Why hadn’t she anticipated this? Of course Keighleigh would pull this kind of bullshit move, despite every single person on their team knowing that she was once again usurping Samiah’s idea. This is what she got for scheduling her conniving, spotlight-stealing coworker’s portion of the presentation to go right before what should have beenherbig finish.
“This is ingenuity at its finest,” Barrington said once the other woman was done. “How do you suppose we implement these potential fixes, Keighleigh?”
Samiah caught the flash of panic behind Keighleigh’s strained smile before her coworker pointed to the back of the room and said, “I’ll leave that to our fearless team leader to explain.”
Seething, Samiah started for the other end of the conference room before Daniel’s words stopped her.
“Why don’t you go ahead and do it, Keighleigh?”
Every head in the conference room turned to him, but his eyes remained on a stunned Keighleigh Miller. The smile on his face belied the tension emanating from him. He was pissed. For her.
Samiah’s heart melted.
“Daniel’s right,” Barrington said. “Bring this home for us. I’m sure Samiah doesn’t mind.”
If there was a dictionary entry forscared shitless, Keighleigh Miller’s face would be in the little square box right next to it. Her wide, panicked gaze flew from Daniel’s to Barrington’s to the smart board, and finally to Samiah’s.
A small part of her—the tiniest, most infinitesimal part that was still capable of empathizing with a fellow human being, even if said human being was straight-up trash—felt sorry for Keighleigh. But then Samiah mentally gut-punched that tiny part of her and sat it in a corner, facing the wall.
Keighleigh deserved every second of the excruciating misery she was no doubt feeling right now. She’d manipulated her way into this job, riding coattails and passing off the ideas of her fellow coworkers as her own, with no thought about the consequences of her actions. Well, it was time baby girl faced the music.
The atmosphere in the room quickly reached nails-down-a-chalkboard levels of discomfort as they all sat there waiting for Keighleigh to continue. In what she could only describe as an attempt to bank a few brownie points to get into heaven, Samiah finally decided to have mercy on her coworker.
Her phone began vibrating in her dress pocket, but she ignored it as she continued onward, plucking the stylus from Keighleigh’s hand and tapping the smart board’s screen.
“Thanks for setting that up for me, Keighleigh, but I’ll take it from here.”
Samiah dismissed her with a brief tilt of her head, then went on to succinctly explain the implementation plan. She answered every single question her superiors lobbed at her, showing them just why Trendsetters was lucky to have her. She was impressive as fuck, and everyone in this room knew it.
Once the presentation was done, the Leyland Group team members received the accolades they deserved for a job well done. After a significant amount of backslapping and congratulatory fist bumps, everyone began to file out of the conference room. Samiah lingered behind. So did Daniel.
Once they were alone, she walked up to him and held her hand out. “Brilliant move there, Mr. Collins.”
He huffed out a laugh as he shook her hand.
“She had it coming,” he said. “How is she going to stand up there and present your part, knowing that we all know she didn’t have anything to do with devising that implementation plan?”
“Because she’s gotten away with doing things like that from the moment she started here,” Samiah said. “Keighleigh has ridden that ‘everyone is on the same team’ horse into the ground, and no one has called her on it.”
“Why not?”
“Because you’ll be accused of not being a team player, or of being a show-off.”
“Yet that’s exactly whatshedid.” He hooked his thumb toward the smart board. “That was all about showing off. Someone needed to call her out.”
Samiah shrugged. She couldn’t argue with him. She was just as culpable when it came to allowing Keighleigh to get away with the shenanigans she’d been pulling since she first started at Trendsetters. They’d all allowed it. But not Daniel. He’d spoken up on her behalf.
Samiah glanced over both shoulders, making sure they were alone and that the windows of the conference room were still opaque. Then she tilted her face up and placed a quick kiss on his lips.
“Thank you for having my back,” she said. “It’s not easy to find people I can trust around here. It means a lot.”
The muscles in his jaw flinched and he averted his eyes.
Samiah frowned. “Is something wrong?”
He blinked hard then shook his head. “No. Not at all.” His smile returned. “Congratulations on that presentation. You think we’ll get a pizza party out of this?”
“A pizza party? I won’t settle for anything less than steak and lobster,” Samiah said. “And considering the money the Leyland Group paid for this rush job, I may demand that steak and lobster be served on the deck of a cruise ship in the middle of the Caribbean.”
