That was her only consolation. She'd never have to look James Cannon in the eye and see the expression of fear tinged with revulsion that had made her high school years a constant misery.
She eased into her chair in her cubicle. Her space was pristine compared to Angie's. That was because she didn't leave clues to her life around. No pictures, cards, memorabilia. For an IT specialist, she was very low-tech in her personal life. No social media or tweets, not much e-mail outside of job necessity. Today the only thing on her desk was a shiny brochure.
The hair on Shay's neck lifted as she recognized it. It was for a private luxury island resort in the Caribbean.
She snatched it off her desk and glanced around quickly. It was a souvenir of the most recent of several weekend getaways Eric had taken her on, at his bank's expense. No one else was supposed to know about it.
When her gaze came back to the brochure she noticed the slanted spidery script in the upper left-hand corner. It read: "Ready to make up?"
"Shit!"
Angie's head popped up over her cubicle wall. "What's wrong?"
Shay thought fast. "Ah … paper cut." She stuck an uncut finger in her mouth for emphasis.
"Hate that." Angie slumped out of sight.
Shay bit her lip to keep from asking Angie any of the questions chasing each other in her head.
Eric had been here? When? And why, of all the trips, would he think she'd want to repeat that weekend?
A searing flash of their final night at the private resort lasered its way into her consciousness. Eric had brought her along to an international banking convention. The executives at the after-hours party were wasted on expensive booze and cocaine when one of them suggested a dance-off with their female companions as contestants.
She had suspected many of the women were paid companions. But when a dozen of them gamely shimmied out of their clothing to bump and grind in sexy barely there undies and less, she knew.
Shay closed her eyes, remembering how humiliated she'd been when Eric had pulled her to her feet and pushed her out on the impromptu dance floor, hissing in her ear, "Act like you're begging for sex. Don't embarrass me. Make them believe it."
He expected her to swing her ass for the amusement of a bunch of drunk strangers.
Worse than stumbling through suggestive dance steps to music with crude sexual lyrics was withstanding the expression on Eric's face as he watched her efforts. Because she wouldn't undress, she was voted off the floor first.
On their way back to their suite, in defense of his scathing review of her poor performance, she'd burst out with, "Unlike some of those women I'm not a whore."
"True," he'd answered. "You're not skilled enough to survive as one."
Shay rubbed the too-tight sensation between her brows. There were so many memories she wished she didn't have. Then, using two fingers, she picked up and flipped the brochure into the wastebasket. If only she could lob Eric in there with it.
To distract herself, she pulled open a drawer to survey its contents. There was a half-eaten bag of chips, a partially eaten power bar, and three pieces of candy that were at least eight weeks old. She tossed them after the brochure.
The tactic didn't work. Memory ambushed her a second time before she could steel herself.
One second she was sitting in her cubicle, the next her world was imploding, sucked into the deep shadows of an unlit apartment bathroom on a night when she was fourteen years old.
She began to vibrate as the memory moved and settled with disturbing familiarity into her psyche. Fingernails bit into her palms as her stomach cramped in fear. The phantom smells seemed to fill her nostrils until she was near suffocating.
She was alone in a new place, an apartment over a Chinese restaurant. Years of orders of stir-fried vegetables and General Tso's Chicken had soaked into the carpeting and drapes. The odor made her feel either constantly hungry, or queasy. It was supposed to a short-term solution, until her mother got established in Raleigh.
Her mother, an LPN, was working extra shifts at the senior care nursing facility so that Shay could finish another school year without needing to get a job, too. "You make the grades that will take you out of this life, Shay. I'll support that."
Always a sensitive child, she locked her bedroom door when her mother was away at night and never ventured out until dawn. But tonight that extra large Slurpee she'd insisted upon with a burger dinner was pressing hard on her bladder. She needed to go. Bad.
She slipped out of bed and turned the knob.
The bathroom floor was cool under her bare feet. She didn't turn on the light, feeling her way along to the toilet. It was ugly, cracked on the rim and stained in ways her mother couldn't scrub away. Better to pretend it was okay than to see that it wasn't. She had finished her business and reached for the handle to flush when she heard it.
Heavy footsteps stopped before the bathroom. Not Mom.
"Ms. Appleton?"
Shay jerked upright and twisted in her seat toward the opening of her cubicle.
Perry Deshezer, entrepreneur and owner of Logital Solutions, stood there in a dress shirt with rolled-up sleeves, cords, and Nikes, his standard office attire.
"You okay?"
Shay blinked. The solid world disappeared for a nerve-racking fraction of a second before returning. "Yeah. Sure."
"Good." He sounded unconvinced. "How was your vacation? Catch any fish?"
"What?" Shay focused on the items on her desk. In my cubicle. In my office space. Grown-up Shay is here. "Oh, I don't fish."
"But you enjoyed yourself?"
"Yes. Why-" She glanced up into his slight frown. Then she remembered what Angie had said about the bags under her eyes and used the same excuse. "I, ah, lost Prince."
"Oh no, Shay. What happened?"
She gave him the sanitized version of Prince's return to his rightful owner. By the end of it he was shaking his head. "That reeks."
She looked away, feeling a little ashamed for having manipulated his sympathy. "I just need time to get over it. To work."
"You're in luck. Halifax Bank's IT customer service person went on maternity leave last week. It's way beneath your skill set but they asked for you by name."
Shay had begun to recoil at the beginning of his speech, her stomach clamping down hard on her coffee-only breakfast. "They asked specifically for me?"
He nodded. "I told them you were out until today. They said they'd wait. You must have impressed the hell out of them when you worked there last year."
"Un-huh." Shay avoided his eye, her stomach roiling.
Eric was a regional manager for Halifax Banking Corporation. They'd met while she was temping as a techie at the main branch. Now Halifax Bank had asked for her again. Coincidence? Or part of Eric's new scheme? "Who exactly asked for me?"
"The HR person."
Shay glanced guiltily at the brochure sticking out of her wastebasket. "No one came in person?"
Perry chuckled. "Who would send a messenger to hire a temp?"
"I just wondered." She looked up. "I'd rather not take this one."
He crossed his arms. "Shay, you're one of my best workers but that doesn't benefit either of us unless you're earning an income. We don't have anything else that fits your skills at the moment."
"Right." Shay looked away from him. Perry was a stellar boss. He tolerated a lot, but when it came to the work ethic, he was all business. As for Eric …
She felt good old reliable anger coiling inside. Eric worked out of the main branch in downtown Raleigh but his position as a regional manager kept him on the road. She might not even see him. And if she did, it would be in a public setting.
You don't have to be afraid. James saw Eric in action. Eric won't want the police involved again.
Of course, Eric wouldn't know getting in touch with James was the last thing she planned to do. But more than that, she needed to prove to herself that she was once again in control of her life. She couldn't do that by hiding.
"I'm just bummed. The job sounds like a bore." She gave an elaborate shrug and rolled her eyes. "Sorry."
Perry glanced at his watch. "You can start today, then, say by 10 A.M.?"
Her gaze strayed to her computer where the time displayed was 8:41. "Sure."
He gave her the once-over, taking in her jeans and sweater and unmade-up face. "Enough time to stop by home and change?" He never missed a thing.
"On my way."
"The paperwork is done. It'll be at reception. Just sign it on your way out."