by Cathryn Cade
The brunette cast a look at the closed door of the prosecutor's office and frowned reprovingly. "Voice level, Ms Cannon. Surely you understand that we cannot pay an employee for the time off for a training caused by her own behavior issues."
Fury boiled up inside her, so hot and intense Sara felt her face and throat pulse with heat. The curse of being a true blonde—every flush was highly visible. Not that she gave a damn about that now.
Right now she wanted justice—which should be a given, considering where they were.
She'd worked her way up from her first job with the county, filing papers in the public works department part-time while attending North Idaho College, a few blocks away. She'd been hired in this department because of her excellent work standards, and also because her former supervisors gave her high marks for being always cheerful and cooperative, no matter what was asked of her. And she'd endured plenty of upset stomachs and teeth-grinding to achieve those ratings.
And what had all that gotten her? This smirking, little twerp walked in the door and took over with her degree in Bitchy Back-Stabbing and Under-Mining.
No. Just no! No more Nice Sara.
Her best friends, Lindi and Kit, were always telling her she was too buttoned-up and controlled. Well, actually Kit had put it much more strongly over drinks not too long ago, telling Sara she needed to 'get the stick out of her ass' and loosen up.
Since both Lindi and Kit had recently taken up with men who lived the semi-lawless MC lifestyle, Sara usually took their advice with a large shaker of salt, but right now she was wishing she had a big, tough biker-man of her own looming behind her, glaring Nikki Tupper into gibbering terror.
This little pipsqueak looked like her idea of violence was breaking a nail. Sara could totally take her down. She took Zumba twice a week and lifted weights to keep her full curves in check. Tupper probably did yoga poses on a pale pink mat to match her nails and pinchy little lips. Sara had envied her slim little figure for the first few days of their acquaintance, until she discovered it housed a soul worthy of a demon.
"You're telling me that I'm being placed on unpaid leave for three days to go to some training over in Spokane?" Sara demanded, not bothering to moderate her rising voice, because she no longer cared who heard her. "All over some supposed infraction of dumb-ass rules you brought here with you? Well, I refuse! I'm not going to the training, and you're not placing me on leave, either."
Tupper's smirk was gone. She eyed Sara warily, her little hands placed on the desk as if braced to flee should Sara become violent—which she just might. "Ms Cannon, I suggest you moderate your tone."
"Suggest away, Ms Tupper," Sara hissed back. She held up her right hand, palm out. "But talk to the hand, because this woman is through listening."
Oh, God, that felt great. So great, she was far from finished. Darned—no, damned if she'd let the twerp have the final word. Sara was going to her real boss.
She strode out into the main office, noting that Marlene and the two younger clerks were all clustered near by the copy machine, the two younger ones with papers in their hands. One of them dropped her head when she saw Sara, pretending to peruse the paper in her hand. The other watched openly, eyes wide, mouth open as Sara headed for their boss' closed door.
"Sara," Marlene hissed, shaking her head so vehemently her carefully waved brunette hair flew. "Hon, don't …"
Sara liked and respected the older woman, but she was through listening to her pleading to get along with Tupper, because Marlene didn't want to lose Sara as a coworker.
Instead, Sara rapped sharply on the door with the shiny nameplate 'George Bartlett, County Prosecutor', and without waiting, opened it and walked in. The heavy door closed behind her with a thud.
George Bartlett was a tall, thin man with a perpetually harassed frown bunching his heavy brows together, and short, gray hair. This morning he sat at his desk, papers strewn over his desk, pen in hand and phone in the other as he scrolled through messages.
He looked up at Sara in shock and then displeasure—his staff did not breach his inner sanctum when the door was closed. "Sara? What is it?" His tone said the building had better be on fire to merit her sudden appearance.
Sara stopped before his desk, struggling to control her hurt and anger. "George, I have worked for you for three years. Before Nikki Tupper came, you always gave me great job reports. Now she's telling me I have to go on unpaid leave and—and attend some training for bad employees. What the hell, George?"
Oops, second mistake. George Bartlett was a member of a local Baptist church which disapproved of dancing, drinking and swearing—and everything else, as far as Sara could tell. She'd always managed to respect the language piece without any trouble, because she didn't swear much herself.
Well, so maybe she did at home, when she was attempting repairs and hit herself with the hammer instead of her intended target. Or when she was really, really angry—like now.
But she'd never been this angry at work before.
"Sorry," she said, pushing back a lock of pale blonde hair that had fallen from her neat French twist.
But it was too late. Her boss threw down his pen with a scowl. "I beg your pardon? I am in the middle of a very important case here, Sara. If you have concerns about office matters, kindly address them through the appropriate channels."
"What? How is that going to help?" The appropriate channel meant through his new personnel manager, who was the problem.
Crap. Mistake number three, directly contradicting her boss. George was only forty-six, but he was an old-fashioned small-town guy, who thought women should smile and defer to the nearest male.
His female staffers rolled their eyes and mimicked him over cocktails, but in the office, they toed the line. George was big on lines, as evidenced by his next words.
He regarded Sara coldly. "This office has instituted personnel standards as decided on by the new city manager and the mayor's office. If you wish to register a protest with them, be my guest. But right now, you're on my time. So it seems to me, you have two choices, Sara. You may do as requested by my office personnel manager, or ... you may look for another department where you might be happier."
Sara recoiled, feeling as if she'd been slapped. George's right eye twitched, almost in a wince, but he controlled it instantly.
He wasn't going to bend. Well, then ... neither was she.
"So, just to be clear," she said, her voice shaking, her heart pounding so hard she felt sick, as if she’d exercised to hard and long, "After working for you for three years, with uncounted hours of unpaid overtime to do my job, and exemplary marks on my evaluations, now because I've had a couple of justifiable arguments with your new personnel manager, I'm being docked three days of wages ... or I can quit?"
He sighed heavily, and started to rake a hand through his hair, then stopped—probably remembering his fresh hair-cut, complete with styling products. He set his hands palm down on his desk instead. "Why don't you go back to your desk and spend a little time thinking, Sara. And we'll just forget this conversation. Hmm?"
Sara stared at him. Really? His solution was 'let's just forget about it'?
"Hmm," she repeated, cocking her head to mirror him. They probably looked like a couple of parrots mimicking each other. "No, I don't think I will, George. I think I'll take door number two. To tell you the truth, I’ve had it with your 1960’s attitudes toward women in the workplace, anyway. Nikki Tupper can have you, with my compliments."
Damn, that felt good. Sara straightened, ignoring the flush reddening his face, and the anger tightening his thin lips and squinting his eyes.
"I'll have my resignation on your desk within the hour, George. Oh, and those cases I've been documenting, and the filing system I've been re-organizing all spring and summer?" She flung out an arm, pointing in the general direction of the records room. "Guess someone else will have to figure those out, hmm? I know, maybe Tupper can pick up the slack and do all my regular work, instead of
spending her time thinking up new ways to torment the rest of your staff! ‘Cause they don’t deserve it anymore than I did."
And then she turned and got the hell out of there, before she picked up the Idaho Bar Association award prominently displayed on his desk, and chucked it through the nearest window. She really did not need a police citation on top of losing her job.
Nikki Tupper was hovering in the door of her tiny office, gaze avid. Sara gave her scathing glare that sent the woman back half a step, hand on her office door knob.
Sara headed for her own desk, where she sat, grabbed her mouse and clicked briskly, opening up a business letter form—or maybe it was a subpoena form, who the heck knew? She blinked, but the page was still blurry. Her stomach rolled with nausea. Had she really just burned all her freakin’ bridges that she’d spent years building here?
A warm hand squeezed her shoulder. "Hey, hon, let's go get us a coffee," Marlene said briskly. "Here's your purse. No, Nikki, Sara does not want to talk right now, thank you so much for your concern."
"You can't just walk out in the middle of the work day," Tupper squeaked.
"And we're not," Marlene replied in a sugary tone. "We're taking a few of the coffee breaks we've missed lately because you had us in team-building meetings—and we're taking them back-to-back." The look she aimed at the smaller woman said to put that in her pipe and smoke it.
Nikki Tupper opened her mouth again. Sara blinked away her tears and rose to her full height. She stepped around Marlene and advanced on the personnel manager, who took a step back, her eyes widening.
“George and your new job are all yours, Ms Tupper,” Sara said very quietly. “But you’d better be nice to Marlene and the other women here after I’m gone, you hear me? ‘Cause I’ve lived in this town for a while, and I have friends you do not want to meet.” Heh. Even if Jack and Keys would bust a gut laughing that she’d used them to threaten a tiny little woman in a pink suit.
With a last glare at her nemesis, Sara marched with Marlene at her side, out of the office and down the hallway to the door that led out onto the street.
They walked down Government Way, a boulevard shaded by huge maple trees, and crossed through the sparse traffic to a small row of businesses that included The Lake Beanery.
Inside, the coffee shop smelled of dark roast and cinnamon, busy with tourists and locals sipping hot or iced coffee drinks, and noshing on sweet treats. Sara saw all of them at a distance, as if through a layer of gauze. Her adrenaline rush was fading fast, leaving her feeling sick and spent.
What had she done?
"Mocha frappucino?" Marlene asked. "That's what I'm having. It's off my diet, but God knows we both deserve a treat."
Sara nodded, but she didn't really emerge from her fugue state until they were seated on a bench in the shade outside, looking down a short hill toward a park and the lake beyond.
It was a beautiful, hot sunny day in July. All around them teemed happy, carefree people in summer clothing. A group of women her age wearing swimsuits with token cover-ups strolled out of the coffee shop with beach bags, headed down through the park to the lake with their iced drinks.
Marlene nudged her with an elbow. "Drink your frappucino, hon. Cost me a finger."
"What?" When Sara frowned blankly, the older woman shrugged, her eyes twinkling, "Well, not an arm and a leg, but a small body part. So drink the darn thing."
Sara took a long drink of the cold coffee mixture. It was sweet, and a little salty. Or maybe that was the ache of tears in the back of her throat.
"So I figure," Marlene said after slurping on her own drink, "You can catch George after his three o'clock coffee break, and he'll be in a better mood. Then you can—"
"No," Sara said, her voice cutting harshly across her friend's softer one. "I can't."
Marlene lowered her coffee, her eyes filling with alarm. "What does that mean?"
Sara took another drink and cut her gaze left to her friend. "It means ... I already quit." And she'd not only demolished her bridges, blown them sky-high. The burning in her chest said it was true, although her brain was having trouble taking it in. It had felt really good to say those things to George and his pink minion, but she’d also made it so she couldn’t exactly return to work for the city of Coeur d’Alene.
But maybe ... maybe that was just as well. A woman could only bite her tongue so many times before it rebelled.
Marlene opened her mouth and Sara shook her head. "No, I did. I quit. I'm just ... I'm done, Mar. I'm done keeping my mouth shut, and going along to get along. I'm done smiling when I want to kick George's misogynistic, stuck-in-the-sixties ass. And I am totally done putting up with Nikki Tupper's smug, shit-eating, little pointy rat-face."
Two teens walking by looked to Sara and then giggled.
Marlene choked on her drink, and had to cough into her hand. "Did you just use the s-word, Ms Jones? I am shocked, simply shocked. That does not support the collegial atmosphere we are working to build here in the CP's office."
They snickered together. And for approximately thirty seconds, Sara felt better.
But just as quickly, Marlene's smile turned upside down. "Oh, Sara. Are you sure? I mean, did you actually say the words to George, or can we fudge this with a—a PMS moment? God knows George believes our fragile little brains are ruled by our hormones."
Sara's chest still ached, but now the pain was not quite as jagged. Resolve. It hurt, but like ripping a bandage off a cut that had festered.
She shook her head as she gazed back across the street at the tan 60's-era brick of the Kootenai County, Idaho courthouse. "Oh, I said the words. And George heard every one."
She cut her gaze to Marlene. "Sorry, my friend. I'm not kissing anyone's pointy rat-butt to get back in, either. And I'm definitely not taking three days of unpaid leave for behavior training! I said the words to her too."
Marlene sighed heavily. "Okay, I get it. But God, I hate that this is happening."
"I know," Sara said. "Me too ... at least, this way. And now," she rose and brushed down the skirt of her classic, navy, linen shift. "You should get back to work, my friend, before Tupper has an excuse to give you grief. Although, I may have, erm, threatened her just a teensy little bit if she doesn’t treat you and the other women right."
Marlene rose with her, her eyes widening with shock and glee. “You did? Holy crap, you are my new heroine.” Then her face fell. "Oh, Sara, what am I going to do without you to help me put up with George’s pompous ass--and her, uh, pointy-rat-butt? And more importantly, what are you going to do?"
Sara only had to think for a few seconds. "I'm going to go cry on my best girl-friends' shoulders," she said wryly. "And let them say 'I told you so' a time or two—because they've been trying to talk me into looking for a new career for a long time. Then I'm going to drink most of a bottle of wine, probably."
"And then spend the night with one of them, I hope." Marlene gave Sara a pointed look.
Sara nodded "No drinking and driving, I promise. I'm the one who always follows the rules, remember?"
Or at least she had been, up till today.
"Well, good. So, how about this afternoon?"
Sara frowned. "After I walk back with you and clean out my desk ... I don't know."
"I'll clean out your desk for you, and get your coffee mug from the break room. Then I'll bring it by this weekend. You should put on a bikini and go to the lake," Marlene suggested. "That's what I always say I'll do the first day I'm retired, although not in a bikini, because I'm nice like that. Don't want to blind any tourists with my pasty, cellulite thighs."
Sara didn't have cellulite, as she was only twenty-seven, but she didn't have a bikini, either. Not her style. A tiny spark of excitement lit inside her. Maybe it was time to change that too.
Except that it was Friday, July 1st, which meant their little town was crawling with tourists and folks in town for the parade and fireworks over the weekend. City beach would be packed as well. She�
�d rather debut a bikini at a quieter time. Although the lakeshore stayed busy all summer. The season was short here in the north-west.
"I'll take you up on the first part," she told Marlene. "Just call before you come by, to make sure I'm home, okay? Don’t want you to waste a trip."
It would be really nice not to have to go back and do the walk of shame past the eyes of everyone in their office, and probably the building. News spread fast in the county grapevine. By now, everyone knew she’d quit, and why.
And even though technically she had nothing to be ashamed of, she still wanted to tuck her tail between her legs and run, as if one of those pet-shaming signs was hung around her neck, proclaiming 'I was sent to behavior training for arguing with my boss's new demon underling' in big scarlet letters.
And sometime in the next few days, she'd have to tell her mother. Oh, God. Forget the beach. She needed her best friends and a bottle of wine, now.
CHAPTER THREE
That same afternoon
Jack Moran popped up out of the cool, clear waters of Lake Coeur d'Alene and swiped the water from his face with one hand, lying back in the water with a big grin for his woman, who lounged on the back of the yellow-and-black speedboat he'd rented for the day. It was late afternoon of this hot, sunny July day, and they'd alternated cruising the lake and stopping to swim while other boats raced by around them.
With a couple of cold beers and an excellent lunch in his belly, and a pretty blonde wearing a red bikini just for him, Jack was in a great mood. It would improve even more when he got her somewhere private and out of that bikini. Next time he was renting a boat with a cabin, or at least a cuddy they could crawl into. He fuckin’ loved getting his hands on her when she smelled like warm woman and her sweet sun-lotion.
"C'mon, in, baby," he called. "The water's nice. Be even nicer with you in it."
But instead of smiling back at him from under the brim of her big, blue, straw sun hat, his pretty, honey-haired blonde frowned and shook her head, tapping on her phone.