Just One Night, Part 2_ Exposed(12)

“I’m not following.”

“Well, let’s see.” I get up from my seat again. My anger is intense, but I like the way it feels. I like the way I’m able to give it shape, form it into a weapon of torture. It’s a slow torture, delicate and feminine . . . it has artistry. I imagine myself holding a pretty little scalpel and rubbing it gently against Asha’s throat. “We both know you shouldn’t have been at that party unless of course you came with someone else. I saw you hanging out with Mr. Freeland. Was he your date? Your way in?”

“Did I give Freeland my affection in exchange for a party invitation? No,” she says, and now it’s her turn to smile. “I don’t mix sex and commerce. Do you, Kasie?”

I stopped. This is more audacity than I expected, even from her. “Are you asking me if I’m a prostitute?”

Asha giggles. It’s a surprisingly appealing sound, almost seductive in it’s daintiness. “Don’t be silly,” she says. “You’re an honorable woman. You wear a rather expensive engagement ring to prove it.”

I glance down at the ring. It squeezes too tightly.

“Besides,” she continues, “prostitutes have sex for profit. Not you. Although after you started dating Dave, you did get a very profitable position here—”

“He got me an interview. I got the job.”

“And then you also got us a very profitable account, didn’t you?” Asha asks sweetly. Her voice is the spoonful of syrup used to mask the bitterness of a crushed pill. “You got that all by yourself. No help from Dave at all. Mr. Dade just handed it to you.”

I don’t answer. Instead I wait, to see how far she’ll push. Is her hatred enough to make her careless? Has she been spying on me, even before that day on the boat? Or is this all presumptions and speculations?

“What did you tell Tom Love?” she asks. “That you met Mr. Dade in the security line at the airport before flying home?”

“Yes,” I say. I have my back to the wall while she looks up at me from the chair I ushered her into. This is my office. I’m in the position of strength here. But the dynamic is unstable.

“It’s funny, because I’ve never gotten into a conversation with anyone I didn’t know while in those security lines. Everyone’s so focused on getting their keys out of their pockets, their watches unstrapped from their wrists, it’s not really a let’s-get-to-know-each-other kind of place, is it?”

“For every rule there are exceptions.”

“True,” Asha agrees with a nod. “And for every crime there is a criminal. When Mr. Dade called to tell Tom he wanted consultant Kasie Fitzgerald to head a team to help him prepare his company for a public offering, he had a different story of your first meeting. He said that the two of you had spoken at a blackjack table.”

I raise my chin as if the gesture could increase my height. I need to be above this, but I don’t manage it. Her words cut as they were meant to. Tom never told me that my tale contradicted the true story he had apparently already gotten from Robert.

What else had Robert told him? Had he told Tom that we had ended up in his room? No, he wouldn’t have shared any of those secrets. For a brief moment my mind betrays me, bringing me back to that night, forcing upon me the recalled feeling of when the man I only knew as Mr. Dade had taken a scotch-soaked ice cube, briefly touched it to my clitoris, and then licked the liquor off me with the flick of his tongue. Images of his hands on my hips, his head in my lap as I grabbed the back of my chair, my skirt up around my waist . . . I had never done anything like that before.

I was paying for that now.

I could try to convince Asha that Robert is the liar. I could tell her that he had made up a false tale of how we met to insinuate things that never happened, as some men are apt to do.

But I can’t do that. I can’t load my shame onto Robert’s shoulders. Yet the price of the truth exceeds my means.

“I didn’t feel the need to tell my boss that I occasionally dabble in gambling,” I say, hoping the excuse doesn’t sound as lame to her as it does to me. “Some people don’t approve.”

“Tom Love approves of anything that brings him business, and your time in Vegas definitely did that.”

“Asha, where were you yesterday morning?”

“I was in a car,” she says, leaning back in her chair. “With your fiancé.”

And now I see that I’ve approached this all wrong. I had assumed she wouldn’t want me to think of her as a snoop, as someone so desperate to undermine me she would scurry after me, looking for bread crumbs, clues that could lead her to greater sins. But I’m the only one here who cares what people think. I’m the only one looking to hide my flaws with layers of icing. Asha cares only about power.