Unless he — they just didn’t care anymore.
By Friday, she’d come up with and discarded half a dozen excuses to see Everett. Had he rescheduled her management camp — and would he like to discuss it over lunch? Were the new employee rules finished yet — and would he like to come to her apartment to show them to her? Each excuse seemed so transparent.
Saturday she even came in to the office, but no Everett wandered by.
By Sunday, she was desperate. The best of her batch of reasons was Jack’s raise. Who would give Jack his special review? As Jack’s supervisor, she needed to know.
Thus armed, Monday morning Edie sailed into the executive wing, right past Everett’s inimitable guard, Ms. Dooley.
Straight into Houghton Howell III, feet propped on the corner of Everett’s desk. Bethany sat nearby.
Edie marched into the office, slapped hands on hips and opened her mouth to shout: What the hell is going on?
Barely in time she remembered her resolution to be cooperative and friendly. “Comfy, aren’t we?”
Howell smiled, his teeth like a wolf’s. “Edie, how pleasant to see you. Unfortunately, we will only see you a short time. Kirk can’t rescue you now.”
Resolution evaporated. “What the hell do you mean?”
“Language, Edie.” Bethany slid off the desk, sauntered to the door and shut it. “You didn’t think even Kirk could cover up those profit and loss figures you manufactured, did you?”
“Manufactured figures?” Edie’s anger faded into confusion. “What are you talking about?”
“Don’t play innocent,” Howell said. “You know exactly what figures. The faked fourth quarter profit-loss reports, conveniently leaked just before you disappeared. The board of directors is not happy. And when the board is unhappy, management must act.”
Edie glanced from Howell to Bethany and back, disliking their twin smug expressions. “I don’t do financial reporting.”
“The VP of Finance put the files online before leaving on vacation. Kirk forecast a profit but these numbers show a nasty loss.”
“In Mr. Kirk’s absence,” Bethany said, “Ms. Dooley asked me to check them out. The report files are stamped with your username, Edie. You. And I traced the originals back to your computer.”
“Only one set of figures is correct.” Howell smirked. “If Kirk’s are correct, you’re out. Of course, Kirk is soft on you. He might pretend your numbers are correct — and commit political suicide.”
Edie sucked in her breath.
Bethany smirked just like Howell. “Mr. Kirk’s been protecting you for years, but not this time. You’re history. I warned you.”
Howell pulled a cigar out of his breast pocket and meticulously clipped the end. “I’ll miss you, Rowan. Cleaning up after your uncooperative little butt made Kirk weak. I liked that.”
“I didn’t do it.” Edie’s blood drained out her feet, leaving her cold and shaken. “Whatever proof you think you’ve found. Where’s Mr. Kirk? He’ll straighten this out.”
“Oh come now, my dear.” Howell stuck the cigar in his mouth while Bethany lit it. He drew on it, blew out a lavish cloud of smoke. Heavy fumes filled the air. “I never thought you had the corporate savvy to try such a bold power play, taking out the president. I admit I was wrong.”
“Please.” Gritty smoke stung Edie’s eyes. “Where’s Mr. Kirk?”
“He won’t save you this time,” Bethany said gleefully.
“I don’t need rescuing.” But Edie felt stabbed to the heart. “Last time. Where the hell is Everett?”
“Right here, Edie.”
She spun. The door had opened silently and Everett Kirk’s big frame filled the doorway. Never had she been so glad to see him.
But something was off. Oh, his navy pinstripe suit and saffron tie were as imposing as ever. But his crisp white cotton shirt was just this side of wrinkled. And his voice sounded tired.
Her confidence wavered. Was he tired because of her? Did he believe Howell? Did he think she’d faked those numbers? Anger fired her. How could he ever think that she would betray him?
Except she had thought about betraying him, for his own good.
In the mirror of Everett’s silver-blue eyes, she saw her own guilt. It scared her.
But what scared her worse was if he did believe her. He’d mount a rescue that would be corporate seppuku.
He swung casually into the room, as if none of this was on his mind at all. “Hello, Houghton, Bethany. Mind if I have my office back?”
“Not at all, my friend.” Howell shot Everett a quick sly grin and stood. “For as long as it is yours. Come along now, Bethy, honey.” He gave her fanny a little pat.
A grimace crossed Bethany’s face. Howell threw an arm around her and steered her out.
Everett watched them leave, eyes narrow. After a moment he shut the door — and locked it with a click that skittered down Edie’s spine. “We need to talk.” He gestured at the guest chair, face stern.
She sank into the chair. “I didn’t do it, Everett. I mean, Mr. Kirk.”
She expected him to sit behind his desk, putting the Great Wall of China between them; the emotional chasm felt just as big.
He surprised her, sitting next to her in the other guest chair. “I know you didn’t. But there’s proof against you.”
“What proof? The original files are on my computer? It’s on the network. Anyone could have created those files while I was gone.”
“They were in your private directory.”
“Impossible.” Edie gaped at him. Security on the system was tight. Her private directory was encrypted and password protected. Exactly one account could create files in her directory — hers. This was like finding the dead body in her locked bedroom, Edie herself standing over it with bloody knife in hand. “It would require my password.”
He nodded. “You must have told someone.”
He was giving her a way out. One she couldn’t take. “Except I haven’t.”
“Someone guessed it then.”
“No. My password is the name of my goldfish.” Jean-Luc Picardfish had died three years ago, before she’d ever come to HHE. “No one here has ever heard of him.”
“While I admire your honesty, that’s bad news. Could someone have used brute force?”
Again she had to be honest. “No. There’s a lockout after three attempts. All lockouts are logged.”
“Rats.” Everett heaved a breath. “I don’t know what we’re going to do this time. What I’m going to do.”
“Everett … ” All these years he’d protected her, cleaned up after her mistakes. The care and worry in his eyes told her it was true. She was ashamed of herself. “You don’t have to do anything. This is my problem.”
He smiled sadly. “I won’t abandon you.”
“Careers are at stake besides mine. Jack’s, the rest of my team … Everett, they need you to survive.” To show him she really meant that, she leaned in and kissed him.
She would have drawn away after a moment, but his hand slid behind her head and he pulled her onto his lap, drawing her into his strength.
And because she was really scared, she went gladly.
He hugged her close and she clung to him. He kissed her hair reassuringly, her forehead, her eyes, her cheeks.
Finally he lifted his head. “I was looking for you just now. I’d been pulling every string I knew to avoid this, but … A disciplinary meeting has been called for tomorrow. Executive managers.” He kissed her lips once again. “Edie, my love, I’ll do whatever I must to protect y — ”
She put a finger to his lips, stopping him.
My love. It echoed in her heart, and opened her eyes to a very painful truth. Mr. Kirk hadn’t abandoned her. Everett had been working nonstop to save
her. But it wasn’t enough. She was going down.
And more. To survive this fiasco himself, he’d have to distance himself from her.
The old Edie would have considered it betrayal.
Now she knew better.
She’d put her mentor Philip in the same position, demanding he choose sides between her and Leadbottom. With a wife and a mortgage, he’d done what he thought was right, rather than what Edie thought was right, and she’d felt betrayed. She’d forgiven him but had never really accepted his choice.
Yet with Everett, she not only accepted his choice, she embraced it. And in embracing it she accepted who Everett Kirk really was, rather than who she wanted him to be.
She released her death-grip on him, to stand on her own two feet. It felt as if she had aged decades overnight.
But she had to be her own corporate tiger for a change. She forced herself to the door. Turned and offered him a sad smile. “I’m a big girl now, Everett. I can protect myself.”
He stood, his body powerful in suit and tie. “I’ll do what I must,” he repeated.
It wasn’t the suit that made him strong, but the crystal clarity of his mind and the iron resolution of his will. He had covered for her all these years. Defended her. He was strong and brave.
How could she be any less?
Chapter Fifteen
To: [email protected]
From: [email protected]
Subject: Re: Meet?
Dearest Prez,
I’m sorry, I can’t meet you. In fact, though it’s shredding my heart, I have to say goodbye.
You’re one of my truest friends, Prez. But I think I’ve fallen in love.
How strange that sounds. I don’t even know if he and I have a future.
I have to be honest with you, though. This man is kind and funny and strong and … well, everything I need and want.
Good luck, Prez. I’ll miss you.
— ED
She wanted what was best for Everett. Whether that meant she loved him or not, she wasn’t going to stand by and let him take the fall for this in front of executive management.
She’d take the fall.
If there had been time to investigate, to straighten things out … but there wasn’t. That was okay. She’d never fitted properly at HHE anyway.
Tuesday morning her heart was at peace when she took her seat at the big main conference room table.
Two mid-level managers guarded the door, security to escort her out. Across the table from her, like a row of hanging judges, sat HHE’s senior officers. She knew them all but three stood out. Houghton Howell the Copy grinned his barracuda best at one end. Howell the Original, eyes glittering in deep dark bags, anchored the other. Philip Sedgwick, back from his vacation, hunkered in the middle. Once she might have thought of him as the Knight but time and reality had tarnished his shining armor.
Besides, she was into loincloths these days.
At the head of the table was Everett, her corporate Tarzan. He looked tired but his jaw clenched in that determined way she recognized. Her heart was fiercely proud of him.
“Ladies and gentlemen, if we can get this special meeting started.” Everett’s voice was deep and sure. “We’re here today to consider Ms. Rowan’s part in the falsification of corporate figures.”
Edie only half-heard him. In his midnight blue worsted suit, his crisp white shirt and his bold yellow tie, he was the handsomest man she’d ever seen, in the wild or not.
“I am hereby absolving Ms. Rowan of any blame in this affair.”
Edie’s jaw dropped.
Howell Junior shot to his feet. “It’s been proven!”
“Kirk.” Howell Senior fired a narrow look at Everett. “I thought this meeting was a mere formality. Now you say she’s innocent?”
“Yes. I know Ms. Rowan. She couldn’t have falsified those figures.”
“How do you explain the files?” Junior rapped the table. “The directory was password protected. No one could have created them but — ” He pointed dramatically. “Edie Rowan herself.”
“Ms. Rowan is innocent, end of discussion.” Everett rose. “Now, if there’s no further business — ”
“Wait a minute.” Howell Senior’s eyes gleamed in their dark pillows. “We convened to fire the perpetrator. If the Rowan woman is innocent — ”
“You’ll have to take the blame.” Junior almost howled in triumph. “Kirk, you’re fired!”
For just one moment, Howell Senior hesitated. Then he said, “Yes, quite.”
“I’m sorry you feel that way.” Everett straightened to his full height, as tall and proud as the day he’d trapped the rabbits. He pulled out a single sheet of bond, laid it on the table. “My resignation.”
“Everett, no!” Edie blurted. Everett shot her a fierce look, part concern, part command, part naked longing. She hesitated for a critical half second.
Everett strode out.
With a flick of fingers, Howell Senior sent security scurrying after. Junior rushed off in the other direction, probably to squat in the president’s office. The conference room emptied.
Edie, stunned, was left alone with Houghton Howell Senior.
“That was unfortunate,” the elder Howell muttered.
“I beg your pardon?”
The old man sighed, met her eyes. His were no longer gleaming, but faded and sad. “Young Kirk is the best executive in the history of this company. Including me.”
Edie stared at Everett’s resignation letter, lying on the table. “Then why let him go?”
“I had to, my dear. It wouldn’t do to appear weak, especially at my age.” Pulling a cane from under the chair, Howell Senior rose unsteadily and shuffled out.
• • •
Everett was gone.
Edie tried to see it as a good thing. Maybe, outside of HHE, he’d revert to her beloved mountain man. With no more company policy and corporate espionage, maybe they could be together.
After the initial shock wore off, she called Everett’s cell. It rolled immediately to voicemail. She left a message. An hour later, she left another. And another a half hour later. She kept trying all day, when the automated voice messaging system told her his mailbox was full.
She managed to get his home phone with a little judicious data diving, and tried that, chewing her fingernails. She got his answering machine. That one filled quickly too.
So she confronted Everett’s faithful secretary, Ms. Dooley. It took three days of worried badgering before Ms. Dooley broke down and admitted that: “Mr. Kirk has retired to his summer house in the mountains.” Or maybe she was that worried too. She gave Edie the address.
Saturday morning, before the sun was up, Edie drove to Utah. In the two weeks since the snowstorm, the roads had been plowed and treated with ice-melt, but her stomach churned as if they were still treacherous, and she clutched the steering wheel with white knuckles. Even with GPS, her nerves got her lost twice.
Finally she found the long private driveway of frozen dirt and ice. She rounded the last curve to a clearing, twice as beautiful as their lost cabin because Everett, stripped to his T-shirt despite the clear, cold day, was there splitting wood. She was so glad to see those broad shoulders twisting with exertion that she didn’t even think to yell at him for doing such a dangerous thing alone. Well, for a couple seconds at least.
He finally looked up when she parked the car. She hopped out and ran to him, arms open wide —
His eyes were dead.
She stuttered to a halt. Her arms dropped. “Everett?”
“Hi.”
“We need to talk.”
“Okay.” He put down his ax.
“Everett, you need to come back. Fight for your job. Howell Senior said you were the
best … ”
He turned from her mid-sentence to trudge into the cabin.
She ran after him into a rustic room with all the curtains drawn shut. “Everett, did you hear me? I talked to Howell Senior after that meeting, and he didn’t really want to lose you — ”
“Coffee?” Everett held out a battered metal pot that stank of burned dregs.
Dust mingled with the sting of coffee to make her sneeze. “Um, no thanks. Everett, about that meeting, I’m glad for what you did for me, but it really wasn’t necessary because — ”
“Have a seat.” He waved vaguely at an old couch.
Edie blinked. Had he not heard her? “You can get your position back. You did nothing wrong.”
“I’m sorry, did you say you wanted coffee?”
She stood in the doorway, completely at a loss. Her usual direct, in-your-face approach was failing abysmally. Everett was … not really here. Polite, but so very, very alone. Walled off.
“Well. Maybe this was a mistake.” She shifted awkwardly. “But before I go, I want you to know … I think … well I’m pretty sure … Everett, I lo — ”
“Okay.” He turned from her to shuffle the coffee pot back to the stove.
A tear brimmed in Edie’s eye. She dashed it away before it could fall. “Okay. I guess I’ll be going. Unless … ?”
She didn’t know what she expected, a sudden declaration of need, a vow never to give up the good fight.
A return “I love you.”
But he only set down the pot and shuffled back outside.
She shut the door behind her. As she went back to her car, she kept hoping … but he was absorbed in his work. She got in her car and started the engine, knowing she should do something but at a loss for what.
Her last sight was of him splitting wood. His shoulders were just as broad, his strokes just as sure. He was her mountain man, rugged and individual. The Everett she’d thought she wanted.
But he was no longer whole. A part of him had died — the part she’d thought she hated.
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