“I’m just surprised you’d want to talk to me when you’re not being paid to do it.”
“I’m surprised they allow you in public without a warning label from Health Canada. ‘May cause cold flashes.’”
He sipped his drink. “What the hell are cold flashes?”
“Ask someone else who’s been in your vicinity for a few seconds and cares to educate you.”
“I’m asking you.”
“Okay. You know that feeling when you walk through a graveyard at night, alone, and there’s no one there, but you hear someone whisper your name?”
He just gazed at me, unmoved.
“There. I just felt it.” I shivered dramatically. “Chilling.”
“If it’s so chilly over here,” he said evenly, “why are you here? You didn’t get enough of me at the office?”
“I’m here to talk about business. Specifically, my job. I’d like to know if it’s in jeopardy. You know, so I can polish my resume and perhaps speak with my lawyer. Did I mention my brother works at a top firm? And he’d be happy to represent his sister in suing any employer who wrongfully dismisses her.”
Honestly, I hadn’t talked to my brother yet. But he would represent me in suing this guy. Or, if the Davenports were too much for him and his firm to take on, he’d find me someone who would.
“Your job is currently safe,” Dane informed me.
“That’s some very gray language,” I noted. “Currently. As in, at this exact moment. What happens tomorrow?”
“No one knows the answer to that.”
God, he was so impervious. It wasn’t just at the office. If I’d thought there was a chance in hell that his chilly, buttoned-up attitude might thaw off the clock?
Nope. No chance.
“Wrong,” I said. “I know that you have no grounds to fire me, which means that I still have my job tomorrow.”
“If you actually knew what tomorrow would bring, sweetheart, maybe you’d be a billionaire, too.”
Oh,fuck. He was so nauseating.
Cocky. Condescending.
Full. Of. Himself.
Thiswas why I almost-hated him in high school.
“Maybe,” I said pleasantly. “But you’re not actually a billionaire, are you?”
His eyes twitched a little, but the man gave nothing away.
He was probably enjoying this. He probably loved fucking with his employees before he fired them; making them feel like they actually had a fighting chance. Probably made telling them they no longer had a job all the sweeter.
Well, I could fuck with him, too.
“You see,” I told him, “I’ve been reading up on the company and the family who now employ me, like a good student of business. Learning everything I can about such titans of industry. As it turns out, your grandmother is a billionaire, many times over. And so is your mother. And the company they own is worth billions. But you… not so much.”
“I guess it takes a lot to impress you,” he said cooly. “I can respect that.”
“Can you?”
“Nine digits not enough?”
