ears. "Get out of here or I'll take your name off the list for the fiscal-year-end party next month."

Bailey grimaced. "Oh, yes, you do have the honor of planning that mess, don't you?"

"Mess? You're spoiled. A Las Vegas party on a riverboat cruising down the Missouri River sounds like a blast to me."

Stafford Morris' door suddenly opened and the man charged out, cigar clenched in one side of his mouth. "Bailey," he muttered by way of greeting, then thrust a stack of typed pages covered with illegible pencil corrections in front of Paula. "Get off whatever you're doing and get started on these changes. We'll have more in a few minutes."

Bailey watched the stocky man in shirt sleeves disappear into his office then shook her head. "How you can stand to work for that man is beyond me."

Paula pushed several keys to save her document and call up another then shrugged. "It's the old system of barter. In exchange for allowing myself to be tortured eight hours a day I receive a paycheck that enables me to spend the other sixteen in a vain effort to recuperate. Now go away so I can concentrate on deciphering these hieroglyphics."

"You have my sympathy," Bailey called, leaving to search for Gordon and see if he had eaten lunch yet.