Page 24 of Forty and Fighting Dirty
“Look at this!” He held up a swatch of plaid fabric—fabulous, timeless plaid, I might add—holding it like it was the mouse from Monday’s site visit, dangling between his fingertips. “If you can’t deliver on the design brief, I’ll find someone who will.”
Ah. There it was. Now I understood why he was pushing the minimalist luxury angle. None of that was conveyed in the original design brief I’d used to put together the proposal that got me the job—but Rhett wanted to use any excuse possible to get rid of me.
He hadn’t been able to chastise me for expensing a desk and a chair, so now he was going after my professional capabilities. I hated that a little worm of insecurity wriggled in the pit of my stomach.
He popped a brow.
“I hear you loud and clear.” Feeling petty, I pulled my trash can out from under my desk and swept my arm across the surface, letting all the swatches and samples fall into it. “Better?”
Rhett held my gaze. “Mila,” he growled without looking at the other woman. “Leave us.”
The administrator gave me a sympathetic smile and ducked away. Rhett reached back—he didn’t even have to take a step—and closed the door.
We were alone.
His presence crowded me, even though he hadn’t moved any closer. The walls felt closer, the light a little bit weaker.
Ihatedthat he was using his size to intimidate me. He might not be doing it consciously, but hewasdoing it. I hated that I was nervous. I hated that even now, not even a full week into my new job, I felt like everything was going to crumble.
And it was Rhett’s fault. He was the one who pretended to be a benevolent god, when all he was was a clever businessman. I didn’t trust him as far as I could throw him.
“You were right, on Monday, when you said we needed each other,” Rhett said, his voice slithering in all the dark corners of the small room.
I braced myself, lifting my chin. “But?”
“But make no mistake, Darling, when the lodge opens, you’ll be on the way out.”
“You’re going to fire me?”
He huffed, leaning his knuckles on the desk to get in my face. “I’m going to make your life so miserable you beg me to let you go.”
“I’ll never beg you for anything,” I hissed in reply. “You can count on that.”
His eyes were black. “I guess we’ll find out, won’t we?”
“Just fire me now and be done with it,” I shot back, even though the words made my stomach tighten. Being fired by Rhett Baldwin would definitely make me a persona non grata in Lovers Peak. I’d have to leave town.
But I’d survived worse. I would survive him—and whatever he had to throw at me.
Rhett straightened, and I tried to hide the sigh of relief at the extra few inches of distance between us. I glared up at him—and that was when I saw the tightening of his jaw.
And I got it. Smiling, I said, “But you can’t fire me, can you? Because people like me, and it would make you the bad guy.”
“I can’t fire you because I need to get this lodge open.”
“No,” I said, sure of myself, “that’s not it. You can’t fire me because I’ve started making friends, I’ve done good work even in my first week here, and I’m a single mom with two young boys. Your reputation would never recover.”
“You have no idea what you’re talking about, Darling.”
“I know you’d be a heartless monster to fire me.”
“Maybe I am a heartless monster.”
I huffed. “Wouldn’t be the first time I had to deal with one of those.”
Something happened to Rhett’s face then, a flicker that I couldn’t quite place. Maybe he thought I was being melodramatic, and I probably was. Jacob wasn’t a monster. He was a decent father when he was around. But he was also so selfish that it was hard to grapple with the reality of it, hard to think of how much of my life I’d wasted trying to pretend he truly cared about me.
“We have an all-staff meeting on Monday morning,” Rhettfinally replied, turning for the door. “You’ll present a status report of the design of the lodge.”
