Tangled (The Tangled Series)(14)

The truth is, I would never demand anything that resembled a sexual favor in exchange for something work-related. I’m a lot of things. A bottom-feeding scumbag like that isn’t one of them.

But that last comment could definitely be construed as flat-out, old-school sexual harassment. And if Kate ever told my father I’d said that to her? Jesus H. Christ, he would fire me faster than you could say, “Up shit creek without a paddle.” Then he’d most likely knock me on my ass for good measure.

I’m walking one high f*cking tightrope here. Yet, though the possibility exists, I’m 99.9 percent sure that Kate won’t rat me out. She’s too much like me. She wants to win. She wants to beat me. And she wants to do it all on her own.

She puts her hands on her hips and opens her mouth to rip into me—most likely to describe just where I can shove my book, I’d guess. I lean back with an amused smile, eagerly anticipating the explosion…that never comes.

She tilts her head to the side, closes her mouth, and says, “You know what? Never mind.”

And with that, she walks out the door.

Huh.

Kind of anticlimactic, don’t you think? I thought so too.

Wait for it.





A few hours later, I’m down in the library looking for an enormous reference titled Commercial and Investment Banking and the International Credit and Capital Markets. All of Harry Potter would fit into one chapter of this sucker. I scan the stacks for where it should be—but it’s not there.

Somebody else must have it.

I turn my attention to a much smaller, but just as important, volume called Investment Management Regulation, Seventh Edition. Only to find that it, too, is missing.

What the hell?

I don’t believe in coincidences. I take the elevator back to the fortieth floor and march purposefully through Kate’s open door.

I don’t see her right away.

That’s because stacked on and around her desk, in neat skyscraper-high columns, are books. About three dozen of them.

For a moment, I freeze, my mouth open and my eyes wide with shock. Then, inanely, I wonder how the hell she got them all up here. Kate weighs a buck-ten at best. There’s got to be several hundred pounds of pages in this room.

It’s then that her shiny dark head emerges over the horizon. And, once again, she smiles. Like a cat with a mouthful of bird.

I hate cats. They’re kind of evil-looking, don’t you think? Like they’re just waiting for you to fall asleep so they can smother you with their fur or piss in your ear.

“Hi, Drew. Did you need something?” she asks me with phony benevolence.

Her fingers tap rhythmically on two gigantic hardcovers. “You know…help? Advice? Directions to the public library?”

I swallow my response. And frown at her. “No. I’m good.”

“Oh. Okay, great. Bye-bye, now.” And with that, she disappears back down behind the literary mountain.

Brooks—two.

Evans—zip.





After that, things get nasty.

I’m ashamed to say that both Kate and I sink to new lows in professional sabotage. It never actually wanders over to the realm of the illegal. But it’s definitely close.

One day I come in to find all the cables missing from my computer. It doesn’t do any lasting damage, but I have to wait an hour-and-a-half for the IT guy to show up and reconnect it.

The next day, Kate comes in to discover that “someone” has switched all the labels on her disks and files. Nothing was erased, mind you. But she pretty much has to look through every single one if she wants to find the documents she needs.

A few days after that at a staff meeting, I “accidentally” spill a glass of water on some information Kate has compiled for my father. Something that probably took her five or so hours to put together.

“Oops. Sorry,” I say, letting the smirk on my face tell her how very unsorry I am.

“It’s fine, Mr. Evans,” she assures my father as she wipes up the mess. “I have another copy in my office.”

How very Boy-Scoutish of her, don’t you think?

Later—about halfway through the same meeting—do you know what she does?

She f*cking kicks me! In the shin, under the table.

“Hmph,” I groan, and my hands fist reflexively.

“You all right, Drew?” my father asks.

I can only nod and squeak, “Something in my throat.” I cough dramatically.

See, I’m not about to go crying to Daddy either. But sweet Christ it hurt. You ever been kicked in the shin by a four-inch pointy shoe? For a man, there is only one area that’s more painful to be kicked.

And that is a place that dare not speak its name.

After the throbbing in my leg dies down a bit, I hide my hand behind some upturned papers while my father’s speaking. Then I flip Kate the finger. Immature, I know, but apparently we’re now both functioning at the preschool level, so I’m guessing it’s okay.

Kate sneers at me. Then she mouths, You wish.

Well—she’s got me there, now doesn’t she?





We’re in the home stretch. A month of mortal combat has passed, and tomorrow is my father’s deadline. It’s around eleven o’clock, and Kate and I are the only ones left in the building.