Everyone else in the office had gone home over an hour ago. Abby sat at her desk staring at the screen saver on her computer. She'd lost the account, all because of a stupid adolescent crush.
She laid her head down on the desk and closed her eyes. It had been fourteen years ago, for God sake. How could he still hold it against her? And didn't people usually get upset when you didn't like them, not when you did?
She stood up and walked to the window. Okay, so maybe being accused of statutory rape wasn't on everybody's bucket list. But she'd admitted to making everything up before her father pressed any charges.
Abby sighed. So that only made her a fruitcake. True or not, she had little recourse at this point. Resolved, she started putting folders into her briefcase. Why work any later? What had long hours and dedication gotten her except an expectation for more of the same?
Gage was taking things a little far warning her to stay away from him, though. Did he really think she might stalk him again? Hello! I've matured a little over the past decade and a half!
She snorted. Someone sure was full of himself. She hadn't done anything over the last few days to warrant kicking her off the account. She'd been a professional in all their dealings. Okay, not counting the brandy and falling asleep on his couch, but other than that she'd been a pro. He was the one being unprofessional.
How could she have thought she'd been falling in love with him again? A few more meetings would probably have cleared up that misconception.
All right, so she still had some feelings rumbling around for him. And she had imagined what it would be like to kiss him and yeah, yeah, so what. It probably wouldn't have been that great. None of that mattered. Actions were what mattered, and her actions had been exemplary. She'd had no intention of letting them be anything but. In fact, if the opportunity to become romantically involved with Gage presented itself, she'd start a bonfire and throw herself on the mercy of the flames. It would be less painful and wouldn't leave as many scars.
A few minutes later Abby exited the elevator to the Lobby. She was a good account manager. Better than good. She deserved this account. It was supposed to have been her big break. Not only had she lost it, but now she'd have to put up with Billings rubbing her nose in it every friggin' opportunity he got.
"Night, Abby," Gary called from behind her as she walked toward the front door. She raised a hand without turning around.
She should be out celebrating her divorce. Instead, she'd probably spend the night working at the kitchen table trying not to think about how good GFI's project would have looked on her resume, or how unfair it was of Gage to hold a grudge after all this time.
When she got outside, it was still fairly warm. She decided to walk. It was early enough there were still plenty of people on the streets, and her townhouse was only a mile and a half away. She had more than enough time to walk it before it got too dark.
She'd gone about two blocks when Gage's threat began to rumble around in her head. She stopped walking. A Keneau Reeves look-alike passed her on her left. He glanced back and gave her a sexy smile.
A young couple jogged around her with a yellow Lab, the woman's long blonde ponytail bobbing from side to side as they continued down the sidewalk.
Have her arrested indeed! Abby's temper began to simmer. On what grounds? A fourteen year old crush? Give me a break. She had done nothing wrong!
Turning around, she marched to the corner and hailed a cab. She'd been overlooked, pushed around, and threatened just one too many times. Dick had dished out enough humiliation to last her a lifetime, but she had enough pride left she wouldn't tuck her tail between her legs and scuttle off without letting Gage Faraday know exactly what she thought of his petty grudge. Have her arrested! Humph! Let him try.
~~~
Abby held her breath as the guard ran his finger down the list of expected visitors. "Here you are. Abigail Carpenter. Go ahead. I'll buzz you through to the elevators."
She gave him a breezy smile as she walked through the turnstile, relieved no one had thought to remove her name. Of course, who would have expected her to show up after Gage had given her the boot?
The light in Gage's office was still on. Thankfully, no one else was around. Abby braced herself. Fools rush in where wise men fear to go. Right, a little late for proverbial wisdoms, since she was standing in the man's doorway.
He sat at his desk with his head down, an open file in front of him. The sleeves of his crisp white shirt were rolled up almost to his elbows, and he'd loosened his tie. His hair was a little mussed up, as if he'd run his hand through it a time or two. He looked tired, she thought tenderly, as if he'd had a rough day.
Abby reminded herself she was angry with him. The pang of longing that pinched her heart had no place there tonight. She took a step forward into the room, and he looked up.
His expression hardened the instant he saw her. He narrowed his eyes, and the cold blast of contempt he shot her almost made her step back.
"What the hell are you doing here?" He ground the words out as if it took every ounce of his control not to bellow them.
Suffering a moment of doubt, she wondered the same thing. Maybe it had been unwise to come. What could he do to her though, really? Take the account away from her? He already had. Embarrass her? Nothing new there, either. Get her fired? Possibly, but even in the face of his anger, she considered it unlikely. It might be naïve on her part, but for reasons she couldn't explain she didn't think he'd hurt her that way.
"I hadn't planned to come." Abby took another step into the room. "In fact," she spoke a little louder, "I was on my way home when I realized I was getting really tired of letting life kick me around. So I decided to kick back, and you were the lucky one at the front of the line."
He stood up and came around to the middle of the desk. Sitting against the edge, he crossed his arms over his broad chest and pinned her with steel grey eyes. "If you're not out of here in ten seconds, I'm calling security and you'll be escorted out. If you resist, I'll have you arrested for trespassing."
"Trespassing or stalking?" She glared right back at him, his threat only making her more determined to stand up to him. "You're going to have to make up your mind. I recommend you go for trespassing. At least you've got a slim chance with that one since you can prove I am here. The stalking one will never stick."
"Get out."
"I'm a little surprised you figured out who I am." Anger gave her courage. "I guess it was foolish not to tell you, but I couldn't be sure how you'd react."
"Now you know. Get out."
"Rachael assured me you'd never guess. Of course, she only wanted to boost my confidence. And I'd actually begun to think everything would work out. I even thought if you turned out to be a reasonable man, I'd come clean."
"Hah!" Gage shouted. "If I hadn't found you out, you'd have played this charade through to the end. I'm no fool, so save the lies. I don't buy them."
Abby shook her head. "Don't you think you're being a teensy bit unreasonable?" She pinched her fingers together to show him just how little and then hooked her hand on her hip. "I mean come on, haven't you ever done anything you regretted? Don't we all have things in our past we'd do differently if we could go back?"
"Considering what happened, I think I'm being extremely reasonable. I could have you fired. If you ever try to come after me again, I will."
"You've got to be kidding me!" She gave him a royal snort. "If you're really that spiteful, then everything I've read about you must be true."
He smiled, not kindly. "Every word of it. If you don't want to find out just how true, I suggest you leave. Now." That now was almost a whisper. It amazed her how lethal one small word, spoken so softly, could sound.
"I don't plan to stay long. I only came because there are a few things I want to tell you before formally closing down this relationship."
He arched a brow. "Do you think I'm interested in anything you have to say?"
"Oh, probably not, but I'
ve been practicing all these wonderful ways of telling you what I think of your decision. It would be a shame to let them go to waste."
The muscle in his jaw flinched. How could he be so cold, look so hard, and still be so handsome? She took a breath. Scratch that thought and go back to the one about how unfair he's being.
"Contrary to what you believe, I am not hung up on you. I had absolutely no plans to seduce you. For you to think I might stalk you is so ludicrous it's laughable."
His expression shifted from thunderous to thunderstruck. She didn't want to lose her momentum to do a temperature check, though. "There's that." She charged forward before she could change her mind. "And anyone who would hold a grudge against a fifteen-year-old kid simply because they let their imagination run away with them really is a coldhearted machine. One of the articles I read about you used that term."
She raised her chin and tried to look down her nose at him, not an easy feat given he had almost a foot on her. "People grow up, you know." She gave him a tight smile. "At least some of us do."
He crossed his ankles. "Is any of this babbling supposed to make sense to me?"
Abby took offense to that. "One person's babbling is another person's cleansing." She smiled at his consternation. "I'm cleansing. Scrub, scrub." She brushed her hand back and forth against her thigh with mock exaggeration.
Gage pushed away from the desk. "If you think you can put two words together that make sense and explain what wanting to seduce me has to do with scrubbing yourself, maybe we could wrap this ridiculous scene up so I can get back to work."
"No, no." Abby shook a finger in the air. "I do not want to seduce you. That, Mr. Faraday, is the whole point."
"What point?" he said in a growl, apparently at the end of his patience.
"That if you're so unforgiving you threw me off the account because you imagine I have some unrequited love thing going for you—" She looked away for a minute because she knew that wasn't all of it, but she was really mad. "And yeah, my dad's a jerk, but I can't control that, and I don't think it's fair to hold his actions against me." She huffed then plowed on. "The point is, maybe you're the one who needs to do a cleansing, not me."
Gage gave his head a hard shake. "What in the name of God are you talking about? And don't start in with that damn cleansing shit because I'm just not getting it."
"I'm talking about why you took me off the account."
"And you believe it's because?"
Abby wrinkled her brow. Why was he asking her because? "Who's playing games now?" She arched her brows.
Gage looked as if he might grab her shoulders and shake her up a bit. "Can we go back a step?" He clenched his jaw. "And don't you dare tell me to say mother may I, or I swear I'll pick you up and throw you out of here myself."
"Aren't you just full of humor all of sudden," Abby mocked.
His eyes flared. "Just tell me why the hell you think I don't want you handling the account, damn it!" His words rang in her ears.
Abby sighed. "Because you're unforgiving, not to mention unrealistic, if you think I've been walking around carrying a torch for you, and you had to give me the boot or I'd be stalking you."
He stared at her for several seconds and then walked over to the bar. "Let me get this straight." He pulled out a bottle and a glass. "You don't mind, do you?" He held up the bottle. Abby shook her head. "You want me to believe that you think I fired you because I thought you had the hots for me?"
"I guess that's one way to put it. But I don't." Well she did, but she'd never admit it, and besides, she was quickly starting not to like him very much.
He took some ice from the minifridge and dropped it into the glass. "And you're going to stalk me?"
"I most definitely am not."
He filled the glass one-third full from the bottle and topped it off with water. He stirred the drink slowly then lifted it to his mouth, watching her over the rim as he took a sip.
"Do you really expect me to believe this nonsense?" he asked.
"Of course you believe it. Why else would you have changed your mind?"
His expression started to cloud over again. "Because," he stressed the word, "you lied to me. You pretended to be an innocent account manager when all the time you were hoping I'd hire you so you could try to dig up something to discredit GFI."
"What!?" Abby gaped at him. Why would he think she'd want to discredit him? He was her client.
"I'll admit you fooled me. You're a great little actress. If my security chief hadn't gotten that picture of you and your husband, you might even have gotten away with it."
Abby froze, realization turning her stomach sour. Wrong secret, a little voice whispered in her head.
"Oh, God!" She brought a hand to her mouth.
"What's the matter, Mrs. Carpenter?" Gage sneered. "Were you really planning to seduce me? Was it your husband's idea, or did you come up with that on your own? I can't deny you're an attractive woman. Perhaps I should have kept you around a few more days to see just how far you would have gone to get what you wanted."
Abby tried to blink away a wave of dizziness. "This is all about Dick." She steadied her breathing, still absorbing the realization. "You…you got rid of me because of Dick."
"I don't have anymore time for this." Gage walked back to the desk, his steps quick, angry. "I'm calling security."
"You're wrong," Abby said. "You're so very wrong."
"No, you were wrong to try to get information for that bastard to use against GFI. You should have known when he spouted off at the press conference I'd have him investigated."
She shook her head. "You're making a mistake. I wasn't trying—"
"Save it!" he barked as he picked up the phone. "I know everything about you I need to know. My investigators are very thorough. By the time I get through with you and your husband you'll wish you'd never been foolish enough to cross me."
He had believed the worst of her without even asking her about it, without giving her a chance to explain. He'd accused her, tried her, and found her guilty by association. Now he wanted to punish her and nothing she could say would change his mind. So be it; she had her pride.
"Oh yeah, well guess what. You don't know everything, not even close." If and when he discovered the truth, she hoped he realized no one would have worked as hard to make Riv One a success as she would have.
He dialed a number. "This is Faraday. I need a security guard up here right away."
He was going to have her thrown out. Something inside her revolted. She would not beg him to listen or plead to be put back on the account, but she did feel an itching desire to teach the man a lesson.
"You'll probably get a good enough product with Billings." She tried to sound like none of it bothered her. "If you'd kept me, you would have gotten the best damn marketing campaign you've ever seen." She shrugged. "Oh well, your loss."
Gage hung up the phone and sat back down in his chair. He opened the file on his desk and started reading.
"Is that your way of dismissing me?" Abby tucked a stray piece of hair back into place. No response. She shifted. "You ought to have that wonderful security team of yours do a little more digging, Mr. Faraday. You might be surprised by what they uncover."
Gage set aside the top piece of paper and moved on to the next one.
"They only discovered a piece of the truth, you know." He continued to ignore her. Man she'd love to rock his socks off. It would serve him right.
The elevator bell sounded out in the lobby. Abby swallowed. "Whatever happened to that old blue Mustang you used to have?"
Gage's head snapped up. Abby smiled.
"Did you know Kelly Samuels has four kids now and weighs about three hundred pounds?" He had such a strange look on his face she almost laughed.
"Who the hell is Kelly Samuels?"
Footsteps sounded behind her and Abby looked over her shoulder. A big beefy guard was halfway across the lobby.
"Bye, Gage." She turned and walked out of his
office. No one would drag her out kicking and screaming. She'd leave with her head high.
"And how do you know about that old Mustang?" he yelled after her.
Abby smiled. He was a smart guy; let him figure it out.
CHAPTER FIVE
Wednesday evening of the following week, Abby walked briskly toward O'Malley's Pub where she was meeting Rachael for dinner. O'Malley's was a favorite hangout for the professional set, serving good, moderate priced food in the dining area, and sports casting in the bar. Wednesday's were two-for-one ladies' night, which meant not only more women, but more men as well.
Since her last encounter with Gage, she had settled into a satisfying state of numb. With the exception of Rachael, from whom Abby could hide nothing for too long, no one knew what lurked behind the calm expression she showed the world.
Abby grimaced. If she kept it up, she'd be checking under the bed for monsters before she went to sleep at night. Wasn't life just like that, though? Get rid of one and up pops another. Now that her divorce was final, she'd stopped killing Dick and focused her talents on another deserving victim—Harold Billings.
She'd murdered him twice that day alone. First when he taunted her with details of the meeting he'd had with Gage. And again when he dumped three of his worst accounts on her desk with the pointedly jabbing explanation that Norwell wanted him to free himself up to focus on River Place One.
As she rounded the corner, she saw Rachael just getting out of a cab and picked up her pace. "Rach," she called, drawing her friend's attention before she could go into the pub.
"Divorce becomes you," Rachael said, giving Abby a hug. "You look great."
Abby kissed her on the cheek. "Reminders of my divorce do bring a smile to my face, but you don't have to lie about the other. I know I look like hell."
"Says who?"
"Billings." Abby linked her arm through Rachael's as they walked into the pub. She spotted an open table near the bar and made a beeline for it. "In fact," she added, dropping into one of the chairs, "just this afternoon Harold came into my office and said, You know, Abigail, you look like hell. Why don't you drop by my place later, and I bet I could put some color back in those cheeks."
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