An Executive Decision (6 page)

Chapter Eight

Dee’s first day on the job, Ellis cleared his calendar and spent the time briefing her on her new responsibilities – especially the more urgent client files she was expected to be up to speed on immediately. Thanks to the connections Dee had made while working with Jasper and McDowell she was familiar with most of the customers. Without such an advantage she was sure she would have been completely overwhelmed.

‘Are you finding everything you need all right in Beverly’s office –’ Ellis caught himself and forced a pained smile. ‘Your office. As for Beverly’s jungle –’ He cleared his throat and blinked. For a second, he drifted away. His eyes were dark and unreadable, half hidden behind glasses that reflected the bright sunlight bathing the room. Then his attention returned. With a controlled intake of breath, the lines of his face dissolved back into neutrality. ‘We can have these plants removed whenever you like.’

She felt a tightness in her own throat, empathy mixed with her own pain of loss as she remembered the last time she had sat in the office with Beverly. She swallowed hard and squared her shoulders. ‘If it’s all the same to you, I’d rather keep them. They remind me of Beverly, and I like that. Sandra can show me how to take care of the more exotic plants. Besides, Beverly told me once that photosynthesis increases the oxygen content.’ She nodded to the teetering mountain of files that now graced her side of the conference table. ‘These days my brain can use all the oxygen it can get.’

Just then Sandra brought in sandwiches so the two could continue their efforts through lunch.

‘You’ll like working with Sandra,’ Ellis said as they watched her leave. ‘She was Beverly’s secretary even before there was a Pneuma Inc. She knows the company better that I do. She must have been a psychologist in a previous life, or possibly a psychic. If you’re ever in doubt about anything, ask Sandra. And –’ he shuffled through the stacks of files in front of him ‘– she can also help you negotiate some of the more difficult personnel problems you may face.’

‘Personnel problems?’

‘Oh, it’s nothing, really. A few people here were unhappy I hired an outsider.’ He watched her as though he was sizing up an athlete for strength and endurance, and she held his gaze in spite of the clench in her stomach at one more problem she could do without. ‘Nothing you can’t handle after being Jasper and McDowell’s only female rep. That place has a reputation for being a good ole boys’ club.’

It was true, the early days at Jasper and McDowell had been challenging. But she had overcome that personnel issue by being the best in her field. Problem solved. She doubted it would be that easy at Pneuma Inc.

Aside from attending several meetings together, Dee hardly saw Ellis those first three weeks. But the growing mountain of files on her computer was proof he was always just an email away. Even when he was in, what he couldn’t pass on through the miracle of IT, he sent through the secretaries. She had long since resigned herself to the fact that he had totally forgotten what had happened between the two of them in his office after Beverly went missing. He was definitely not giving her preferential treatment. He wasn’t giving her any treatment at all, actually. The secretaries got way more of his attention than she did, though she seldom had time to dwell on what now seemed like the distant past.

She arrived at the office early and stayed late. The working day was only over when she fell asleep with whichever client file she had taken to bed that night. And even then the job invaded her dreams, often with Alan Marston berating her in front of all of Pneuma Inc., while Ellis stood by, shaking his head in disappointment and commenting repeatedly on how she had let Beverly down. Then she would wake up in a cold sweat, unable to go back to sleep. It was just as well. There was always plenty of work to do. She woke up groggy every morning before the alarm went off, too stressed to go back to sleep, and then the whole process started over again. It seemed like every night she got home later and slept less. She was sure she was running on adrenalin by now, but with the help of lots of caffeine and an acute fear of failure, she was managing. When panic threatened to take control, she buried herself deeper in the mountain of files and had some more caffeine, reminding herself Ellis and Beverly had faith in her, and she wasn’t about to fail them.

Everything was gearing up for a big teleconference with Marston and Scribal Paper, in which Dee was to give the financial projections and a short spiel on some of the research Wade Crittenden had been doing. Wade never made public appearances, nearly hyperventilated at the very thought, so it was up to her to promote Pneuma Inc.’s latest brainchild. At best, it was a temporary fix, and an effort to convince Marston not to consider Jamison Holding’s tantalizing deal of a cheap clear-cut in a part of the world no one cared about. The proposal would be a hard sell, definitely – and one complicated by the fact that, since Beverly’s death, Marston was still refusing to work with anyone but Ellis. Hopefully the presentation would help ease her into Marston’s good graces, of which there seemed to be precious few these days.

The problem was she hadn’t received the financial information she needed from accounting. Her requests had gone unanswered and, at last, she gave up and decided to go after the file in person.

When she got off the elevator on the sixth floor, she could hear the yelling halfway down the hall. She was surprised to find the uproar was coming from Tally Barnes’s office, and the door was standing wide open. It wasn’t hard to hear what was going on; in fact, she figured most of accounting could hear.

‘What is it, Pneuma Inc.’s new policy to hire morons? And fat ones at that. If you can’t follow simple directions, maybe we can find you a job with the janitorial staff. It shouldn’t take too much brain power to push a mop, and from the looks of you, the exercise would do you good.’

‘But you told me to –’

‘Don’t tell me what I told you. I know what I told you.’ Tally shoved a file at the flustered woman. ‘Get out of here, and don’t come back until you get it right.’

Through the open door, Dee could see a dressed-for-success blonde with shoulder-length hair and artfully done make-up seated behind the desk. She would have been attractive if not for the venom spewing past her carefully painted lips. She was in mid-rant to one of the secretarial staff Dee had met earlier. The woman, who looked to be barely out of her teens, stood red-faced, shifting from foot to foot.

Dee was about to tiptoe away quietly and come back when things were calmer, but it was too late. Tally had seen her.

‘Dee Henning! What a pleasant surprise. I wondered when you were going to do us the honour.’

The secretary apologised quietly as she pushed past Dee with her head down, but Dee thought she saw tears. She tried to offer the poor thing a reassuring smile, but she was interrupted.

‘Never mind her. She’s just incompetent, like so many people these days. I’m Tally Barnes.’ She stood to offer Dee an overly firm handshake, looking down at her from several extra inches of height. Her long acrylic nails made her grip a bit worrisome. ‘Everyone at Pneuma Inc. has been talking about Dee Henning, the wonder girl. At last we meet.’ She offered Dee a smile pressed tightly against impossibly white teeth.

Dee remembered Tally Barnes. Hers had been one of the resumes she’d reviewed for the executive assistant’s position, one she’d found reasonably impressive. She knew the woman was more qualified for the job than she was. Perhaps she would have felt a little more guilty about the whole situation had she not just seen Tally’s mistreatment of the young secretary. Was Tally one of those personnel problems Ellis had mentioned that Sandra could help her negotiate? She hoped not.

‘I suppose you came for this?’ Tally sat back down and nodded to the file labelled “Scribal” lying on the edge of her desk. ‘I’m sorry I didn’t get it up to you. It’s been a madhouse down here with no end in sight. I’m sure Ellis told you that I’ve had to take up the slack since Beverly died. Of course, I’m more than happy to do my part, even if it means we’re short-handed in other areas.’

Dee took the offered file. ‘I’m hoping I’ll be able to relieve some of that burden. I’ll be taking over the account for Scribal soon. That should help.’

‘I have to say I’m a little surprised that Ellis would want to rock the boat with Alan Marston right now.’ She leaned forward over the desk as though imparting a big secret. ‘I mean, Alan isn’t exactly easy to work with, Dee. I’m just now getting the man to trust me a little bit. I’m more than happy to liaise with him and do my part to make your transition easier. Heaven knows you’ve got enough to think about without his nasty tantrums.’

‘Thanks,’ Dee said. ‘That’s very kind.’

‘So tell me, are you spending another night in the Dungeon?’ Tally asked. ‘Oh, don’t look so surprised. Gossip travels fast at Pneuma Inc., and there’s been a lot of speculation as to what Ellis’s new executive assistant is doing every night down in R and D.’

Dee smiled. ‘Just some projections Wade’s helping me with.’

Tally raised an eyebrow. ‘Sounds intriguing.’ Just then her phone rang. ‘Damn it, Louisa, how did I end up working with someone who has the IQ of a peanut?’ she yelled into the receiver.

Dee chose that moment to make her exit, waving casually at Tally, who had moved on from IQ to insulting the secretary’s fashion sense. As Dee stepped into the elevator and the doors shut out the ravings in accounting, she felt pretty sure she wouldn’t be soliciting any more of Tally Barnes’s help than absolutely necessary, nor would she be divulging any project details. 

Chapter Nine

Tally glared at Dee’s back as she left. Being nice to the little bitch felt like broken glass in the pit of her stomach. She slammed down the phone and looked at her watch. Only 15 minutes till quitting time. She began to pack up her things. Dee Henning certainly hung out in R and D a lot these days. She wondered if it had something to do with the mysterious
ESC
that kept turning up in the emails she’d downloaded from Beverly’s computer.

She’d asked Wade about it, but he didn’t seem to know, or wasn’t paying enough attention to the question to know if he knew or not. Wade was the stereotypical absent-minded professor. She picked up the phone, and dialled his extension.

‘What?’ came the answer after the seventh ring. She was lucky he answered at all.

‘Oh, hi Wade, it’s Tally, Tally Barnes. Accounting?’

‘What?’ he said again. It was a good thing for Pneuma Inc. that what the man lacked in social skills he made up for in genius.

‘Are you going bowling tonight?’ He loved bowling, and claimed to have gotten some of his best ideas at the bowling alley.

‘Nope.’ She could hear him rattling around working on something, clearly not paying her much attention, which was exactly what she wanted. ‘Meeting with Dee Henning about Trouvères. Running projections, numbers.’

She put on her best dumb blond voice. ‘I would have thought Dee would be spending her time on Scribal rather than on some little French company.’

‘Of course she’s spending time on Scribal. What the hell do you think she’s spending time on? I gotta go. I’m busy.’ He hung up. She didn’t take offence. That was just Wade Crittenden.

All Tally knew of Trouvères came from a glance at one of Beverly’s files. She had no idea what they did, or why they mattered to Scribal. Did Trouvères have anything to do with the
ESC
?

On her laptop, she pulled up the most intriguing email exchange between Beverly and Ellis and perused it for the thousandth time.

B: I’ve been thinking a lot about the ESC lately, Ellis, and I think it’s time. When we hire my replacement, I think we need to implement the ESC.

E: lol. I can hardly put that in the requirements for Dee Henning to pass on to the lucky lottery winner, can I?

B: Of course not! It’s a secret weapon. And it won’t be a lottery. That’s why we’ll have to choose my replacement very carefully. But when we do, when we have just the right person and we implement the ESC, well, Ellis, I think you’ll be taking Pneuma, Inc. to greater heights than either of us ever dreamed of.

E: Still lol! You get Dee Henning to find me just the right person for the job, and we’ll do it.

B: Oh, don’t you worry, Ellis. If you’ve got the balls for it, I’ll find you just what you’re looking for, and we can watch productivity soar. Won’t that just sweeten my retirement package?

Beverly always was blunt. Tally had been on the receiving end of the woman’s straight talk more than a few times. ‘Bitch,’ she whispered under her breath.

Just before she closed up shop to head home, her BlackBerry buzzed with a message from her Visa card company, thanking her for her payment. The card had been maxed and then some. What the hell was going on? A quick check online showed that the balance had been paid in full. Before she could call the card company, the soft tinkle of a bell alerted her to the arrival of a text on the new phone Terrance Jamison had given her for all their communications. She pulled it out of her bag. The text read.

A gift for a gift. I reward the deserving.

‘Fuck,’ she whispered, her breath steaming the screen of her phone. She had sent Jamison copies of the proposal that was to be given to Marston tomorrow. It wasn’t the complete proposal, but it was as much as she could get hold of: it was enough for what Jamison needed. Had the man really just paid off her maxed-out Visa gold card?

She texted back with trembling fingers.

How did you do that?

The answer was almost immediate.

I’m rich, remember? Now go celebrate, Tally. You can afford it.

Dee spent most of the night before the teleconference with Marston cooped up in the Dungeon, as his lab in R and D was universally known. Wade had one of the best teams of scientists and engineers in the country working for him, but the Dungeon was his domain, separate from the state-of-the-art facilities where everyone else in R and D worked. It was all she could do to contain her excitement. She couldn’t wait until they were ready to share their findings with Ellis. During the course of the evening there had been a couple of conference calls to Paris, a pizza delivery in the wee hours, lots of coffee, and lots of scheming. Dee had the connections from her time at Jasper and McDowell, and Wade had the technical expertise that just might be able to pull the plan together.

Back home, she read through her presentation for the teleconference one more time before she headed off to bed. It was a mid-morning meeting, so she set her alarm and settled in for what would be little more than a catnap. At least, that was her plan.

It was the sun streaming through her window that woke her. That was the first indication something was wrong. Since she’d begun work at Pneuma Inc., Dee had always caught the sunrise over the freeway just before she exited for the Pneuma Building. Somewhere in the back of her brain, a
beep, beep, beep
got louder and louder. It took a second to register that it was her alarm. She rolled over to turn it off, and her stomach turned to ice. It was almost eight o’clock! The alarm had been going off for nearly three hours. How could she not have heard it? She jumped from the bed, jamming her toe on the nightstand as she reached for her BlackBerry and punched in Ellis’s number. There was no answer. She punched in a quick message, which didn’t go. Then she remembered IT had had the network down all night for maintenance. Looked like they were still finishing up. She cranked the shower and stripped. The meeting was at nine. If she hurried, she just might make it.

And she probably would have had it not been for construction on I-5. Ellis still wasn’t answering his phone, and neither Lynn nor Sandra seemed to be at their desks. Dee left messages at the switchboard, but could do nothing else except sit and curse the traffic. She stumbled into the executive suites at 10:03, just as Tally Barnes stepped out of Ellis’s office.

Tally was the last person Dee wanted to see, but it was too late to duck behind anything. She was caught like a rabbit in the headlights.

Tally offered her a smile that was all sweetness and light. ‘Thank God! Dee, you’re here at last. I was worried sick that something awful had happened to you. Ellis had Lynn call me in when you didn’t show up. Naturally, I dropped everything and came in to pinch-hit for you. Are you all right?’

Dee nodded, forcing herself to remain calm. ‘Is Ellis in?’

‘Of course.’ Tally laid a solicitous hand on Dee’s arm. ‘I’m sorry, Dee, but he’s not in a very good mood. I mean, I’m sure whatever happened, you have an excuse, and, well, Ellis is a reasonable man. Good luck. I’m sure it’ll be OK.’ She squeezed Dee’s arm, then hurried past in a wave of some spicy perfume, her heels click-clicking on the floor as she headed for the elevator.

For a second, Dee feared she would pass out. Nothing like this had ever happened to her before, and worst of all, there was no one to blame but herself. She took two deep breaths, knocked on the door, and stepped inside.

‘Sit down.’ Ellis didn’t look up from his laptop.

She obeyed.

He continued with his work, giving her no indication as to what he was thinking.

She sat stiff-backed, clutching her BlackBerry for dear life. Waiting.

‘IT had a major glitch this morning,’ he said, still not looking at her. ‘The meeting was late getting started.’

‘I’m sorry,’ she said.

At last he pushed his chair back and looked up at her. ‘Marston refused the proposal.’

‘I’m sorry,’ she said again.

‘Not that it was a huge surprise, but I could have done without him berating me for hiring someone incompetent and irresponsible to take Beverly’s place. That didn’t exactly make my day. What the hell happened?’

She felt the heat rising up her spine and onto her ears. ‘I overslept.’ She forced the words out into the chilled room.

‘You overslept?’

‘Yes.’ She nodded imperceptibly, feeling the scrutiny of his glare.

For a long moment, he just stared at her. She forced herself to meet his gaze and held her tongue, afraid if she tried to say anything she’d burst into tears, and she despised women who cried.

‘That’s it, then? You overslept.’

She nodded again, swallowing hard.

‘Well, that’s a relief.’ He leaned forward in his chair and rose, almost as though he were going to leap over the desk and pounce. The tension in his body was palpable. ‘I was afraid you were lying on the freeway somewhere in a pool of blood. I’m so relieved that it was nothing so dire, and that you simply overslept.’ His voice gradually grew louder until he wasn’t exactly yelling, but neither was there any way she could miss his message as each word drove her deeper into her chair until she felt as trapped as if she had been tied there.

‘I’m sorry.’ She forced a whisper through the block in her throat, but the stinging behind her eyes warned that a swift exit would be necessary if she were to avoid the flood.

‘Sorry? You’re sorry? Tally had to pick up the slack. Do you have any idea how that looked? Just when I was starting to make progress with Marston, just when the man was beginning to listen to reason, you oversleep. You made Jamison’s deal seem all the sweeter, that’s what you did. Now, tell me what the hell’s going on.’

‘Pardon?’

He moved from behind his desk and paced the carpet in front of her like a bull ready to charge. ‘You’re supposed to be working to shore up the situation with Scribal. I told you up front that’s your major concern at the moment, then not only do you oversleep and miss an important meeting, but I find out you’ve been working on something behind my back.’ Before she could respond, he turned on her. ‘Is Trouvères what you’ve been staying up half the night and missing meetings for? When I hired you, I never thought you, of all people, would neglect your responsibilities.’

‘I’m not neglecting anything. If you would just –’

He interrupted her. ‘Don’t think just because I gave you this job, you suddenly know it all. I took a big risk hiring you.’ He stopped pacing and rooted himself in front of her, close enough that she had to strain her neck to look up at him. ‘You want to do something; you bring it to me first. You’re not ready to make that kind of decision on your own. You don’t have the experience it takes to … To … You’re not Beverly.’

His words were a hard slap, felt more than heard above the roar in her ears. She wasn’t sure whether the ragged breathing her brain finally registered in the chasm of silence that followed his tirade was his or her own.

The phone rang into the charged atmosphere, and Ellis jerked it from its cradle in a stranglehold. ‘This had better be good, Lynn. Wade? What the hell does he want? Can’t it wait? We’re not finished yet. I can what?’ He heaved a sigh of resignation and slammed the receiver back down. ‘Wade wants to see you right now. He says I can get back to you on this, and believe me, I intend to.’ He nodded toward the door. ‘Well, go on; at least don’t keep him waiting. Pick up the notes on the meeting from Sandra.’

She stood on trembling legs and turned to go. As she reached for the door, he called to her. ‘Dee, I strongly suggest you make no more attempts to prove Marston right about you.’

Sandra joined her in the hall. ‘I have the meeting notes for you.’

‘Just put them on my desk. Wade wants to see me.’

Sandra nodded. ‘Yes, I know. I told him he did. And I told him to give you a few minutes in the ladies’ to freshen up first.’ She offered a reassuring smile and turned on her heels.

Still breathing like a freight train, Ellis watched Dee disappear, shutting the door behind her. He grabbed the phone and called his secretary. ‘Lynn, hold all my calls. I don’t want to be disturbed … How long? Until I say otherwise, that’s how long.’ He slammed the receiver down, snapped his laptop shut, and stormed down the hall to the lounge.

He shoved his way out of his jacket and tossed it across the wing-backed chair, then practically strangled himself in his efforts to loosen his tie. From the coffee table he grabbed up the remote, and plunged the room into the wild, raucous ride of the third movement of Beethoven’s
Moonlight Sonata
. Then he dropped onto the sofa struggling to breath, struggling to regain control, struggling to figure out what the hell had just happened. All through the meeting, when Dee didn’t show up, he was terrified that something horrible had happened; terrified that he would lose Dee the same way he had lost Beverly. And the relief he felt at seeing her. Jesus, the relief was like nothing he’d ever felt before.

If Lynn hadn’t called, if Wade hadn’t demanded Dee’s presence … If Ellis had had one more second with her, he would have yanked her up from the chair and fucked her senseless right there in the middle of the day with all of Pneuma Inc. just outside his door, fucked her as though he might never get another chance, fucked her as though his life depended on it, and that’s exactly how it felt. He wiped cold sweat from his forehead, struggling to breathe. If he’d lost her, Jesus! He couldn’t even bear the thought.

He jerked open his fly and sucked a harsh breath as he released himself into his hand and began to tug on his cock like the world was coming to an end. Christ, he couldn’t go on like this. It felt like he was always either avoiding her or jerking off thinking about her. And fuck if he wasn’t thinking about her all the time; the shape of her, the feel of her, the sass of her. He’d never wanted anything so badly. And then – and then she’d fucked up so royally that all he wanted to do was punish her, to turn her over his knee for giving him such a scare, to – to … To fuck her until she couldn’t walk.

The image flashed through his head, of him bending her over his desk and shoving up her skirt, of him ripping aside her panties, of him making her sorry she’d overslept, of him making her sorry she’d made him feel all those things, things he didn’t want to feel, of him dropping his trousers and shoving his cock up into her very contrite, very wet slit and … That was it. Before he could reach for his handkerchief, before he could even think about making it to the bathroom, he convulsed his load onto the coffee table to the driving piano crescendo hammering into his ears and to visions of Dee Henning bent over his desk, moaning and writhing beneath him.