The Proviso (45 page)

She was quiet, so he looked up to see her at the
window staring down at the maze of empty cubicles.

“Eilis?”

“Thank you,” she said, so softly he almost thought
he’d imagined it.

He approached her hesitantly. “What’d you say?”

She cleared her throat and looked over her shoulder,
but down at the floor. “I said thank you. It was long overdue three
years ago.”

Color Sebastian shocked. “Well,” he said gruffly, “I
would’ve fired you, too, if you weren’t the CEO.”

“And I’d deserve it.”

Sebastian wondered how hard to come down on her,
since he’d already been down this road and he didn’t like repeating
himself. But.

“You specialize in HR services, Eilis. What kind of
image do you present when you can’t manage your own human resources
issues? This is your product. It needs to be a model operation. I
would suggest you hire someone who can fire people if it makes you
that squeamish.”

She said nothing for a moment. “I didn’t know who to
fire, where to start. It got so complex, so out of control. I was
going through the trial and trying to keep HRP together at the same
time. I couldn’t pay attention to it and I had to trust that they’d
at least keep it steady. I didn’t have time to figure it out before
Knox put me in receivership and he didn’t ask me if I had a plan
before he did it.”

Oh. Hmm. That explained a lot.

“I’m curious,” he said softly. “What happened to the
ruthless bitch who built this place?”

Her body didn’t move; she didn’t betray anything. He
waited for her to calmly query him as to why he’d been so vulgar.
Again.

“I had to change,” she finally said, still no
passion in her voice. “I couldn’t make the deals I really needed to
because my reputation preceded me, but I didn’t have enough
leverage or power yet to get anything that way.”

She stopped speaking and Sebastian continued to
watch her carefully. “So now you’re a lady of excruciating
propriety—very effective weapon, by the way—and somewhere along the
line you bought your own act and stopped being a hard ass when you
needed to be.”

“Yes.”

“Which do you like more?”

She didn’t reply for a while, then she said, softly,
“Some happy medium I can’t figure out how to get to.”

Sebastian’s fertile mind filled with images of how
that would manifest and he couldn’t help his arousal: a blonde
bombshell in a little black dress being a completely brilliant
businessbitch at the front of a conference room.
Yummy.

“The people you fired today are going to talk.”

Oh, he supposed he’d let her change the subject. “I
know and it’ll hurt HRP’s reputation here in town for a little
while, but Wall Street will love it. This ship has to be tight and
working like a well-oiled machine with good products before we can
take it public.”

“Please don’t do that to me,” she murmured.

There went his arousal. “Eilis,” he said harshly,
wrapping his hands around her arms and turning her to face him, “do
you know
why
Knox asked me to take this receivership?”

“I think so.”

“Uh huh. Well, I’ll save you the embarrassment of
being wrong and just tell you. He picked me because he likes you,
which, by the way, is very rare so treasure it. I am the only man
from Denver to Chicago who can do what he wanted done with this
company and
not
take a piece of it or all of it. He knew
this was a salvageable company. He thinks that you’re teachable and
cooperative, and he knows how my Fix-or-Raid policy works. So now I
want to ask you something: How would you have felt if Fen Hilliard
had been appointed your trustee?”

She stiffened slightly.

“That’s what I thought. Lucky for you that
Knox
and
I
are at war with Fen, but don’t think Fen
didn’t try to make an end run around Knox to get this receivership
for himself. Knox asked me to do this because Fen won’t dare cross
me.”

Well, that and to give him first pick of the
art.

He had her complete attention and a very queer
expression streaked across her face. Considering she never showed
emotion when she was in costume and her face makeup hid most of
whatever she did show, Sebastian’s gut started to churn, which only
meant one thing: The CEO—any CEO—was hiding something from him.

“Fen tried to get this receivership?” she asked
slowly.

“Yes, he did. He went to a lot of trouble to get
it.”

“And you and Fen aren’t secretly working together?”
she asked even more carefully, pulling herself back into
character.

“No.” He released her, though he didn’t really want
to. “To answer your question. The alliance that apparently nobody’s
figured out is me and Knox.”

“He really is your attorney?”

“Yes.”

“Nobody I know believes that.”

He grunted. “I don’t know why. The press has made
that very clear.”

“Sebastian, the news changes hour to hour concerning
you, Knox, Fen, and OKH. The fact that you don’t talk makes it all
very confusing and it makes you look very bad.”

“So I’ve been told,” he muttered wryly. “Why do you
think Senator Oth got off my back?”

“I assumed you got a publicist.”

“Mmmm, sort of. That’s Knox’s good ol’ boy
off-the-record schtick in action. OKH will be mine whether he
fulfills the proviso or not because he’s not interested in it.
He—we—just don’t want Fen to have it beyond the date it was
promised to Knox. I despise Fen Hilliard.”

“You do?”

“Yes. I always have and I would have taken him down
long ago if I’d known Knox didn’t want it.”

Her reply was immediate. “All right,” she said in a
rush. “I’ll agree to the IPO.”

Sebastian was stunned and very suspicious. As soon
as he got to his car, he pulled out his Blackberry and texted Knox:
FIND LINK-HRP&OKH

* * * * *

42:
THEN VACUUM

The next day was more of the same. He had his
employment attorney on hand to tend to the firings of the morale
killers, which was billed officially as layoffs for financial
reasons; for these, Sebastian wouldn’t fight unemployment. They got
severance and their unused vacation and sick pay. No muss, no
fuss.

All in all, he’d done a good job. Out of two hundred
fifty employees, seventy-five were left to carry the weight that
ninety people could carry around comfortably. The folks who thought
fast on their feet and enjoyed doing it would take up the
slack.

Eilis stood at the front of the auditorium to
outline Sebastian’s four-point plan, the first point of which
Sebastian had done himself, so he sat in the audience with everyone
else. The mood was lively and the beach ball someone had brought
bounced gaily around the room. Sebastian almost smiled.

“We have two products,” Eilis began and the shushing
commenced, to be followed by the silence of scratching pens and
paper. There were no handouts or fancy presentations today, no
podiums, no microphones. Just the down and dirty work.

“We have two products,” she began again, “that are
ones we offer as add-ons to the customers who use our services
either at their locations or ours: software and psychological
screening tests. Both of these are far superior to what is out on
the market right now, so we’re going to mass market them.”

Sebastian was gratified when Karen jumped up, her
fists in the air and shouted, “YES!” Everyone laughed and Eilis
even smiled. It had been Karen’s idea to present these to the
general business marketplace and Eilis had stonewalled her on
that.

“Next, I’m going to sell the art collection, so when
you come to work next week and see the bare walls, don’t panic; we
haven’t been robbed.”

And Conrad Fessy, following Karen’s lead, did the
same. The mood lightened even more. Sebastian had never seen such a
happy bunch of people in his life.

“Third, we’re taking the company public.”

The room roared as people jumped up, and the beach
ball went flying overhead. Eilis looked at Sebastian, because
nobody was paying attention to either of them, and she smiled.
Sebastian smiled back.

“Okay!” Sebastian stood and boomed again after he
thought a sufficient time for hilarity had gone by. “Party time
later. Work time now.” He flipped the sheaf of papers in his hand
and began passing them out, with pencils. It took a while for
everyone to settle back down, but the settling went quick once the
screening tests began to go down the rows.

Eilis began again. “Today we’re going to do
something we’ve never done before. We’re going to re-administer the
screening test. I know that at least one of you has beaten this
test—”

Sebastian and Karen exchanged a glance and he winked
at her because her paranoia was showing again.

“—so that leads me to believe that a good percentage
of you might have also. What I want you to do is answer honestly.
You are here because you’re the cream of the crop, but if you don’t
answer honestly, it will mean your job. I won’t be able to tell,
but Sebastian assures me he will know who is faking and who is
not—and at this point, I believe it.

“I’ll tell you up front that what we’re looking for
are the personality traits to best match your interests with the
work that needs to be done, how much work it will take to keep you
interested and engaged, and what your weaknesses might be. It’s in
your best interest to answer as honestly as possible. We—Sebastian
and I—want to make HRP a fun place to work.

“We’ll score these this afternoon and assign job
duties tomorrow. Right now, our most pressing need is to staff and
service the clients we have. Sheila, you’ll be on point for that.
Business as usual outside this building. And Sheila—” She looked
straight at Sheila.

Good for you, Eilis.

“—you have a free hand and an open checkbook. You
also have first pick of staff.”

Sheila’s eyes grew big as saucers and Sebastian
smirked.

The IT department required no changes. The CIO ran
it the way he saw fit because his way worked. Even Eilis could see
that. She only had to tell him what she wanted when she wanted it
and somehow it always happened. So she did.

“Michael, the HRP Full Management System needs a
small business version with a thirty-day free trial lockout. I want
a beta in six months.”

“Okay.” That was all he said. It was all he had to
say.

“With regard to the mass marketing of the screening
tests outside our client base: I will be contracting with a
psychologist to restructure the scoring, which I hope will happen
some time in the next month. After that, we’ll begin the process of
reprogramming our scoring software and then we’ll begin
distributing it. Karen—”

Sebastian could see that Karen, still paranoid, held
her breath. Too bad Sebastian hadn’t been able shake that out of
her.

“Karen, I would like you to work on the marketing
campaign or campaigns for both the test and the software while they
are in development so that by the time they’re launched, we will
have saturated the market. You may put any other marketing schemes
into place as you see fit. And, like Sheila, you have a free hand,
an open checkbook, and second pick of staff or, in the alternative,
you may hire at will. You won’t need my approval for anything.”

Karen gulped and even from across the room,
Sebastian could see the tears.

“Sebastian has given us one year to be in the black
and pumping money through here like adrenaline before we start the
IPO process. The rest of the week will be devoted to rearranging
staff, applying new titles that mean something, and giving out
raises across the board.”

There was a collective gasp and the delighted
murmurings began.

“Monday, you’ll all start working like fiends to get
the money flowing. Today, lunch is on me and you have the afternoon
off.”

* * * * *

That done, Eilis, feeling very good about life in
general, went to Sebastian with a smile. “Thank you,” she said and
watched as his face softened and he smiled back at her.

“You’re welcome, Eilis.”

“Now, about that vacation . . . ”

His face didn’t change at all, but his body tensed
and his eyes took on the same definite chill she’d seen Monday when
he was slicing and dicing. “After the auction,” he said tersely.
“It’s set for February fifth. I’m sorry, Eilis, but you’re needed
here and after Friday, I won’t be. I’ll come in every Friday at
three to see how things are going, but I need to get back to my own
projects.”

Eilis felt like she’d just been sent to the
principal’s office, though she wasn’t really sure why, and she
swallowed. “Okay.”

“I’ll go collect the tests and then put them through
the scoring machine myself,” he said as he turned and strode up the
aisle to pick up the papers. He was waylaid more than a few times
by handshakes, thanks, and hugs. Eilis almost teared up when Karen
gave him the biggest hug of all and he returned it, genuinely,
honestly, and for a long time.

Then he strode out of the theater without a backward
glance at her, leaving her a lot unhappier than she had been just
minutes before.

* * * * *

Vacation. So she could find Ford. So Ford could
paint her. So Ford could fuck her—oh, ’scuse him—
make love
to her.

Sebastian was getting very, very tired of Ford. He
was getting the definite impression that there would be no
competing with Ford at all.

As usual.

She had her little fantasy, fed by her ownership of
Morning in Bed
. She probably gazed at that damned painting
as she went to sleep and then saw it first thing when she woke up,
and nothing was going to get in the way of the Ford she’d created
in her mind.

He wanted to tell her she couldn’t keep it. Letting
her keep it had been the worst miscalculation of his career, he was
quite sure, but he didn’t want her to know that he was jealous of a
man who didn’t exist.