For a heartbeat, there was absolute silence on the other end, and then Hazel murmured sweetly, “Well, you gave me whatIwanted back then. But we’re not at college anymore, Mr. Snark. You want to keep Fox as badly as he wants to stay. You have my draft contract, Gareth, so I don’t know what else there is to discuss.”
“It's an unreasonable contract draft that no one would sign. And it contains several spelling mistakes. As if it was written by an elementary school kid.”
“Well, I thought I’d stay on your intellectual level. After all, you weresecondin your class at Harvard. After me, if I remember correctly, so…”
“Hazel,” he snapped, “stop making it personal.”
“I’m surprised you know the wordpersonal. Though I’d like to be professional, I can’t when you’re yelling at my assistant.”
“I wouldn’t have to yell at her if you didn’t subject me to that agonizing rigamarole every time.”
“All I heard wasagonizingand that spontaneously made me happy and reinforced my belief that I was doing everything right,” she explained matter-of-factly.
“Oh, yes, you’re infallible.”
“At least I’m making an effort to be professional, at the beginning of our conversations, at any rate.”
“So professional that you instruct your client, Malcolm Smith, to publicly call me an asshole?”
This time, the silence on the other end of the line wasn’t truly silent. Instead, it rumbled loudly and dangerously in his ears.
“I had nothing to do with what he said in that interview, Gareth,” Hazel replied tersely.
Well, at least now she sounded as angry as he felt. “Yes, obviously, I believe you.”
“I don’t care if you believe it. It’s the truth.”
“If you don’t care, then why are you suddenly the one shouting?” he asked. “And if it was wrong of him, why didn’t you, as his agent, comment?”
“Fuck you, Gareth,” she replied coldly, all humor gone from her voice. “I released Smith. He’s no longer my client. That’s why I didn’t comment on his statements. I have a clause in my contracts that allows me to release assholes. And, as soon as I heard what he called Penny, he was out the door. You have the right to sell him. I couldn’t care less about the reason — but you don’t have the damn right to accuse me of deliberately creating negative publicity just to get back at you. I don’t need to; it’s ridiculously easy to upset you. No matter what the press says about yourimpressive control. But thanks for believing that I could do that level of shit. How nice.”
The next moment, she hung up.
Fuck. Gareth crumpled the interview in his hand and tossed the phone onto the desk with a thud.
How was he the asshole again, when she was the goof who'd included acandy clausein Fox’s contract, a bag of gummy bears for every goal scored?
God, every time he spoke to her, saw her, heard her, or smelled her…he felt like he was losing every time. Maybe even losingsomething specific, like his sanity.
Hazel had always been the only person in the world capable of stealing it from him. But at least he’d been able to enjoy it before.
Chapter Two
Social conduct for hate-free inter-colleague teamwork
For short: SCHIT
Paragraph 2:
Under no circumstances should the work be compromised due to a shared (very distant!) past. Should this past come up: ignore, evade, or distract.
I’d say I won.”
“Did you finalize the contract?”
“Well, no, but…”
“Shit, Hazel, then nobody won!” Fox groaned and threw his head back before giving her a nasty sideways glance. Thank goodness the light turned green at that moment, so he had to focus on the road again.
