Hard to Handle (20 page)

He frowned. “I don’t know.” He looked down at her. “We, uh, don’t have to advertise it, do we?”

She understood. It was a little uncomfortable going out with a committed man, but it wasn’t as if he were married or anything. Besides, his girlfriend treated him like dirt. She wouldn’t.

“No, we don’t,” she agreed. “I’ll look forward to it.”

“Great!” He beamed, too. “I’ll phone you Friday night and we’ll decide where and when to meet, okay?”

“Okay!”

She was on a new track, a new life, and she felt like a new person. She’d started going to a retro coffeehouse in the evenings, where they served good coffee and people read poetry on stage or played folk music with guitars. Jodie fit right in with the artsy crowd. She’d even gotten up for the first time and read one of her poems, a sad one about rejected love that Alexander had inspired. Everyone applauded, even the owner, a man named Johnny. The boost of confidence she felt made her less inhibited, and the next time she read her poetry, she wasn’t afraid of the crowd. She was reborn. She was the new, improved Jodie, who could conquer the world. And now Brody wanted to date her. She was delighted.

That feeling lasted precisely two hours. She came back in after lunch to find Alexander Cobb perched on her desk, in her small cubicle, waiting for her.

She hadn’t had enough time to get over her disastrous last
meeting with him. She wanted to turn and run, but that wasn’t going to work. He’d already spotted her.

She walked calmly to her desk—although her heart was doing cartwheels—and put her purse in her lower desk drawer.

“Hello, Alexander,” she said somberly. “What can I do for you?”

Her attitude sent him reeling. Jodie had always been unsettled and full of joy when she came upon him unexpectedly. He didn’t realize how much he’d enjoyed the headlong reaction until it wasn’t there anymore.

He stared at her across the desk, puzzled and disturbed. “What happened wasn’t anybody’s fault,” he said stiffly. “Don’t wear yourself out regretting it.”

She relaxed a little, but only a little. “I drank too much. I won’t do it a second time,” she assured him. “How’s Margie?”

“Quiet,” he said. The one word was alarming. Margie was never quiet.

“Why?” she asked.

Shrugging, he picked up a paper clip from her desk and studied it. “She can’t get anywhere with her designs. She expected immediate success, and she can’t even get a foot in the door.”

“I’m sorry. She’s really good.”

He nodded and his green eyes met hers narrowly. “I need to talk to you,” he said. “Can you meet me downstairs at the coffee bar when you get off from work?”

She didn’t want to, and it was obvious. “Couldn’t you just phone me at home?” she countered.

He scowled. “No. I can’t discuss this over the phone.” She was still hesitating. “Do you have other plans?” he asked.

She shook her head. “No. I don’t want to miss my bus.”

“I can drive you…”

“No! I mean—” she lowered her voice “—no, I won’t put you to any trouble. There are two buses. The second runs an hour after the first one.”

“It won’t take an hour,” he assured her. But he felt as if something was missing from their conversation. She didn’t tease him, taunt him, antagonize him. In fact, she looked very much as if she wanted to avoid him altogether.

“All right, then,” she said, sitting down at her desk. “I’ll see you there about five after five.”

He nodded, pausing at the opening of the cubicle to look back at her. It was a bad time to remember the taste of her full, soft mouth under his. But he couldn’t help it. She was wearing a very businesslike dark suit with a pale pink blouse, her long hair up in a bun. She should have looked like a businesswoman, but she was much too vulnerable, too insecure, to give that image. She didn’t have the self-confidence to rate a higher job, but he couldn’t tell her that. Jodie had a massive inferiority complex. The least thing hurt her. As he’d hurt her.

The muscles in his jaw tautened. “This doesn’t suit you,” he said abruptly, nodding around the sterile little glass and wood cage they kept her in. “Won’t they even let you have a potted plant?”

She was aghast at the comment. He never made personal remarks. She shifted restlessly in her chair. “It isn’t dignified,” she stammered.

He moved a step closer. “Jodie, a job shouldn’t mimic jail. If you don’t like what you do, where you do it, you’re wasting the major part of your life.”

She knew that. She tasted panic when she swallowed. But jobs were thin on the ground and she had the chance for advancement in this one. She put to the back of her mind Brody’s comments on her shortcomings as a manager.

“I like my job very much,” she lied.

His eyes slid over her with something like possession. “No, you don’t. Pity. You have a gift for computer programming. I’ll bet you haven’t written a single routine since you’ve been here.”

Her face clenched. “Don’t you have something to do? Because I’m busy.”

“Suit yourself. As soon after five as you can make it, please,” he said, adding deliberately, “I have a dinner date.”

With Kirry. Always with Kirry. She knew it. She hated Kirry. She hated him, too. But she smiled. “No problem. See you.” She turned on her computer and pulled up her memo file to see what tasks were upcoming. She ignored Alexander, who gave her another long, curious appraisal before he left her alone.

She felt the sting of his presence all the way to her poor heart. He was so much a part of her life that it was like being amputated when she thought of a lifetime without his complicated presence.

For the first time, she thought about moving to another city. Ritter Oil Corporation had a headquarters office in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Perhaps she could get a transfer there…and do what, she asked herself? She was barely qualified for the predominantly clerical job she was doing now, and painfully unqualified for firing people, even if they deserved it. She’d let her pride force her into taking this job, because Alexander kept asking when she was going to start working after her graduation from business college. He probably hadn’t meant that he thought she was taking advantage of his financial help—but she took it that way. So she went to work for the first company that offered her a job, just to shut him up.

In retrospect, she should have looked a little harder. She’d been under consideration for a job with the local police department, as a computer specialist. She had the skills to write programs, to re
structure software. She was a whiz at opening protected files, finding lost documents, tracking down suspicious e-mails and finding ways to circumvent write-protected software. Her professor had recommended her for a career in law enforcement as a cyber crime specialist, but she’d jumped at the first post-college job that came her way.

Now here she was, stuck in a dead-end job that she didn’t even like, kept in a cubicle like a box of printer paper and only taken out when some higher-up needed her to take a letter or organize a schedule, or compile his notes…

She had a vision of herself as a cardboard box full of supplies and started giggling.

Another administrative assistant stuck her head in the cubicle. “Better keep it down,” she advised softly. “They’ve had a complaint about the noise levels in here.”

“I’m only laughing to myself,” Jodie protested, shocked.

“They want us quiet while we’re working. No personal phone calls, no talking to ourselves—and there’s a new memo about the length of time people are taking in the bathroom…”

“Oh, good God!” Jodie burst out furiously.

The other woman put a feverish hand to her lips and looked around nervously. “Shhh!” she cautioned.

Jodie stood up and gave the woman her best military salute.

Sadly the vice president in charge of personnel was walking by her cubicle at the time. He stopped, eyeing both women suspiciously.

Already in trouble, and not giving a damn anymore, Jodie saluted him, too.

Surprisingly he had to suppress a smile. He wiped it off quickly. “Back to work, girls,” he cautioned and kept walking.

The other woman moved closer. “Now see what you’ve done!” she hissed. “We’ll both be on report!”

“If he tries to put me on report, I’ll put him on report, as well,” Jodie replied coolly. “Nobody calls me a ‘girl’ in a working office!”

The other woman threw up her hands and walked out.

Jodie turned her attention back to her chores and put the incident out of her mind. But it was very disturbing to realize how much authority the company had over her working life, and she didn’t like it. She wondered if old man Ritter, the head of the corporation, encouraged such office politics. From what she’d heard about him, he was something of a renegade. He didn’t seem to like rules and regulations very much, but, then, he couldn’t be everywhere. Maybe he didn’t even know the suppressive tactics his executives used to keep employees under control here.

Being cautioned never to speak was bad enough, and personalization of cubicles was strictly forbidden by company policy. But to have executives complain about the time employees spent in the bathroom made Jodie furious. She had a girlfriend who was a diabetic, and made frequent trips to the rest room in school. Some teachers had made it very difficult for her until her parents had requested a teacher conference to explain their daughter’s health problem. She had a feeling no sort of conference would help at this job.

She went back to work, but the day had been disturbing in more ways than one.

At exactly five minutes past quitting time, she walked into the little coffee shop downstairs. Alexander had a table, and he was waiting for her. He’d already ordered the French Vanilla cappuccino she liked so much, along with chocolate biscotti.

She was surprised by his memory of her preferences. She draped her old coat over the empty chair at the corner table and sat down. Fortunately the shop wasn’t crowded, as it was early in the evening, and there were no customers anywhere near them.

“Right on time,” Alexander noted, checking his expensive wristwatch.

“I usually am,” she said absently, sipping her cappuccino. “This is wonderful,” she added with a tiny smile.

He seemed puzzled. “Don’t you come here often?”

“Actually, it’s not something I can fit into my budget,” she confessed.

Now it was shock that claimed his features. “You make a good salary,” he commented.

“If you want to rent someplace with good security, it costs more,” she told him. “I have to dress nicely for work, and that costs, too. By the time I add in utilities and food and bus fare, there isn’t a lot left. We aren’t all in your income tax bracket, Alexander,” she added without rancor.

He let his attention wander to his own cappuccino. He sipped it quietly.

“I never think of you as being in a different economic class,” he said.

“Don’t you?” She knew better, and her thoughts were bitter. She couldn’t forget what she’d overheard him say to his sister, that she was only blue collar and she didn’t fit in with them.

He sat up straight. “Something’s worrying you,” he said flatly. “You’re not the same. You haven’t been since the party.”

Her face felt numb. She couldn’t lower her pride enough to tell him what she’d overheard. It was just too much, on top of everything else that had gone haywire lately.

“Why can’t you talk to me?” he persisted.

She looked up at him with buried resentments, hurt pride, and outraged sentiment plain in her cold eyes. “It would be like talking to the floor,” she said. “If you’re here, it’s because you want something. So, what is it?”

His expression was eloquent. He sipped cappuccino carefully and then put the delicate cup in its saucer with precision.

“Why do you think I want something?”

She felt ancient. “Margie invites me to parties so that I can cook and clean up the kitchen, if Jessie isn’t available,” she said in a tone without inflection. “Or if she’s sick and needs nursing. You come to see me if you need something typed, or a computer program tweaked, or some clue traced back to an ISP online. Neither of you ever come near me unless I’m useful.”

His breath caught. “Jodie, it’s not like that!”

She looked at him steadily. “Yes, it is. It always has been. I’m not complaining,” she added at once. “I don’t know what I would have done if it hadn’t been for you and Margie. I owe you more than I can ever repay in my lifetime. It’s just that since you’re here, there’s something you need done, and I know it. No problem. Tell me what you want me to do.”

His eyes closed and opened again, on a pained expression. It was true. He and Margie had used her shamelessly, but without realizing they were so obvious. He hated the thought.

“It’s a little late to develop a conscience,” she added with a faint smile. “It’s out of character, anyway. Come on. What is it?”

He toyed with his biscotti. “I told you that we’re tracking a link to the drug cartel.”

She nodded.

“In your company,” he added.

“You said I couldn’t help,” she reminded him.

“Well, I was wrong. In fact, you’re the only one who can help me with this.”

A few weeks ago, she’d have joked about getting a badge or a gun. Now she just waited for answers. The days of friendly teasing were long gone.

He met her searching gaze. “I want you to pretend that we’re developing a relationship,” he said, “so that I have a reason to hang around your division.”

She didn’t react. She was proud of herself. It would have been painfully easy to dump the thick, creamy cappuccino all over his immaculate trousers and anoint him with the cream.

His eyebrow jerked. “Yes, you’re right, I’m using you. It’s the only way I can find to do surveillance. I can’t hang around Jasper or people will think I’m keen on him!”

That thought provoked a faint smile. “His wife wouldn’t like it.”

He shrugged. “Will you do it?”

She hesitated.

He anticipated that. He took out a photograph and slid it across the table to her.

She picked it up. It was of two young boys, about five or six, both smiling broadly. They had thick, straight black hair and black eyes and dark complexions. They looked Latin. She looked back up at Alexander with a question in her eyes.