Page 117 of The Hookup
She crossed her arms, fighting back the urge to punch something. His face, even. Unbelievable. After everything she had done, not forgetting the hours she had put in during her time here, giving the bank her life and soul, they were taking away her biggest client. She shook her head in disbelief. “I’ve been up to date with everything. I haven’t fallen behind on anything. It wasn’t Geoffrey’s business to mention anything about my personal life.”
“But your boyfriend does have cancer, am I right, or not?”
Boyfriendwas obviously not the right word, but she had to play along. She almost choked at the idea of explaining the details of their hookup to Remington. “We’re dealing with it.”
“Look, Kay. Don’t fight me on this. Geoffrey’s dealing with this client now, and everything goes through him. That’s my decision, and it’s final.”
Geoffrey had stabbed her in the back, and now she’d lost her account. Her chance to shine. Worse, Remington saw her as a liability. Heat surged through her body, and the blood in her veins turned to magma. Anytime now she was going to erupt. “This isn’t fair,” she ground out slowly. “I haven’t taken any time off. I’ve forwarded Geoffrey the correct report. If the client received the wrong one, it’s Geoffrey’s fault, not mine—”
Remington scratched the side of his face with his index finger, and his shiny white platinum cufflinks shone as the rays of sunshine hit it. “The decision is final, Kay. Cut out the hysterics and get on with business as fucking usual. We’re in the banking business, for fucks sake.” The good old Remington was back, curses and all.
And just like that, the Pembroke account was taken away, and with it, her chances of promotion.
She had given this company her blood—almost. Her blood, sweat and tears. She had worked around the clock, staying until way past normal hours, and taking work home. She had cajoled, and worked, and negotiated, and drank, and joked with the best of them, but in the end, it had taken a pathetic little whiny-voiced man, a man who hadn’t been able to handle her rejection, to stab her in the back while she had been at her weakest. In a moment of vulnerability, she had let down her guard, and mistaken Geoffrey for a friend.
After the weekend she’d had, with Luke, and his sister and Maggie, and the shock of all she had discovered, this announcement from Remington just about broke her. It was everything she had worked for, everything she had put her heart, blood and guts into. He couldn’t just take it away from her like that. It wasn’t fair. She went for one last attempt. “Look, Theodore. It doesn’t make sense to take me off this now when we’re so close to making the deal. You just can’t—”
Remington looked up at her, his eyes widening as he raised one eyebrow. “I can’t what?” he said, quietly. “Can’t what?” he cupped his hand to his ear, in what she saw as a final humiliation. She thanked her lucky stars that there was nobody around to witness this.
What did he expect her to do now?
As if reading her thoughts, he said, “Engelmann needs assistance with the client deal he’s running. I’ve told him he can expect you to help out.”
Engelmann? The guy who had only joined less than a year ago? She was supposed to help him out? And she’d been here three years. Talk about a slap in the face, a way to make her feel she wasn’t worth jack.
“As you wish.” She spun around on her heels, and left Remington’s office.
Back at her desk, she forced herself to put on a coat of armor, to remain stoic and strong, and to not fall to pieces, especially because she knew everybody was watching her.
They had known before she’d set foot in the office, what was going down today. She willed Geoffrey to come to her and say something, anything. She eyed the pair of scissors in her desk tidy and considered, fleetingly, the possibility of sticking it in his back.
Erin often asked her if she wanted to go to lunch and she almost always turned her down, but today she needed to get out of the office. An hour later, she and Erin were sitting outside one of the sandwich shops, only her mind was elsewhere. She was trying to come to terms with the way both her personal and working lives had been turned upside down.
“How is he now?” Erin asked, having expressed shock and disappointment that Kay hadn’t said a word to her about Luke’s illness before.
“He’s recovering.”
“I can’t believe it, Kay,” her friend said in a whiny voice. “You meet a guy this hot, and fall in love—”
“Who said anything about falling in love?”
Erin looked surprised, the half-eaten bagel still in her hand. She looked at Kay as if she’d asked her an idiot question. “But you’ve been looking after him, and you lost the account over him. If that’s not love I don’t know what it.”
“I didn’tintendto lose my client deal,” she said, looking away. “Geoffrey used it to his advantage. Slimy little snake that he is.” She couldn’t help but wonder how easy it was for Remington. He didn’t need to give her client to Geoffrey. He knew how hard she’d worked. Maybe that one time she slipped up was one time too much.
It still hurt hard, and she wasn’t entirely sure what she was going to do next. Working alongside Engelmann wasn’t appealing, and to her ambitious mind, she saw it as a demotion.
“It was a shitty thing to do,” Erin agreed. “He’s met your boyfriend, hasn’t he?”
She flinched at the label. Luke would vomit if he heard anyone use that term to refer to him. Besides, that hadn’t been the way she’d seen him, not before, not now and not ever. “Why? What’s that got to do with it?”
“You would have thought he’d understand.”
“Geoffrey?”Understand?
“He might have had the hots for you before, but that was a few months ago. He’s seeing someone from the fifth floor now.”
Kay looked at her in disbelief. “Lucky girl,” she said sarcastically.
