TWO
How dared he? How bloody dared he even suggest she might be suffering from stress, burnout? Damn it, Miles had to know this was all a crock of manure.
Tash, despite her stand-up defiance, was shaking as she left Miles Morgan’s office and she headed for the cloakroom. There was no way she could go downstairs and face Janine, who’d obviously known exactly what was coming, until she had pulled herself together.
She jabbed pins in her hair, applied a bright don’t-care-won’t-care coating of lipstick and some mental stiffeners to her legs before she attempted the stairs she’d run up with such optimism only a few minutes earlier.
She’d been ten minutes, no more, but Janine was waiting with a cardboard box containing the contents of her desk drawers.
‘Everything’s there,’ she said, not the slightest bit embarrassed. On the contrary, the smirk was very firmly in place. They’d never been friends but, while she’d never given Janine a second thought outside the office, it was possible that Janine—behind the faux sweetness and the professional smile and ignoring the hours she put in, her lack of a social life—had resented her bonuses. ‘It’s mostly rubbish.’
She didn’t bother to answer. She could see for herself that the contents of her desk drawers had been tipped into the box without the slightest care.
Janine was right; it was mostly rubbish, apart from a spare pair of tights, the pencil case that one of her brothers had given her and the mug she used for her pens. She picked it up and headed for the door.
‘Wait! Miles said...’
In her opinion, Miles had said more than enough but, keeping her expression impassive, she turned, waited.
‘He asked me to take your keys.’
Of course he had. He wouldn’t want her coming back when the office was closed to prove what havoc she could really cause, given sufficient provocation. Fortunately for him, her reputation was more important to her than petty revenge.
She put down the box, took out her key ring, removed the key to the back door of the office and handed it over without a word.
‘And your car keys,’ she said.
Until that moment none of this had seemed real, but the BMW convertible had been the reward Miles had dangled in front of his staff for anyone reaching a year-end sales target that he had believed impossible. She’d made it with a week to spare and it was her pride and joy as well as the envy of every other negotiator in the firm. Could someone have done this to her just to get...?
She stopped. That way really did lie madness.
No doubt Miles would use those spectacular sales figures to back up his claim of ‘burnout’, suggesting she’d driven herself to achieve the impossible and prove that she was better than anyone else. So very sad...
He might even manage to squeeze out a tear.
All he’d have to do was think of the damages he’d have to pay Darius Hadley.
Taking pride in the fact that her fingers weren’t shaking—it was just the rest of her, apparently—she removed the silver Tiffany key ring Toby had bought her for Christmas from her car keys and dropped it in her pocket, but she held on to the keys. ‘I’ll clear my stuff out of the back.’