Iris walked in, and Kendra felt a thumping at her temple, like the band striking up moments before the Titanic hit the iceberg. She hadn’t even had her coffee yet. Iris’s homing device led her unerringly toward Kendra’s cluttered desk. “Busy?” she asked, and sat without waiting for an answer.
Kendra liked Iris well enough. The older woman was as cheerful as they came, although her voice rose half an octave or so above the threshold of human tolerance. But, as many women did when they were flushed with the newfound joys of wifedom and motherhood, she waxed lyrical about the most unsettling things…and did so at great length.
“Uh…” Kendra hit the power button on her computer, knowing even as she did so that the old heap would take forever to get going. “A little,” she hedged, all the while silently yelling, “Hurry, hurry! Boot up!”
Iris smelled of lavender bath salts and Cheez Whiz spread. She was wearing a necklace of spray-painted pasta elbows strung together with odd-shaped lumps of clay by her four-year-old. She wore it as reverently as if it were a string of pearls. On her right shoulder was the grubby handprint of her eighteen-month-old. It was Monday, and that inevitably meant Kendra would be treated to an expansive rundown of the weekend’s antics by the tireless duo. She braced herself.
Iris leaned forward, eyes shining. “You won’t believe this.”
Try me , Kendra didn’t say.
“Zachary did a huge poop last night.”
Kendra nearly fell off her chair. “What?”
“He did a huge poop.” She demonstrated with her hands—as if Kendra needed a visual. “And took his diaper off. All by himself. Then he showed it to us!”
Iris was smiling. Waiting for her to say something. Kendra coughed, searching for an appropriate response, but all she could come up with was, “Oh, really?”
“Right in the middle of Tony’s cocktail party, would you believe it? Everyone was so impressed. He’s so smart for his age. And then he marched inside, and brought out the tub of baby wipes.”
Kendra fished frantically in her In-box. “Wonder if the mail guy passed,” she said, a little louder than necessary. There was nothing there but today’s paper. “Where is he?” All of a sudden the impending appearance—or inexplicable nonappearance—of the mail guy took on a disproportionate importance.
Iris amused herself during Kendra’s mini panic attack by fiddling with the array of knickknacks littering the desk, an assortment of souvenirs from far-flung places in the world. They were gifts from Kendra’s grateful clients for trips she had arranged. In the year or so since she moved here, she had become one of the best sales agents Salomon’s Travel and Tours—or, rather, Wanderlust—had. She loved people, and it gave her the greatest pleasure to hand select the best holiday packages around for the company’s small list of wealthy and fussy clients. They’d been assigned to her since her promotion from sales representative to special accounts executive.
The computer finally obliged and chimed out its little welcome. Kendra tried not to look too relieved. This minor but significant event had no effect whatsoever on Iris, who had moved from a purple koala from New Zealand to a small Bahraini hookah made of brass. Kendra tried again. “Busy around here, huh?” That was when she noticed that, far from being simply a broad hint, her comment was disconcertingly true.
She looked around. A soft buzz hovered above the heads of the employees occupying the twenty or so cubicles on the floor. Many were on their phones, and from the low, excited chatter, she suspected they were talking to each other.
“You betcha, it’s busy! Hammond’s snarling mad. He’s got poor Petreena jumping through hoops. Making phone calls, running around looking for documents…something’s going down. And from what I hear, it isn’t pretty.”
Kendra felt a chilly dread settle upon her shoulders. She looked up. One of Shel Salomon’s brilliant ideas had been to erect the CEO’s office on a huge loft overlooking the general working area, and to construct it almost entirely of glass. That way, he could—and frequently did—sit at his desk and look out onto the floor, like a lion on a hillock surveying his pride.
The disadvantage, as Trey Hammond learned, was that, while the occupant watched his staff, they could—and frequently did—watch him. Because the new owner was a looker. With his long legs and lean, athletic build, he was the hottest stranger to ride into Santa Amata in ages. He had dark brown hair with a hint of warm highlights, skin the exact color of the filling in a Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup, and charcoal gray eyes—gray eyes! And—the girls sighed—he had the most beautiful smile.
When he’d arrived, the whole office—practically the whole building—had gone into a frenzy of speculative whispers. Half the unmarried women, and a few of the married ones, related breathlessly to each other the details of their briefest encounters. In the elevator, in the lounge, at the cooler or the coffeemaker—everyone wanted to know who this newcomer was. And why hadn’t he crashed into their lives earlier?
He was up in his glass box now, and Iris was right, he didn’t look happy. Kendra watched with growing unease as he paced the carpeted floor, arms outstretched, gesticulating forcefully as he talked. Even from all the way down here, he was larger than life. The fine tailoring of his navy suit emphasized his height, and his obvious agitation made him seem to fill the large office. Hammond’s executive assistant, Petreena Rai, swayed as she tried to continue facing her boss, even as he wore a path into the gold rug.
Kendra began to feel ill. “What d’you think he’s mad about?”
Iris leaned forward. “Talk around the water cooler says he was in all weekend with the external auditors.”
Auditors? Oh no.
“Talk says someone’s been robbing the company blind!” Iris waited eagerly for Kendra’s scandalized reaction, maybe for a little more information to feed back into the rumor mill.
Oh…God. I’m going to throw up.
Head hurting, mouth dry, Kendra stood and wheeled past Iris, her only thought being to make it to the bathroom before she embarrassed herself.
Iris swiveled in her chair, concerned. “What’s wrong?”
Bathroom, Kendra thought. Bathroom!
“Need some water? You aren’t…” she looked around to see if anyone was listening, and then hissed in a voice that would unavoidably be heard by anyone who was, “You aren’t pregnant, are you?”
Kendra managed to shake her head. Her phone started ringing.
“Want me to answer that? Want a paper bag for your head?”
Only if it comes with a cyanide pill, Kendra thought.
The phone stopped ringing. Kendra evaded Iris and hurried up the corridor. The ladies’ room, and refuge, were in sight. Mrs. Mertz loomed, cutting off any hope of escape. “Miss Forrest! Didn’t you hear your phone?”
“No, I…” Kendra answered weakly. “I…uh…was on my way to the ladies’ room. I didn’t—”
“I was calling you.”
“I’m…sorry?”
“Mr. Hammond wants to see you in his office.” This seemed to make her extremely happy.
Kendra hesitated, looking past the woman’s angular shoulder to the swinging door with its familiar icon, a white-painted female in a triangular skirt. Had she been three seconds faster, she would have been on the other side of that door.
Mrs. Mertz followed Kendra’s longing gaze to the bathroom door. “You’re just going to have to hold it.”
Just going to have to hold it? On any other day, she would have laughed off the directive, suggested to Mrs. Mertz that a cup of tea might improve her mood, and continued on her intended trajectory.
But not today.
Wordlessly,