Between the Covers

by Louisa Masters

  He shook his head, that smug expression still in place. “I disagree. In fact—”

  “Disagree with what?” Dani interrupted. There was no way she was letting him keep control of this conversation, not when she didn’t know what his purpose was.

  Annoyance flashed across his face. “You said you’re not opposed to change. I disagree.”

  “Okay,” Dani said slowly. “You’re entitled to your opinion. But I don’t believe my work performance reflects that.” And he’d be hard-pressed to prove it did.

  “Oh, Danika.” He grinned toothily, and she fought not to cringe away. “You’re too caught up on the metrics. Your lack of enthusiasm for change is infecting the office and affecting morale.” What? “That’s why I think you should show everyone that you’re on board with the changes we’re making here as we evolve into the next phase of the company’s development.”

  Did he realize that he wasn’t making sense? And what the hell was he talking about? She should have given in to Ben’s puppy eyes and stayed away from work for another day.

  “I am on board with keeping this company strong and profitable,” she told him flatly. “Figures have been—”

  “Danika, Danika, Danika.” Seriously, his dumb habit of always using her whole name had never seemed as stupid as it did then. Why add the extra syllable? Nobody called her Danika except her mum when she was in trouble and her siblings and Ben when they were teasing. “You need to let go of the figures. I’m concerned about feelings.”

  Dani could think of not one thing to say that wouldn’t be in breach of employee behavior guidelines, so she kept her mouth shut and waited.

  “I want to show the staff that they can feel confident and comfortable about the changes we’re making, and the best way to do that is to have management lead by example.”

  Well, that wasn’t wrong… although since when did he give a crap about staff feeling comfortable? He’d tried to cut the break room in half to make way for an “executive dining room,” and only gave up on the idea when HR informed him it would be a breach of state law to have a break room that size for the number of employees working on site.

  “What did you have in mind?” she asked, feeling as though she were stepping into a trap but unable to see it.

  “I’d like you to spearhead our internal job socialization initiative.”

  Oh, there it is. Hello, trap. Also, what a dumb name.

  “And what’s that, exactly?” She’d given up on any thought of being polite. Whatever game Tom was playing now was just to cover his ass. Maybe he was trying to distract her from the debacle of him and Lisa?

  “It’s a program in which management team members rotate through all the jobs in their departments, demonstrating to staff the standards and job performance expected in each role.”

  What. The. Fuck?

  Was he insane?

  “That’s an interesting idea, Tom,” she began, not bothering to keep the contempt out of her voice. “But it’s not practical for several reasons.” Not to mention all our managers—except you—have already worked their way up through those roles.

  Tom tsked. He actually tsked at her. Dani took a calming breath, then another.

  They didn’t work.

  “Danika, this is what I mean by you being opposed to change. You’re unwilling to even consider the idea because it would mean upheaval in your daily routine.” The smug look intensified. He thought he had her over a barrel, that she would agree to his asinine scheme in a shortsighted attempt to prove she didn’t hate change.

  Moron.

  “I’m very open to the idea of a program that allows all staff to gain experience from job sharing, and I think a mentorship program, where senior management would demonstrate to employees the skills and abilities they’ve gained over the years of being in multiple roles, would be an excellent idea. I’m happy to spearhead those initiatives, and will gladly take part in them myself,” she countered. “I’m also happy to investigate the logistics of your”—she forced herself not to sneer—“job socialization initiative and do a feasibility study, but I can already see several reasons why it won’t work, the first of which is that if you have managers in less senior roles, who will be doing their jobs? Or do you intend to hire new staff?” Surely he didn’t believe anyone could be made to do the work of two full-time jobs? They would have WorkSafe breathing down their necks in no time.

  “Oh, no,” Tom said hastily, no doubt at the idea of spending money on more staff. “That’s the beauty of this idea. It dovetails perfectly with the other new program to give staff experience in management roles.”

  Dani restrained herself from pointing out that having a manager and team member essentially do a job swap was not going to lead to efficient and effective business practices, especially if the team member wasn’t properly prepared and qualified. It was also unlikely to engender confidence in the company from their customers. Instead she said, “But that won’t work in my department, for example, where the management role is across all sections of the workplace, but each team role is in a different section. None of the administrators has enough experience across all company functions to oversee them. The only cross-function role is the manager.” The minute the words were out of her mouth, Dani saw where he was going with this asinine game. Because of course there was one other role in her department that was cross-function: Lisa’s. She hadn’t counted it because she’d only been considering those jobs that had enough seniority for their incumbents to step into her shoes.

  But surely this wasn’t all about Lisa? She hadn’t expressed any ambition—in fact, she barely seemed to want the job she did have. And Tom was a dickhead and a wanker who didn’t have half the business brain his uncle did, but he wasn’t so stupid as to believe that an intern with minimal experience and no drive could handle an office manager role for a company of this size—was he?

  No, she realized suddenly as he smirked at her. This had nothing to do with Lisa. Poor Lisa was just the tool he was using, although no doubt he was enjoying whatever they had going on. This was about getting rid of her.

  He couldn’t sack her, so he wanted her to quit.

  And the best way to make her quit? Force her to take part in some stupid job swap and give her intern the office manager job. Sure, it was entirely illegal. Her employment contract was for the office manager role. HR would back her up, and if he tried to override them, she could take it to the relevant government body, or to court, and ultimately she would win. He couldn’t force her out. She could fight to stay. Her employment record was unblemished. She was popular in the office. Even Harry would be likely to support her—technically the company was still his, even if Tom ran it. In fact, if she went and called Harry now, she could likely put an end to this whole drama.

  That weaselly, fuckwit douchenozzle would not win.

  But as she sat there, thinking of all the things she could do to steal his victory from him… she realized she didn’t want to. She didn’t want to continue working in an environment that was becoming more and more toxic by the day. The company she would miss no longer existed. The people… well, she could still see them. Friday night drinks at the pub across the street was open to all, after all. And she could get another job—experienced office managers were in high demand. HR was contractually obliged to give her a reference based on her performance metrics, whether Tom wanted them to or not, and Harry would gladly give her another—he had been her manager for years. She had months’ worth of leave days owing to her—she could walk out now, and even if they took four weeks in lieu of notice, they would still need to pay her out the rest. She could go home with Ben for a while, be lazy for a month or so, then start her job search while she was over there and only come back when she was ready for formal interviews.

  She would never have to deal with Tom again.

  Smiling, Dani met Tom’s gaze. His expression changed sharply.

  “I resign. Effective immediately. I’ll stop by HR on my way back to my o
ffice, and as soon as the paperwork is signed, I’ll be gone.”

  At first, he looked confused, as though he couldn’t relate her smile to her words. Then that smug look was back.

  “If you’re sure that’s what you want,” he said smoothly. “Such a shame that your fear of change is compelling you to make this decision.”

  For a split second, she considered actually smacking him, but instead she laughed. “Good luck, Tom,” she said, and it almost sounded like she meant it.

  She walked out of his office feeling lighter than she had for a long time. She didn’t even feel guilty about not doing a proper handover. Grinning at Julie, she strolled toward HR, mentally listing the different forms she’d need to complete. At the back of her head, a little voice that sounded suspiciously like her gran was having a celebration, telling her she’d made the right decision.

  The folks in HR, with whom she’d worked closely, were shocked and appalled that she was leaving, and for a moment, Dani felt a pang of doubt.

  Then she thought of Dickhead Tom’s smarmy face and extracted a promise that her termination papers would be ready for her to sign by the time she’d packed up her desk.

  As she headed to her office, she pulled out her phone and called Ben.

  “Are you calling to finish telling me about Dickhead Tom and the intern?” her bestie demanded.

  “No. I’m calling to tell you I’m coming to Monaco.”

  Chapter Four

  “Do you mean we must pack boxes?” Malik heard the incredulity in his own voice as he asked.

  Ben and Dani exchanged looks. “Yes?” Ben said, and for some reason it sounded like a question.

  Malik turned to Léo. “Why can we not hire someone to do this?”

  Dani gasped, and Ben stomped his foot. Léo coughed.

  “Er, perhaps this is something best handled ourselves,” he said, and then once Ben had humphed in satisfaction and turned away, he shrugged and shook his head with an expression of bewilderment.

  Which meant Malik was stuck packing boxes.

  Dani and Ben had a clipboard with a list, and they allocated him to a room and told him to pack anything personal. He took that to mean everything in the room and sighed. At least Dani only had a small house. If he took his time, he might be able to get away with doing only this one room.

  As thrilled as he was that Dani was coming back to Monaco with them for a long visit, he did not like that he’d been designated as a volunteer laborer. Dani apparently had a cousin who was going to stay at her house while she was away, but to quote Dani, “I don’t trust her not to sell everything that isn’t nailed down,” hence the need to pack all personal belongings that Dani might conceivably miss if they went missing. He’d heard mutterings about hiring a van to move the boxes to Dani’s parents’ garage, but Léo had managed to convince them it was a better idea to get professional movers to do it—thankfully. If he’d had to heave boxes in and out of a truck, he might have caused an irreparable rift in his relationship with his cousin.

  Heaving a put-upon sigh that was so impressive, he was sorry nobody had heard it, he taped up a box the way he’d been shown—because Dani and Ben were both such control freaks that they’d had to give a quick lesson on the best way to tape and pack the boxes—and got started with the packing. Surprisingly, it didn’t take long to get into a rhythm—probably helped by the fact that he was in the guest room, and since nothing belonged to him, he wasn’t distracted by it as he worked. He just put items in boxes.

  By the time he’d stripped the surfaces of the dresser and the desk and emptied the desk drawers, he felt… grimy. It was odd, because Dani’s house was clean. None of the surfaces he’d touched had been dusty, not even here in a room that clearly didn’t get a lot of attention. Yet somehow, he was covered in a film of grime. He went to wash his hands before he tackled the dresser drawers, which he’d been told contained some “extra” clothes.

  Half an hour later, he’d successfully dumped the contents of all drawers into boxes. Dani may want to kill him when the time came to unpack, though, because he hadn’t been particularly careful. Plus, he seemed to remember she’d said something about lining the clothes boxes with plastic and tissue paper, which he hadn’t done.

  Well, you got what you paid for.

  There was only the wardrobe left, and he was feeling decidedly buoyant when he flung open the doors.

  It was, surprisingly, almost empty. Seemingly, Dani reserved this space for formalwear, because there were half a dozen or so cocktail and evening dresses hanging there—he suspected one or two were bridesmaid dresses, because his observations so far had indicated that Dani had good taste, and those dresses were ugly.

  Ugly or not, though, he didn’t think he should just dump them into boxes, so he went in search of Dani.

  It took him only a few minutes to find her in her little shoebox house. “Dani?”

  She looked up from taping a box closed. “Hey. You done?”

  “Almost,” he assured her, hoping he wasn’t volunteering himself for extra work. “But do you have garment bags for the dresses in the guest room wardrobe?”

  “Oh.” She straightened. “I hadn’t thought about that. There should be some on the shelf above… or maybe I put them….” She trailed off, pursing her lips, and he resisted the sudden, unwise urge to lean forward and plant a kiss on them. “Let’s go look,” she suggested finally, and led the way back to the guest room—which seemed absurdly tiny with both of them in there.

  Stretching up on tiptoe, she peered at the shelf in the wardrobe. “Yep, they’re at the back—I rolled them up and put an elastic band around them to save space, which is dumb because I never put anything else in there. Can you—”

  Anticipating her request, he stepped closer and reached past her to the rolled-up cylinders of fabric that were presumably garment bags. They’d somehow ended up right in the back corner, which was why he hadn’t seen them before.

  “Thanks, Malik—oh!” Dani turned and almost ran into him, presumably because she hadn’t realized how close he was. She swayed unsteadily and put a hand on his chest for balance.

  Heat exploded through every nerve in his body.

  She drew an unsteady breath, tipping her head back to meet his gaze.

  The tension between them heightened to almost unbearable levels.

  Malik swallowed hard.

  And kissed her.

  Their lips had barely met when somewhere in the house, Ben shouted, “Dani!” and she jerked back, breathing heavily.

  “I….”

  “Apologies,” Malik managed. “It was… an impulse.” Mentally, he kicked himself. Could he have said anything worse?

  Nodding, she muttered, “It was that kind of moment. I’d better see what Ben wants.” She pushed past him, leaving Malik standing alone in front of her wardrobe with the taste of her on his lips.

  Malik glanced over to where Ben and Dani were sleeping curled around each other on one of the plush couches on the private plane, and once more found himself biting back a laugh. He leaned across and nudged Léo.

  “What?” His cousin didn’t look up from his tablet.

  “How can you just pretend they’re normal?” he asked, genuinely curious. He adored Ben, of course, and although before this trip he’d only known Dani from anecdotes and group Skype sessions, he would still have said she was a great person. Now, having seen firsthand her strength at her grandmother’s funeral, then in dealing with her boss, that had only been reinforced. More, at Ben’s insistence they’d made several stops on their way home, spending a few days each in Singapore and Dubai, showing Dani the cosmopolitan cities, and Malik had gotten to know her better. She was fun, more worldly than Ben but just as irreverent. He would gladly count her among his friends—although he supposed technically he already had been, if only by association—and was looking forward to seeing what she made of Monaco. Ben’s reactions when he’d first arrived had been memorable.

  The kiss… they’d
both been pretending it hadn’t happened. Malik wasn’t sure if that was a good thing or not. Admittedly, it would have been… not right to pursue something now, in these first weeks right after her grandmother’s death, when she was grieving and possibly not thinking clearly. But he suspected their aborted kiss was just a precursor of what could happen between them.

  In the meantime, he found it just plain odd the way she and Ben finished each other’s sentences and curled up like puppies for a nap. They could order for each other in any restaurant too, no matter what kind of food. They had a curious closeness that combined the longtime knowledge and affection of siblings with something that transcended the current societal norm. It was… fascinating.

  Léo glanced across at his boyfriend, and his expression softened. “How am I supposed to know what ‘normal’ is?” he asked. “You and I do not exactly live what most people would call ‘normal’ lives. This is their normal.” He raised an eyebrow at Malik. “What does it matter, anyway?”

  Malik sighed. “It doesn’t, I suppose.” Léo was right—the majority of the population did not consider casual use of a private plane “normal.” And Dani and Ben’s relationship was sweet, even if he didn’t fully understand it.

  “Shouldn’t you be working?” Léo asked, his attention back on his tablet, where he was reviewing financial reports for some investment he was considering. Malik’s eyes darted over to Ben and Dani again, but they were still soundly asleep. “Relax,” Léo assured him. “They were up half the night talking about… something. They’ll probably sleep the whole way.”

  Malik considered that. He really did need to do some work, but the last thing he wanted was to answer questions about what he was doing—or worse, have someone catch a glimpse of his laptop screen. But if they were going to be asleep for a few more hours….

  He pulled out his laptop and booted it up. Léo glanced over again. “How are your revisions going?” They never, ever discussed his work in front of other people—when they were conscious, anyway. Léo was one of fewer than half a dozen people who knew he actually did work, much less what he did, and the others were all contractually involved professionals who were obliged to respect his privacy and keep his secret. Not even Lucien knew, which had been difficult for Malik over the years, but he just wasn’t ready to share. Certainly his parents didn’t know—he could just imagine his father’s reaction.