The Singles (24 page)

I needed to know why Margaret and her attorney—the attorney my father had obviously trusted—had done this to my dad, to me?

Fisting my hands, I swallowed back the weakness, willing myself not to bow under the invisible blows of defeat pummeling my body, but it was hard. So damn hard, my stomach churned.

“Don’t crumble now,” I told myself. When that day came—
if
it came—Margaret would fall right alongside me.

I dried my eyes and picked myself up off the tan tile. With shaking hands, I fixed my appearance in the mirror, washing the mascara that streaked my cheeks—three ragged lines on each side.

Gripping the counter, I leaned close to the mirror and glared at the delicate face staring back at me. “Uncover, expose, and get the hell out of there,” I whispered. And though my brown and amber eyes were bloodshot from crying, the terror that was there my first day at Emerson & Taylor was mixed with something new.

Determination.

Anger.

Combing my fingers through my platinum hair, I exited the bathroom and returned to the living room. August and Pen were on the couch, their heads bowed together as they studied something on his laptop. When she noticed me, Pen snapped the computer shut and leaped to her feet.

“I figured it was best not to bother you—” she started, but I interrupted instantly.

“What do I need to do to take this bitch down?”

Wiping her palm over one of her peacock tattoos, Pen worried her lips together. She looked over at her shoulder at August, who’d started returning his laptop to its bag. Turning back to me, she took a tentative step closer. “There are a couple avenues we can take.”

“Pen, I’m heading out,” August declared from behind her as he pulled the strap of his bag across his body. 

She held up a finger and gave me a pleading look. “One second, I promise.”

While they whispered back and forth, I lowered my numb body to the chair and clung to the armrests. Ignoring the sound of my phone ringing from inside my purse, I stared at the stack of documents that were now strewn out on the coffee table until my vision turned hazy.

“Gemma,” August said loudly, breaking my daze. I lifted my chin to see him by the front door. Although we barely knew each other, I could tell he felt sorry for me by the way his shoulders curled forward and the sluggish shake of his head. “I’m sorry it took us so long.”

My chest hitched. He and Pen had done me a favor, solved something I hadn’t been able to even after I was placed right in Margaret’s trajectory, and he was telling me sorry?

Sagging back in the chair, I cleared the dryness from my throat. “Thank you,” I said shakily. “You have no idea what you’ve done for me.”

Turning red from my praise, he dipped his head in a nod and then looked at Pen. “If I find anything else while I’m here, I’ll be in touch. I’ll call you about that Campbell thing in a day or two.”

She crossed her arms over her breasts. “Thanks for everything.”

The moment he was gone, she locked the door and returned to me. She dragged the ottoman over to the chair. “Gem,” she started tentatively, “Are you going to be alright?”

“How do we take her down?” I asked again. I would worry about
alright
after this was all completely resolved. “I want to know why she did this, Pen. I have to know.”

She fidgeted her hands. “We can go the legal route. But if we do that, we’re going to have to really nail down our story because there’s a good chance we’ll be bent over if we’re not smart about it.” Jabbing her finger at the coffee table, to the paperwork, she took a breath. “That is
all
we have to go on, and even though I
know
it’s right, it’s going to be hard as hell to prove because both witnesses and your father have died. It’s our word against Margaret and a douchey attorney who was well-respected before he retired.”

“Both witnesses are gone.” I murmured, and she gave me a pained look.

“Virginia Carroll, the former VP of E & T, died of pancreatic cancer two years ago, and Nick Fairbanks passed away in a car crash a few years after your dad’s heart attack.”

“How convenient for Margaret,” I choked out, but I was thankful to Penelope Connelly for discovering all this. And I was ashamed of myself. The stranger who’d called me had been right. No matter how much I thought of my father, how much I still loved him, I hadn’t cared enough before five months ago to untangle our history.

I’d been too afraid of feeling the sharp pain of rejection again.

Bending forward, I rested my head between my knees, letting the blood flow to my face. “You want to tell Linc, don’t you?”

When she spoke, she surprised me. “Fuck. That. Crap.”

I sat upright. “Okay,” I breathed, “so since you don’t want to involve your brother, what’s behind door number two?”

“You keep working for Margaret. You go into that office tomorrow and the next day and the day after that, and we keep digging until we figure out everything that happened. There has to be a paper trail somewhere, Gemma. There always is. We just have to find it.”

“And once we have that paper trail?”

“
Then
we go to Linc.” From the unease in her voice, I could tell she’d never planned to involve her older brother, but if there was one person who’d make sure we went about exposing Margaret the right way, it was Lincoln.

“We can figure out another way,” I said, but she snorted.

“I can handle my brother.” She touched my knee, and I examined her chipped metallic nail polish. “We’ve got this bitch, Gem. Now we just need to drag her and Michael Scott down. You’re already in, so use whatever information you can. The woman from marketing. Finley-Bitchface-Scott. O—” Before she said his name, she froze and cleared her throat.

“Oliver.”

“Yes. Oliver.” She slid closer to me and dropped her voice to a warning whisper. “You
can’t
fall for him, Gem. Because the end of this will tear you two apart.”

Wrapping my arms around my body, my fingers pressed into places his hands had touched last night. I held back the shiver and tried like hell to suppress the emotion, but it didn’t work. I wanted him just as much as before.

At last, I nodded. “I know that, Pen.”

*

M
argaret was out the office the next day taking care of last minute details for her Friday flight to Paris, so I didn’t see her again until our nine-thirty ritual on Thursday morning.

She was at her desk when I walked through the French doors, and rage pounded my ears as I approached her with her customary skinny latte.

“Good morning, Margaret,” I forced through a cheerful smile. “All set for France?”

Resting her elbows on the glass surface, she pinched her nose and sucked in a breath through it. “Do I look like I’m ready, Ms. Connelly?”

I handed her the coffee, which she practically jerked out of my hand, and for the briefest moment, I pictured the lid flying off and the liquid covering her cream-colored cashmere and mink Caroline Herrera sweater.

“Is there anything I can do to help?” I offered.

Is there anything else I can do to help you live in that house that’s supposed to be mine? To help you blow money my father left for me?

It wasn’t even about the money, but damn, this was an awful situation.

Biting my tongue, I sat across from her and folded my hands in my lap. “If you need anything taken care of for your trip today, I’m happy to run out and do it.”

Tightening her blue eyes into slits, she twitched her head to either side. “Just do your job while I’m gone. Can you handle that?”

“Of course. Did you receive the transcriptions I emailed you?”

“I did, and I have another set for you to work on in my absence.” Dropping her hand from her nose, her nostrils flared. “I was surprised to see you did such an exceptional job, I need you to fix the mess the little cunt who worked here before you made.”

The little cunt.

Her words brought bile to the back of my throat, and I wondered if she’d used them to describe me before. In spite of the anger that continued to throb in my skull, I could almost vividly hear the words falling from her pinched mouth.

That little cunt Gemma.

Somehow, I made a small sound of agreement and bobbed my head. “I’ll get to work immediately on them. Where can I find the—”

“I’ve emailed you the mp3 files already.” Her desk phone rang, but she ignored it. As soon as the shrill sound stopped, she continued, “The moment you’re finished, email me all the transcriptions and make sure you CC Philip and Cate. You failed to send the last transcriptions to them, and they both need them as well. ”

I made a note on my LCD tablet to email the documents to the company’s VP and CFO. “I’m right on that,” I promised through a smile that felt like it was poisoning me. “I’ll have them to you ASAP.”

“Then, I need you to—” Her phone rang again. Letting out a sharp curse, she lifted the receiver and slammed it to her ear, knocking one of her giant pearl earrings to her desk. “This is Margaret,” she announced in a clipped voice.

I watched her face transform, from annoyance to disgust, and I wanted to know who it was. Who would cause her to feel the exact emotions she inspired in me. When she said the name a second later, I held back a gasp.

“It is a goddamn birthday party, Finley. Not the end of the world. If you can’t handle it, please contact my assistant who will refer you to one of the event planners we’ve used in the past.” Margaret held her breath while the brunette on the other line said something, and then she laughed dismissively. “Well, Oliver knows best. Goodbye, Finley.”

Apparently, there was trouble in paradise, and my curiosity was absolutely piqued.

Making a teepee with her fingers, Margaret breathed against her hands before addressing me. “I’ll email you anything else I need, Ms. Connelly,” she said, her tone dismissing me. As I started to the door, she continued speaking, and my spine stiffened. “My house guest, Ms. Scott, may call you for help planning my son’s thirtieth birthday party. As I’ll be in Paris until nearly a week before the event, I would appreciate it if you gave her a hand.”

I opened the door and looked back at her. “I’d
love
to help.”

Even though I already knew Finley would rather saw off her own arm than ask me for anything dealing with Oliver. “Have a safe flight to Paris, Margaret.”

The second I returned to my office, I sent Pen a text.

What can we find out about Finley Scott?

*

“I
didn’t realize you were here. Figured you’d be working from home today with Mrs. Emerson being gone,” Carl told me the following day as I breezed past his security station a few minutes after noon. Although I was running late, I turned around to face him, the spiked heel of my secondhand Manolo Blahnik shoes squeaking loudly on the black granite floor.

“Lunch with Stella.” Switching my purse to my other arm, I pointed to him. “Do you want me to bring you something back?”

Stunned, he blinked a few times. Then he motioned me to his desk. Although I tried to keep my gaze focused solely on him, as usual, I couldn’t resist flicking my eyes to the massive photo of my mother to the left.

God, I wished she were here.

It would make this all so much easier, so much more bearable.

Leaning his forearm on his desk, Carl lifted his eyebrow. “Where are you two going?”

“That little Italian place a few blocks away,” I replied, and he closed his eyes together in anticipation. When he dug around in his back pocket for his wallet, I touched his wrist and shook my head.

“Don’t worry about it. Just tell me what you want, and I’ll bring it back with me.” I still remembered what Stella had told me about helpfulness being dead around here, and after the week I’d had, I wanted to at least make someone else’s day a little better—especially Carl, who’d been at this company forever.

He gave me his order, which I texted to myself. As I walked toward the main entrance, allowing myself one more peek at Mom’s picture, Carl’s words warmed my chest. “You’re a good one, Lizzie.”

When I reached the restaurant ten minutes later, I spotted Stella in a booth near the back. She waved at me, and her Tiffany charm bracelet jingled prettily against her caramel skin.

“Sorry I’m late,” I breathed, sliding into the booth, slightly exerted from the walk here.

“Don’t worry. I ordered us garlic knots.” She gestured to the basket of bread between our seats, her elegant ponytail swishing around the Peter Pan collar of her beaded black blouse as she moved closer. “I’ve been doing carb-cycling to tighten up a bit before I head to Trinidad for Christmas, and it’s my cheat day.”

“You’re beautiful. But I’m jealous of your vacation,” I admitted. I grabbed a piece of bread, tore off a small chunk, and popped it into my mouth. “Take me with you.
Please
.”

“I will. Or are you going back home to—”

For the first time since my charade started, the first city that wiggled into my mind was Las Vegas—the city I had built my life in for the last several years. So where the hell was Lizzie from?

I’d been so immersed in being myself all week—being the name written over and over again on my father’s will—I felt like I was slowly losing my mind.

“Oregon,” I finally informed Stella, although I prayed that by Christmas next month my façade would be over. “Yes, I’ll be going home to see my mother and father.”

Stella ate another piece of bread, giving me a dark look when I grinned and lifted my brow. “Cheat. Day,” she said slowly.

After our waitress stopped by, and I ordered a drink and both my lunch and Carl’s food, Stella’s phone vibrated on the table. Nibbling on yet another piece of garlic bread, she turned it to face her and rolled her dark eyes dramatically.

“I’ve got to figure out how to stop these damn things,” she complained.

“Don’t tell me you’re doing one of those sexting subscriptions,” I joked, quickly realizing how close that hit to home. The reason I became a phone sex operator was because I’d looked into texting jobs first. When I found a forum dedicated to both, I’d decided to go the phone route.