“What good is patience?” Kyra lifted one hand and pushed back a fringe of hair that had drifted into her left eye. “While we’re being patient, Fortune TX, Ltd. will sweep in and hustle off our major clients.”
“They haven’t yet,” he reminded her.
“That’s not to say they won’t.” Kyra stared him straight in the eye, unwilling now to back down from the precipice where her temper had carried her. “At Fortune, they’re not afraid to take chances. To try something new. To foster their employees’ imaginations.”
“Then maybe you’re working for the wrong company, Ms. Fortune.”
She hissed in a breath. Ooh, that one hurt.
She pushed up from the desk. Folding her arms across her breasts, she concentrated for a full minute on inhaling and exhaling. She counted to ten. Then twenty. Then thirty.
Didn’t work.
Still furious.
“Maybe you don’t know this about me, Mr. Wolff, so let me be the first to tell you. I don’t trade on my family name. It’s for exactly that reason that I came to work for Voltage. I wanted to make it on my own talents. I’ve worked hard to earn my position here. And I’ll work even harder until I have your job.”
He snorted a derisive laugh that had Kyra’s hackles lifting.
“Is that a threat, Ms. Fortune?”
“That’s a promise, Mr. Wolff.”
“I’ll keep that in mind.”
A tiny, tiny voice in the back of Kyra’s brain was screeching, telling her that she was being an idiot. That she was risking everything she’d worked for by pissing off her boss.
But, she thought as she deliberately squashed that shrieking voice, at this point what did she have to lose? He already didn’t like her. Maybe if he knew she was willing to stand up to him and fight for respect, he would, at least, admire her.
After several long seconds of silence ticked past, Kyra spoke again. “This review. You’ll be doing it?”
He smiled again. “Yes.”
A cold chill snaked along her spine. “I won’t make it easy on you.”
“What?”
“I know you want me fired.”
He shook his head. “Contrary to what you believe, you don’t actually know everything.” He paused. “But the fact that you always act as if you do is irritating to some.”
She squirmed uncomfortably.
“And I will say,” he continued, “that maybe, Kyra, you’ve finally irritated the wrong people.”
Another chill caught her and she stiffened. Lifting her chin high and squaring her shoulders, she nodded briskly. “Think whatever you want to think, Mr. Wolff. But I’m damn good at my job. And my record will speak for itself.”
“We’ll see, won’t we?” he asked, and slowly sat down in his chair again. Picking up her employee file, he tucked it away in one of his desk drawers, then lifted his gaze to hers. “That’s all for now. You can get back to work.”
She opened her mouth to say something more, but shut it again almost instantly. She’d already said way too much. And knowing Garrett Wolff, he wouldn’t forget a word of it.
Two
K yra was still shaking as she left Garrett’s office. She deliberately closed the door gently, wanting to kick herself for losing her temper. Hadn’t she been told most of her life that her temper would only get her into trouble?
And for the most part, she reminded herself, she’d conquered that instinctive flash of anger that had prompted her into saying something she shouldn’t too many times.
But that man, she thought grimly, could make a saint come storming out of heaven wielding thunderbolts.
“Are you all right, Ms. Fortune?”
Kyra’s gaze snapped to Carol Summerhill, sitting at her desk. Short, with a lush figure, cropped, dark curly hair and a simpering smile that irritated everyone around her, with the exception of Garrett. Carol wouldn’t see forty again, but she hid the signs of her age with perfectly applied makeup. And she guarded her boss’s office with the zeal of a rabid dog.
“I’m just fine,” Kyra managed to say through gritted teeth. “Thanks.”
“I only wondered,” Carol said slyly, “because you look a little…ill.”
Only because that’s how she was feeling. Along with terrified, furious and worried. But she’d be damned if she’d let Carol know that.
“No,” she managed to answer, “I’m fine. Just a little warm. But thanks for your concern.” Which was, Kyra knew, as much a lie as the answer she’d just given the woman.
Sucking in a gulp of air, she tried to steady the nerves jumping in the pit of her stomach. Then she forced a smile she didn’t feel, and headed past Carol’s desk. No way was she going to let the woman know just how shaken she really was.
The office door behind her opened abruptly, and Kyra spun around to face Garrett again.
“Still here, Ms. Fortune?” he inquired wryly, one eyebrow lifted into a high arch.
“Just leaving,” she assured him.
“Good.” Dismissing her, he turned to his assistant. “Carol, come inside and bring your pad.”
“Yes, sir,” she said, leaping to her feet like a dolphin breaching the surface of a pool to grab at a tasty fish.
The woman had absolutely no dignity, Kyra thought as she watched Garrett disappear back into the inner sanctum. She ground her teeth as Carol paused, gave her a slow smile and shut herself in their boss’s office.
Kyra glared at the closed door and did the only thing she could in that situation. She stuck out her tongue, then left as quickly as possible.
The building was quiet, most of the employees having left for home long before. From down the hall came the soft drone of a vacuum cleaner, and outside the bank of windows behind Kyra’s desk, rain spattered against the glass.
Oblivious to the faint background sounds, Kyra bent over the open file on her cluttered desktop. Frowning in concentration, she flipped through the pages of the Hartsfield report, making notations on the pad at her right. With no distractions, no interruptions, she’d have the presentation ready by morning.
If Garrett Wolff was really going to fire her, it wouldn’t be because he’d found fault with her work. A voice in the back of her mind muttered darkly about men with too much power. About the unfairness of it all. About how, despite how hard she tried, she would never really be good enough.
She swallowed and gripped her pen tightly in her fist. Whispers of self-doubt fluttered through her brain, but that was nothing new. Most of her life she’d covered up her fears with bravado. To the outside world, Kyra was a woman who knew exactly where she was going and just how to get there.
But inside, she was still the youngest child of a drunk. Unsure whom to trust. Unsure of her own abilities. Unsure of every damn thing.
“Okay,” she said softly, as she mentally smoothed the knot of nerves in the pit of her stomach. “That’s enough of that.”
“Talking to yourself is not a good sign, you know.”
Kyra jumped in her chair, slapped one hand to her chest and took a deep breath in an effort to nudge her heart down out of her throat. Her pulse beat wildly as her gaze shot to the man in the open doorway of her office.
Garrett Wolff stood