She would be, as Nick so expressively put it, so fucked.
She was not at all surprised to find Marla waiting outside, her taut rear end perched half-on, half-off the long marble vanity counter. Her arms were crossed, her brows knit. She looked furiously angry.
There were other women primping and washing, and Marla waited in stony silence for them to leave. Becca braced herself as the door closed behind the last woman, leaving them alone.
Marla lost no time. “You slept with him, didn’t you?”
Becca stared at the other woman blankly. That took her utterly by surprise, so beset was she by images of grisly death wounds and bullet holes. “Ah…huh? With who?” she floundered. “I—but I—”
“Don’t play dumb with me,” the older woman hissed. “I’m talking about Mathes. So that’s where you were all those days you didn’t come to work, hmm? The phone messaging, the slut lingerie? Did he give you a fake name, Becca? Did he not tell you he was married? Christ, what an innocent you are.”
Fuck a duck. Becca struggled to organize a coherent response. She just kept opening and closing her mouth as it sank in that the conclusion Marla had leaped to was a screamingly obvious one. Far more probable and believable than the awful truth.
Marla raged quietly on, her voice laced with suppressed anger. “That was his wife, Helen Mathes, beside him. Remember the tall blonde with all the bling? Big philanthropist, on all the charitable boards in the city? She attended the Mother/Daughter Tea you organized last year. With her nine-and twelve-year-old girls. Mouthy little blond brats, both of them. You don’t remember her?”
Becca shook her head. “I don’t remember her,” she whispered.
“I very much hope that you’re not thinking anything stupid, Becca. Like, for instance, that he’s going to leave his wife for you.” Marla’s eyes swept critically over her. “Please be realistic. You’re a very pretty girl and very sweet, but you’re hardly a femme fatale.”
“Marla, I’m not—”
“And now, damage control.” Marla dragged a handful of perfumed facial tissues out of the pink marble dispenser and shoved them into Becca’s hand. “I am very sorry that you’ve had not one, but two romantic disappointments in a single week. But this is an opportunity to show your true colors. I want to see how professional you can be.”
“But Marla, I—”
“Get out there and work, just like nothing ever happened. It’s the only dignified thing you can do,” Marla announced. “What’s he going to do? What can he do? Nothing, Becca. If he sees you, be classy. Smile. Pretend you’ve never seen him before. Smile big at his wife, too. Let him wonder what you’re capable of. Let him squirm and worry. He deserves it, the lying, cheating prick. But do not let him control you!”
Marla’s lecture was delivered in ringing tones that should have been accompanied by inspiring theme music. Becca stared at her boss’s stern expression, and found herself wishing desperately that she could do exactly as she was told. Just go with the flow.
After all. It seemed so lurid, so improbable. Maybe the whole episode had all been some sort of crazy hallucination. A bad dream she wanted so badly to forget. Or at least ignore. Maybe if she pretended…and hoped he didn’t notice her, or recognize her…?
No. Not an option. She’d seen what she had seen. She’d surfed on rivers of blood. She had to face it, own up to it, and deal.
“I cannot go back out there,” she said quietly. “I’m so sorry.”
Marla’s face tightened. “You’re running out on me in the middle of one of the most important events of the year because you slept with the wrong guy? For God’s sake, Becca! Everyone’s done that a time or two! Get over it! Grow up!”
I didn’t sleep with that slimy son of a bitch. I would rather die.
She wanted to scream it at the top of her lungs. She swallowed the impulse down, and it bumped like a big rock in her throat.
She both liked and respected Marla. Despite her sharp tongue and her bitchiness, she was protective and supportive, even maternal to her younger employee. Becca genuinely valued Marla’s good opinion.
But at this point, she had two options. Marla could think that Becca was a weak-willed, scared slut, or else she could think that Becca was a deluded paranoid nutcase. Both options were painful.
“I’m sorry to disappoint you,” she said, meaning it with every cell of her body. “I have my reasons. I just can’t do it.”
Marla’s eyes narrowed, and opened her mouth. At that moment, another woman came into the bathroom and headed for one of the stalls. Marla waited until the stall door clicked shut, and then leaned forward and whispered savagely into Becca’s ear.
“I will give you five minutes to rethink that decision. If I don’t see you out in the Crystal Ballroom after that amount of time, I’ll consider that your letter of resignation, effective immediately. Goodbye, Becca. Best of luck in all your future endeavors.”
She left, heels clicking angrily on the gleaming marble tiles.
Becca clutched the marble sink, white-knuckled, as the shape of her world shifted. Hope, daydreams, expectations suddenly, brutally readjusted.
Fired. So. On top of rape, torture and murder, she got to worry about how she was going to pay her rent, too. And Carrie’s. And Josh’s.
She tried to comfort herself. It wasn’t as if she had anything to lose. There was unemployment. She’d stood on that slow-moving line before. If she didn’t go out and work the banquet, she lost her job, yes. But if she did go out, she’d get dead. Dead girls held down no jobs.
She shook with ironic laughter, doubling over with her hand on her still fluttering belly. Gee. Some comfort. A real winner, that.
OK. Getting fired was definitely her clue to scram. She squelched her fear and shock, and looked out the bathroom door, looking to the right and the left. No one. She sprinted on tiptoe down the corridor towards the administrative offices at the end of the wing.
A quickie trip to her office to collect her purse, cell and keys. She tossed her coat on. Put up the hood. God, how she wished she’d bleached her hair, as Nick had begged her. Why had she been so stubborn? Why was she such a fluff-headed dork? Why?
She lingered for one wistful moment in the office she had shared with Shay, Marla’s administrative assistant. Where she’d worked so hard for three years. All that effort, up in smoke. Marla wasn’t going to give her a reference after tonight. She was back to square one, professionally. Waitressing, catering gigs, temping. No benefits, no health coverage, no future.
Concentrate on staying alive, birdbrain. She pried the keys to the office off her chain, and left them on Shay’s desk with a note of explanation and farewell. She flipped off the lights, pushed the door open and peeked out into the hall.
She ducked immediately back inside, her heart thudding madly against her rib cage. He was there. Right there, less than ten yards from her office door. In the second it had taken to register who he was, he’d been too busy arguing with a woman to see the door crack open.
A dark-haired woman in a long raincoat. Not Helen Mathes.
She closed the door, very gently, and locked the knob. Trying to breathe, to think, over the deafening thumps of her heartbeat. Her insides were icy-cold mush, getting mushier with each successive adrenaline surge. She cringed against the door, tears squeezing out of tight shut eyes. Wishing she carried a gun like Nick. That she could snap necks, slice throats, blast off asses, if anyone messed with her.
Basically, she hoped they would just go away, and give her an opening to flee. Like the cowering crybaby that she was.
Click. A door opening. Click. Light suddenly flooded in from the adjoining office. Marla’s office. Her boss had left it unlocked. The connecting door between the offices was yawning wide open.
Oh, Jesus. She was right in their line of sight as they burst in the door, already arguing.
“…the hell you think you’re doing here, anyway! Have you gone completely insane?” Mathes hissed.
&nb
sp; “But they sent us all the data on the blood and tissue typing!” The woman’s voice quavered, verging on tears. “You’ve seen it! The girl is a perfect match for—”
“And you trust their doctors? Their paperwork? Their lab equipment? For the fees we’re charging, I cannot have the slightest doubt about any of the details. We test, we check, we double check, and then we triple-check. Is that clear?”
Becca couldn’t breathe. Her mouth shook. She was afraid that if she unlocked her lungs, and tried to suck in air, they would convulse, make a sound like a barking sob. She couldn’t risk it. Air could wait.
She slid, very slowly, her back against the door. Trying not to rustle, not to squeak. Until she was down, behind the water cooler, curled up, trying to be as small as possible.
The woman gulped back tears, audibly. “But Richie, I can’t—”
“What do you mean, can’t? We have Edeline Metgers scheduled for two days from now!” The violence in his voice punched against Becca’s jangled nerves like the blows of a fist. “Along with four other recipients. You made the arrangements yourself!”
“You don’t understand,” the woman whispered brokenly. “Y-you have to come with me to do this, Richie. It’s too hard to do alone. You’re the one who makes me strong. I can’t—”
“Bullshit. We’re miles deep in this, you stupid bitch. We can’t go back now,” Mathes snarled. “God knows, I would prefer to do it myself, but I’m stuck here and you know it. I’m giving a fawning speech for that pompous old dickwad in exactly…ah, great. Yes. Exactly nine minutes and counting. Great timing, Diana. You show up here, uninvited, in a trench coat and diva sunglasses at nine o’clock at night, and make a fucking spectacle of yourself at Harrison’s party—Jesus Christ, did you think my wife wouldn’t notice? Everyone noticed!”
“But I—”
“Go, and do as we agreed.” The steely note of menace in the man’s voice sent a shudder up Becca’s spine. “It has to be you and it has to be now. Tonight. No other options. Do we understand each other?”
“But Richie, I’m telling you—”
Crack, the sound of a vicious slap to the face. Followed by the sound a dog made when its tail was stepped on. Then muffled sniveling. “You are such a prick, Richie,” the woman whimpered.
“I know. That’s why we get along so well. Now get out, and do your job. The time to have a breakdown has passed. Understood?”
There was a muffled sob, then a whimper and a guttural moan. Becca leaned forward just long enough to see that the man was kissing her. His hand gripped her crotch, working it. The woman writhed, clutching him around the neck as if she were drowning.
Becca jerked back, feeling slimed and fouled for having witnessed it.
The woman stumbled back with a sob and bumped into Marla’s desk. Mathes had evidently shoved her away from himself.
“Be good, Diana,” he warned. The door snapped shut behind him.
Diana blubbered noisily for so long, Becca actually started to get bored. Her legs went to sleep from being folded up so tightly. She was intensely grateful when the woman pulled herself together and stumbled out the door, still sniffling.
Becca fell forward onto her face and struggled up onto numb legs. Stomping and staggering until the pins and needles subsided enough so that she could actually walk, she flung her purse over her shoulder, and peered out the door in time to catch the flash of Diana’s beige raincoat, disappearing down the staircase that led to the back parking lot. Where Becca’s own rental car was parked.
She didn’t dare to examine the impulse, or she’d lose her nerve. It has to be you, and it has to be now. Tonight, the man had said.
Funny. Go figure. The exact same thing held true for her, too.
She took a deep breath and followed.
“Um, excuse me? May I ask you a technical question?” the soft, faintly accented female voice asked.
Josh Cattrell readjusted the fan inside the computer’s hard case, and groaned inwardly at this hundred and fifty thousandth interruption. He would never get this damn computer assembled before closing time unless he could get people to leave him the hell alone. “Miss, why don’t you talk to one of the other guys out on the floor?” He looked up. “One of them can answer your…uh…”
The distracted words disintegrated in his mind, like a smoke ring coming softly apart in the air until it vanished completely. Leaving the slate of his mind wiped clean. And his mouth dangling wide open.
This girl was beautiful. So outlandishly beautiful, it was like she was from another planet. Long, swinging white blond hair, huge, dark blue eyes, bee-stung lips, flower-petal-smooth skin.
And it only got more outrageous from there. He rose to his feet so that he could send his peripheral vision downward and catalog the rest of her supernatural perfection. Double D’s that defied gravity beneath a tight white tee, tiny waist with a bare midriff, pierced navel. Super lowrise jeans, clinging for dear life to the curve of a world-class ass.
He forced himself to look at her face again. He had no idea how long he’d been gawking. She was smiling at him. That mouth was amazing, full and perfect and sexily shaped. Angelina-eat-your-heart-out lips. She glowed. She shone. She was a miracle of nature, right here in Eric’s Electronics Barn.
“I am so very sorry,” she said, those long dark lashes sweeping down, casting fan-shaped shadows over her cheeks. “I disturbed you, from your work. Please excuse me, I will simply go and ask that other man, no? The red-haired man standing by the counter? Perhaps he can—”
“Oh, no! It’s no trouble at all!” Josh said. “Ask away. Anything you like. Anything.” Aw, shit. He was babbling, like an idiot. He hated himself when he did that.
But she was still smiling, amazingly. A tender, radiant smile, like he’d just offered her the moon.
It took all his brainpower to actually listen and understand her computer problem, with the combined difficulty of her accent and her unbelievable, insane gorgeousness, but eventually he started to get a vague clue: a desktop publishing program which went into conflict with other stuff on her computer and froze her system.
“Bring it in for me and I’ll take a look,” he suggested. “Did you buy it here?”
She looked suddenly worried. “No, it was a used computer.”
“Aw,” he said, crestfallen. “So it, uh, won’t be covered by the warranty, then.” Damn. He totally wanted to solve her problem, save her money, be her hero. “Um, I guess you could still bring it in to me,” he suggested. “I could still take a look. Completely free of charge, of course. I’ll do it after hours.”
She looked radiantly hopeful. “Oh. You are so very kind. But if I may ask…I hope you do not think I am asking too much…”
“Ask! Anything,” he said rashly.
“Could you perhaps consider, ah, coming to my house, to see it?” Her words came out in an anxious, embarrassed little rush. “Like a consultant? I have no car, you see, and the computer is very big and heavy for me, and I have no one who will help me here—”
“Sure! Yes, absolutely!” He was practically dizzy. Her house? This was too much. Holy crapola. He was going to blow a gasket.
“I will pay you for your time, of course,” she said earnestly.
“Oh, God, no. Don’t worry about it,” he assured her. “It’s my pleasure. It’s just…uh…when?”
Her fathomless blue eyes blinked. “As soon as convenient for you?”
He swallowed, hard. “Um, how about now, then?”
Dimples suddenly appeared, and a laughing sparkle in her eyes. “Do you not have to work?” she asked gently. “I do not want you to have trouble with boss because of me.”
“Oh, not at all. My hours are sort of flex, anyhow,” he lied. “And I was already planning to leave early, so my boss will be OK with it.”
That was kinda true. Joe had given him leave to go early so he could get a good start driving down to Olympia to pick up Carrie.
Abrupt change of plan. His little
sister was just going to have to understand. A chance like this rolled around about once a millennium.
“May I ask you a personal question?” he asked.
Her lips tilted at the corners. “They are the only interesting kind.”
His fingers and toes practically buzzed at the caressing tone of her voice. “Your, uh, accent,” he mumbled, blushing. “Where is it from?”
“Moldova,” she said. “I am here on a student visa.”
“Oh, I see,” he said. “I’m, uh, Josh.” He stuck out his hand.
She took it, and held it. “Nadia,” she offered him the name as if it were a jewel lying on a little velvet pillow.
Nadia. Wow. It dazzled him. He mouthed the name. Shivers of delight went up his spine at the feel of it in his mouth.
Her hand was so soft. And her slender, cool fingers were curled around his, holding on. Gently, trustingly. For so long, he didn’t know quite what to do. Take his hand back? He didn’t want to risk hurting her feelings by pulling it away. Maybe it was one of those culture clash things. Maybe Moldovans gave really long, intimate handshakes.
The effects of which went straight to his dick. Whoa. Woody alert.
“I better tell my boss I’m leaving,” he said, flustered. “And, uh, if you don’t mind, could you wait outside? My excuse for leaving looks really bogus if he sees me taking off with a gorgeous blonde.”
She gave him a secretive smile, an under-the-lashes upward peep. “Sweet,” she murmured. “I shall see you outside then. Josh.”
Josh watched her go out, wondering when he was going to wake up. Holy moly. He yanked the tail of his crumpled orange uniform shirt out of his jeans to cover up this boner and any possible future ones that might pop up in that unbelievable girl’s vicinity. He loped over to his boss Joe’s office like he had springs in his shoes.
“Yo, Joe,” he said. “I’m cutting out.”
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