Shine Not Burn(35)

She broke eye contact with me and stared at a paperweight on my desk. “I’m not sure what you mean.”

“Ruby, please look at me.”

She looked at the ceiling, blinking her eyes deliberately.

“I want to know what happened.”

Shrugging, she said, “You took a long lunch with Bradley and a lot of people called in while you were gone. I took messages. I don’t know what else you want from me.” She tapped her long fingernails on the arms of the chair.

“Do you have to say his name like that? He’s my fiancé, Ruby. It hurts my feelings when you say it with such disdain.”

She wiggled around in her seat a little but didn’t respond. The fingernail tapping started again.

“I didn’t mean the messages,” I said, although that was one of the many symptoms of our problem. “I’m talking about what happened between us.”

She finally looked at me, raising a cocky eyebrow. “Us? Whatever do you mean?” Again with the innocent act.

I wanted to scream, but I restrained myself. Anger just got Ruby going even more, making her more cold-hearted toward me than usual. “I mean us. You as Ruby, me as Andie. We used to get along. I used to love working with you, and I think you used to love working with me. But for a long time now, things have been going downhill.” The tone of my voice rose up a notch. “And now they’re to the point where I almost don’t think we can work together anymore.” I gave her my best pleading look. It worked really well on juries.

Her nostrils flared, but she didn’t say a thing.

“Are you hearing me Ruby?” My heart spasmed with the pain of rejection. Ruby hated me, but I still loved and respected her. She had been so good to me once. Without her I’m not sure how I would have worked my way through learning to navigate the quagmire of civil procedure. She’s an expert in her field, and I’m not the only young lawyer who she’s helped mold into a litigating machine. But now instead of helping me, she seemed to spend every minute of her day trying to make me angry by undoing my work or making my work twice as hard as it should have been.

“Yes, I’m hearing you.” She finally looked at me. “The question is, are you hearing yourself?”

I frowned. This, I wasn’t expecting. “I think I am.”

She shrugged just the slightest bit. “I think you’re not.”

“Explain,” I said, curious.

“No, thank you.” She put her hands on the arms of the seat as if to lever herself up. “Will that be all?”

I pointed to the chair. “No. Don’t get up. I’m not done.”

“Oh, and it’s all about what you want, isn’t it?”

Now we were getting somewhere. “Not all the time, but I am the attorney and you are my assistant. What’s bothering you about our relationship?”

“If you’re talking about being your assistant, then nothing’s bothering me. Not one single thing.”

“What if I’m not talking about you being my assistant?” I was fishing now. I had no idea what she was getting at, but I damn sure wanted to find out. If I could fix whatever was broken with Ruby and me, it would turn my life into a bed of roses again, especially considering how many hours I worked in this place. Or almost a bed of roses. Yes, there would still be some thorns, but I could live with some thorns. A girl has to live with some of those if she’s going to marry a man. I’d accepted that as a simple fact of life. A necessary evil that went with being around a guy.

She clarified. “Not as your assistant? Okay then, if you’re talking about us as two women who mutually admire one another, then that’s a different story altogether. There’s plenty bothering me where that’s concerned.”

That hurt my feelings. I prided myself in my people skills. I was known as the Rainmaker at the firm, single-handedly bringing in more new clients than any other junior partner for the last two years running. Everyone liked me. I got invited to all the parties and networking events. “How so?” I asked.

“I like my job.”

I thought her response through for a few seconds, but reflecting on it didn’t help ease my confusion in the least. “What does liking your job have to do with anything?”

“It has everything to do with everything. If it hadn’t been for my need of this job, you wouldn’t have … done the things you’ve done maybe or I wouldn’t be working here anymore.”

I dropped my face into my hands, trying to keep myself from displaying the frustration that swirled around inside me. I didn’t have any idea what she was getting at, but there was no way I could let this go until I had figured it out. She was finally talking to me after more than a year of the silent treatment or sometimes even straight up disrespect. It was time to put it all to bed.