by Kira Archer
“Showtime,” Kiersten muttered, her stomach fluttering at the thought of going head-to-head with Cole.
Normally, she’d rush to his office to make sure everything he needed was at hand and ready for him. Today, she stayed put. While she was nervous, excitement built in her as well. She’d spent the last six months anticipating his every need and carrying it out before he even had to ask. The thought of what his current needs might be after their dance Saturday night made her cheeks flame hot and sent her stomach into overdrive. Because if they were anything like hers, they could probably both do with a cold shower. Another one. She’d been sure Cole would have at least pretended to object to her behavior at the club. He was notoriously anti office fling. Instead, he’d wrapped those big hands of his around her and…
The elevator doors dinged and opened to reveal the man himself. He marched across the floor, face in his phone as usual, conducting business too important to wait until he got to his office. He glanced up when he passed her, the slight raise of his eyebrows the only indication he was surprised to find her out chatting with her friends instead of in his office, waiting for his first command. He took off his coat and tossed it in her direction. It took every ounce of willpower she had to ignore the instinct to catch it, and just let it fall to the ground.
A muted, but collective, gasp rippled through the cubicles when the coat dropped to the floor, and it spurred Kiersten’s resolve. This was supposed to be fun. And it had been until things had gotten a little kinky on the dance floor. But since he wasn’t acting out of the ordinary, maybe he wasn’t inclined to mention it. Worked for her. He apparently wanted life to get back to normal. Well, she was going to have to disappoint him there.
She bit back a smile and stepped over his coat, following Cole into his office. He went to his desk. She went right for the coffee, as per usual. Only instead of making Cole’s sickeningly sweet brew, she made herself a cup the way she liked it. One cream, one sugar. She carried it to Cole’s desk. He stuck out his hand. She raised the mug to her lips and took a healthy sip. At that, he finally glanced at her and gave her his full attention.
“Coffee?” he asked.
“Oh,” she said, giving him the brightest grin she could muster. “No thanks, already have some.” She dropped into the chair in front of his desk and put her feet up.
He glanced at the coat rack near the door and frowned. “Where is my coat?”
She shrugged. “I think you dropped it back there.” She took another sip of her coffee and sighed. “So, what’s on my list for the day?”
He stared at her a few moments, and Kiersten could almost see the wheels turning in his head. Before he could say anything, his phone pinged again and he picked it up. His forehead furrowed, and then his lips twitched. His eyes flickered up to her and back to his phone, and he rubbed his finger over his mouth, though it did little to hide the fact he was on the borderline of full-on smiling.
He slowly put the phone down on his desk. “So, Krispin—”
“All right, I can’t take it anymore.” She dropped her feet and slammed her coffee mug down hard enough some sloshed over the sides. Cole cocked an eyebrow at it but didn’t interrupt her.
“My name is Kiersten, Kear-sten. Rhymes with sear. Not Kristen or Kursten or Kestin or Kasen or Kessen or Krestin or Christine or Crustin or freaking Krispin or anything else you’ve called me. I’ve worked with you directly for six months now and have been at the company even longer. I’ve scheduled your doctor’s appointments, been up to my elbows in your underwear drawer, and as of Saturday night, had my hands just a few inches from your most prized possession, and you still can’t get my name right. You know the name of everyone who works for you. Even the seasonal employees who are only here for two weeks a year. Why the hell can’t you get my name right?”
He sat back in his chair, with that strange half-amused, half-serious smirk on his face. Kiersten braced herself. No way would he let an outburst like that pass. Time to pack her box, collect her severance, and get her ass away from the aggravating twit before she lost her marbles.
He opened his mouth, and Kiersten took a deep breath. But instead of firing her, he just said, “Why the hell have you never corrected me?”
She released her breath with a slight frown. That was not what she expected him to say. At all. “Most people don’t.”
“You aren’t most people.”
His voice was low, almost sultry. Her eyes locked with his, and suddenly she was back on that dance floor, his arms around her, his breath hot on her neck. Having a man who held the world at his fingertips tell her she stood out for him, well, that was just…overwhelming.
“I’ve always known your name. You just never corrected me, so I thought I’d see how long I could get away with it.”
And there went the warm fuzzies. Jackass.
He shrugged and grabbed her coffee, taking a sip before grimacing and setting it back down. “You held out longer than I thought. I should have had a pool going or something.”
She froze, hardly daring to meet his gaze when it flickered back to her. Did he know? That was a rather spot-on statement to make unless he knew, right?
“Now, as for today…” He glanced around his desk, his gaze coming to rest on a large stack of file folders. He stood and gathered them, coming around the desk to drop them in her lap. “I need you to go through the client folders and re-staple them.”
She looked up at him, not sure she’d heard him right. “Excuse me?”
“Re-staple them.” He opened one and showed her the documents each folder contained. Usually a stack of thirty or more pages all neatly stapled with an industrial stapler in the upper left hand corner. “Having them stapled in the corner like that has become a real problem. The papers tear off too often and it makes the stack awkwardly bulky when I’m reading through them and folding the papers back. If they were stapled perpendicularly here,” he said, indicating a spot about an inch and a half down from the corner, “then I could fold the pages over like the pages of a book. It would make going through the information much easier. So. I need them re-stapled.”
He had to be kidding. But he stood there, staring at her expectantly. “Just the current files?”
“No. I’d like them all done. Well…I suppose we don’t need the archived files.”
“Oh good,” she said with a slight laugh. There were easily several thousand old client files.
“But everything from say, the last five years should be done. I don’t want to have to deal with the corner staple if I ever need to go through an old file. Might as well have them all done.”
She stared at the stack on her lap and then back up at him. The last five years? That was several hundred files, at least.
He gave her a tight smile and reached across her to grab his phone from the desk, totally invading her space as he did so. She tried not to take a deep whiff of him as he went by. The man was an ass, but he smelled divine.
“I’ll be back in a few hours. Try to get those files done quickly. I have some other jobs for you.”
“I bet you do,” she muttered at his retreating back.
She watched him through the open door until he’d disappeared into the elevator, and then she dropped the files back on his desk with a muttered curse.
“So?”
Kiersten turned around to see Cass and Izzy with their heads poked through the door.
“He wants me to re-staple every file from the last five years,” she said, thrusting her hand out to indicate the wall of files in her connecting office. “He’s insane. I mean, seriously, what the hell? Is he trying to drive me nuts?” She stopped short in her tirade. “Wait. Yes. He’s trying to drive me nuts. Get me to quit. I bet you anything.”
“Why would he do that?” Cass asked.
“He must have figured out what I’m doing. Maybe not the reason why, since we haven’t told anyone that. But he must realize I’m planning on leaving and is trying to get me to quit.”
; “What are you going to do about it?” Izzy asked, with a wicked grin.
“Oh, the game is so on,” Kiersten said, laughing. “He thinks he’s got me, that he can outplay me? Not a chance. I think he forgot who runs his life.”
Cass and Izzy grinned back at her.
“Come on,” she said, hurrying through the connecting door to her office. “He’s got a meeting with accounting. He should be back in about an hour.” She sat down at her computer and pulled up his calendar. Time to make things a little more interesting.
“What are you going to do?” Cass asked.
“Just move a few things around on this calendar,” Kiersten said, scanning Cole’s schedule for a few likely candidates. Her mouse hovered over a meeting with an architect for one of Cole’s projects, but she couldn’t quite make herself screw that up. Too many people’s jobs depended on those projects running smoothly. She had no qualms about meddling in Cole’s life a bit—he’d meddled in hers often enough with his constant and unreasonable demands. But she wouldn’t adversely affect any innocent parties to do so.
Then she saw the entry for the following Friday and smiled. “Oh, this will be perfect.” She made a few corrections and sat back, resisting the urge to cackle like an evil genius. Two events, one black tie, one costume, held at the same venue a week apart. Cole’s life was about to get very interesting.
“What do you want us to do?” Izzy asked.
“Round up as many interns as you can find, and whoever isn’t doing anything at the moment, and tell them to get in here with their staplers. I have an appointment to make.” She shared a grin with her two besties and picked up the phone.
Chapter Eight
Cole leaned back against the elevator wall, his mood surprisingly great for a man whose trusted employee seemed hell bent on wrecking his week. Getting some coffee in him had helped. If he could walk around with an IV drip of the stuff, life would be much easier. Nothing like a good caffeine jolt to start the day. And he’d had a productive meeting with his accounting department, which always put him in a good mood.
But what was really putting the smile on his face was his current battle with his errant assistant. The info from Trevor, his IT guru, had been illuminating indeed. Cole pulled up the document Trevor had located on the company’s servers and scanned it again. The Termination Pool. He had no idea why she was trying to get fired. The most likely scenario—she’d gotten a better job offer and instead of quitting she’d decided to have a little fun at his expense first. The clause in her contract was quite specific about what would happen if she quit without just cause. And what would happen if he fired her. Quitting would cost her money. Firing her would cost him.
He shook his head, faintly smiling, and clicked over a screen to call Brooks. When he answered, Cole quickly filled him in, knowing he’d get a kick out of it.
“Holy shit. That’s crazy dedicated revenge she’s got going on. I’m kind of impressed.”
Cole snorted. “Whose side are you on?”
“Not sure yet.”
“Gee, thanks.”
Brooks laughed. “Sorry, man. I mean I know I should be all bro code here, but I gotta say, I didn’t think our sweet little librarian had something like this in her.”
Cole hadn’t, either. He’d never had someone so flagrantly defy him before. It was uncalled for. Annoying. And coming from Kiersten, unexpectedly sexier than hell. He’d been trying to get her to show some spark of personality for months. He’d seen glimpses when she was chatting with some of the other assistants and secretaries, and in the photos she had of her with her family and friends arranged around her office. But with him, it was nothing but business all the time, which was how it should be, of course. Still, he’d craved more of that fire he’d seen simmering beneath the surface. Like that morning. It took serious balls to walk into his office and do what she just did.
“It’s creative, I’ll give her that.”
Brooks laughed again. “That’s one way to put it. So, why do it? Why not just quit?”
“My guess—because if she quits, she gets nothing. If I fire her, she gets a very nice severance package. After the fiasco with Marie, we drew up new employment contracts that covered both our asses. I didn’t want my highly-trained assistant walking out on me, and she didn’t want to risk getting fired unexpectedly. The contracts make it advantageous for us both to keep her employed here. So, she must be trying to get fired. I need to know why.”
“Maybe your charming personality finally drove her away.”
Cole frowned but wasn’t going to admit he was afraid of the same thing. “Or maybe she’s got a lucrative job offer somewhere else. I know of several firms who would love to hire her away from me. They get a great assistant with inside knowledge of my business and get to piss me off, all in one.”
“You think she’d do that?”
Cole’s frown deepened. “Everyone has their price. Maybe someone found hers. Until we find out, it’s probably best if we keep her off our major projects. I’ve got plenty of other jobs she can do.”
A slow smile spread across his lips. “In fact, I’m going to keep her so busy doing ridiculous, bullshit jobs, she’ll quit long before she can get me to fire her. If she thinks a little inappropriate behavior is going to get her terminated, she can think again. Two can play her little game. And I’ll win, because I always do.”
Brooks let out a barking laugh. “You two are going head-to-head to see who can drive the other one nuts first? Oh, this I gotta see. And everyone is in on it?”
“Nearly every employee on the floor has bought into it, so far.”
“All betting to see when you’ll finally snap and fire Kiersten?”
“Yes. Though I think they’ll be surprised at what I’ll put up with now that I know what I’m dealing with.” Not as surprised as he’d been to see it, though. He hadn’t figured Kiersten for the vengeful type.
“Mr. Never-Goes-Down-Without-a-Fight. Ha! We’ll be lucky if the damn building is still standing by the time you two are finished with each other.”
Cole shook his head. “It won’t be that bad. I’ll be surprised if she lasts the week. Actually, I’m not all that sure what she has to be so pissed about.”
“Seriously?”
“What? Yes, I’m a tough boss. I have to be to get things done. Does that really justify payback?”
“Apparently. Certainly makes things more interesting. How many squares are left? I should get in on the action.”
“And let on that we know what’s going on? No way. Besides, there aren’t many left. Just a few days toward the end of the month. Everything else has been taken. The spots that had been open for this week got filled sometime in the last hour.”
Cole’s forehead creased. “Which is interesting. What could Kiersten be up to that has people thinking she’s on her way out the door sooner than later? She should be neck deep in files and staples by now.”
“Why?”
Cole grinned and told Brooks. “You should have seen her face when I told her what I wanted her to do.”
“I wish I had,” Brooks said with a chuckle after Cole described it. “Shit, man, that’s ice-cold. That’s got to be the most mundane, menial, pointless job you could think of.”
“At least on the spur of the moment. But, come on. It’s genius. It has a twisted, anal logic to it, so she couldn’t really argue with it, not that she ever argues with me.”
“At least not until today.”
“True. With any luck, she’ll realize I’m more than up for her challenge, and she will just give up and walk away. She was probably ready to pull her hair out within five minutes of starting those files.”
“It’ll be a fucking shame if this works. She’s fun to have around.”
Cole’s smile faded. Was her leaving what he really wanted? He needed someone he could trust, and the fact that she was apparently jumping ship stung more than he thought it would. He’d come to rely on her, maybe a bit too much. But the t
hought of not seeing her every day…
He cut those thoughts off. She was an employee. That was it. He didn’t have the time or energy for any emotional entanglements, especially for a woman who was bailing on him because something better came along. He had enough women in his life doing that on a depressingly frequent basis. What really pissed him off was his surprise at her betrayal. He should know better by now than to expect anything different. She was like everyone else in his life—only in it to get what they could from him and then gone the second there was no more advantage in it for them.
The elevator reached his floor and bumped to a halt. “Gotta go. It’s showtime.”
“Keep me posted,” Brooks said.
Cole ended the call and walked off the elevator, his heart pounding in anticipation. It wasn’t often that he was at a loss. He was always in control of the situation, could anticipate almost any outcome. Always knew what he was walking into and what he’d be walking away from. Except for now.
Kiersten had turned his world upside down, made him feel out of control for the first time since he and Brooks had started their company, junior year of college. On the one hand, he despised the feeling. Being in control at all times was something he prided himself on. But on the other…it was exhilarating. The anticipation swelling in him at the impending battle had him on edge with excited energy. He was ready for anything she could throw at him.
He was wrong.
He passed her office first and glanced in, expecting to find a frazzled Kiersten buried in files and ready to throw the stapler at his head. Instead, three of the company interns occupied the office. They’d formed a sort of chain, one woman pulling the files and handing them to a woman who removed the staple, who handed the file to a woman who re-stapled the papers, who handed them back to the woman pulling the files, who re-filed the folder and pulled another one. Neat, organized, incredibly efficient. It had Kiersten written all over it, but she was nowhere to be seen.