“Boy, he must have really screwed up,” Jane said, taking the vase.
Jane buzzed her twenty minutes later. “The Hun is on line three. Be gentle with him.”
“Ha.” Emily punched three. “Yes?”
“Emily, I’m sorry about last night.”
“You should be.”
“Let me make it up to you.”
“Not even with rubies. Any man who would leave me for George—”
“I just wanted to get rid of him so we wouldn’t be interrupted.”
“And when the Girl Scouts came selling cookies, you’d talk to them, too. And Jehovah’s Witnesses, and some guy working his way through college by selling encyclopedias.”
She heard a faint buzz, and he swore. “Hold on a second,” he said. “I’ve got another call.” And the line fell silent.
Emily clutched the receiver in a death grip and then carefully returned it to the cradle.
Jane opened the door. “I saw the light go out. What happened?”
“He put me on hold.”
Jane swallowed. “Oh, boy.”
“The lousy son of a bitch put me on hold.”
Jane went out, closing the door behind her.
Emily stared straight ahead, rigid with anger.
Jane buzzed her again. “Richard on two.”
Emily picked up the phone.
“Emily, I...”
“Don’t you ever put me on hold again.”
“Jane said that was a mistake,” he said ruefully. “Let me make it up to you.”
“You can’t make it up to me. Not with dinners, not with roses, not with rubies. You are a controlling, cost-effective, power-mad, anal-retentive, deaf son of a bitch!” She ended on what from a lesser woman would have been a shriek and slammed the phone down. Then she buzzed Jane.
“I am not taking any calls from Richard Parker no matter what he has to say. If he wants to communicate with me, tell him to send a memo.”
“Right,” Jane said.
* * *
“MEETING IN THE conference room at five,” Jane said as Emily got ready to leave that night.
“What?”
“Memo just in from George’s office.” Jane handed it to her.
Emily groaned and crumpled the memo. “I’m tired. I want to go home.”
“Well, you can as soon as you’ve done the executive bit.”
“I wish I was a secretary.”
“No, you don’t.” Jane put her coat on. “You’re a terrible typist. You’d starve. See you tomorrow.”
Emily kicked off her shoes and sat in the gloom of her office. I’m so tired, she thought. And my panty hose are driving me nuts. I hate panty hose. They’re an invention of the devil. I’m never wearing them again. She took them off as a gesture of independence and threw them away. There was a run in one leg, anyway.
Instantly she felt better, cooler. She leaned back in her chair and spread her legs apart to cool them, reveling in the relief from the scratchy heat of the hose. It reminded her of other ways of feeling good. It reminded her that she was still so frustrated from the night before she wanted to kill.
It reminded her she still wanted Richard.
No, she didn’t. She was going to forget him and go home.
She looked at the clock. Five-fifteen. Damn.
She slipped her bare feet into her heels and went down the hall to the conference room.
“George?” It was dark in the room, and as the door swung behind her she bumped into him, tall and broad and muscular.
Not George.
Richard.
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