LITMIR.BIZ

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going to be their new VP? In charge of Public Relations?” When she realized she was still speaking in the inquisitive tense, Kendall closed her eyes and mentally willed her age back up to twenty-seven-and-a-half. If she kept this up, Matthias wouldn’t let her have her milk and cookies for snack later.

      When she opened her eyes again, she saw that his dark brows had shot up even farther at her declaration. Question. Whatever. Oh, hell.

      “OmniTech?” he asked. Using the proper punctuation, Kendall couldn’t help noticing. Unlike some people. “Who the hell recruited you to work for OmniTech?”

      Strange that he would assume she was recruited, she thought, and that she hadn’t gone looking for the position on her own. Even if, you know, she had been recruited for the position and hadn’t gone looking for it on her own. “Stephen DeGallo,” she told him. And she applauded herself for finally grasping the proper rules of punctuation. Now if she could just do something about the sudden drop in volume her voice had taken….

      Although she wouldn’t have thought it possible, Matthias’s eyebrows arched even higher. “The CEO of the company recruited you to come work for him?” he asked with obvious disbelief. “As a vice president?”

      Kendall didn’t see what was so unbelievable about that. She was perfectly qualified for the job. Tamping down her irritation, she repeated, “Yes, sir.”

      Matthias narrowed his eyes at her. “Stephen DeGallo never hires from outside the company. He always promotes from within. He doesn’t trust outsiders. He likes to surround himself with people he’s trained to think like he does. You know. Suck-ups.”

      Kendall ignored the comment. Mostly because she couldn’t help thinking that, after five years of working for Matthias, she was even better qualified for the job of suck-up than she was vice president in charge of public relations. “Stephen said—”

      “Stephen?” Matthias echoed, this time punctuating the comment with an incredulous expulsion of air. “You’re already calling him by his first name?”

      “He insisted. Sir,” Kendall added meaningfully, since Matthias had never extended her the invitation to address him so informally, even after being his right-hand woman for five years. Before he could comment further, she hurried on, “Stephen said I had impeccable credentials. And I do,” she couldn’t help adding. “In case you’ve forgotten, I have an MBA from Stanford, and I graduated with highest honors.”

      Matthias actually smiled at that. “Oh, yeah, I’ll just bet DeGallo’s impressed with your…credentials.” He leaned back in his chair even more, folding his arms now to cradle his head in his hands. It was a position Kendall knew well, one that was meant to lull the observer into a false sense of security before Matthias struck with the velocity and toxicity of a cobra.

      “You realize,” he said, “that the only reason DeGallo offered you the job is because he’s competing with Barton Limited for the Perkins contract, and he’s going to expect you to tell him everything you know about the work we’ve done so far to win it.”

      The barb hit home, just as she knew Matthias had meant for it to. Instead of reacting to it, however, Kendall only replied calmly, “That would be highly unethical, sir. Possibly even criminal. Not only could Stephen not be expecting me to provide him with any such information, but he must know I’d never betray you that way.”

      “Wouldn’t you?” Matthias asked easily.

      Kendall gaped at him. Now that was a reaction she hadn’t expected. “Of course I wouldn’t. How can you even ask me something like that?”

      She realized then how right she’d been to accept the new position. If Matthias could suspect she was capable of turning on him so completely, so readily, then he truly didn’t view her any differently than he did the phones he tossed out the window. He’d also implied she wasn’t qualified for her new job, even after the countless times she’d proved how valuable an employee she was.

      Clearly, it was time to go.

      “Fine, then,” he said, dropping his arms and sitting up straight again. “But, Kendall, haven’t you learned anything from me in the time you’ve been at Barton Limited? Big business isn’t the gentleman’s game it was a generation ago. No one’s going to do you any favors. Why should you do any favors for them? For me? When it comes to business, you think of yourself first, others not at all. Feel free to report to OmniTech tomorrow if you want. Since you’ll be going to work for one of my competitors, I can’t risk having you around the office any longer and potentially compromising the work we’re doing here. Your two weeks’ notice won’t be necessary. You’re fired. Clear out your desk immediately. I’ll have Sarah call security and they can escort you out of the building. You have ten minutes.”

      And with that, he turned his attention back to the stack of papers requiring his signature and began to sign each without another glance in her direction.

      Kendall had no idea what to say. She hadn’t expected this from Matthias at all. She’d thought he would react the way he’d reacted every other time she’d tried to resign, with a seemingly endless list of reasons why she couldn’t go, none of which was in any way legitimate. Never in a million years would she have thought he would fire her, even if she was going to work for one of his competitors. Barton Limited had scores of competitors. She would have been hard-pressed to find a position with a company that didn’t compete with Matthias in some way. She’d thought he would view her acceptance of a new job the same way she did: as business. Instead, he seemed to have taken it…

      Personally, she marveled.

      Immediately, she told herself that was impossible. Matthias Barton didn’t get personal. About anything. He was just reacting this way because he was worried she would compromise his pursuit of the Perkins contract. That, she thought, wasn’t surprising. That he would think of his business first, and others…well, as he’d said, not at all. She just wished he had enough faith in her to realize that she would never do anything to sabotage him or his work.

      Clearly, it was so time to go.

      With a briskly muttered “Yes, sir,” Kendall spun on her heel and exited Matthias’s office, giving him the same courtesy he’d extended to her and not looking back once. She wasn’t the kind of person to look backward. Only forward. That was the reason she’d come to work for Matthias in the first place, because she’d been thinking ahead, to a better future. Now that future was the present. It was time to start thinking forward again. And that meant never giving another thought to…

      Well. She could barely remember Matthias Thaddeus Barton’s name. Or how his espresso eyes flashed gold when he was angry. Or how that one unruly lock of dark hair fell forward whenever he had his head bent in concentration. Or how one side of his mouth turned up more than another whenever he smiled that arrogant smile…

      Matthias looked at the closed door through which Kendall had just exited and silently cursed it for ruining the view. Not that there was anything especially scenic about Kendall Scarborough. With her librarian glasses and those mannish, colorless clothes hiding what was doubtless a curve-free body, anyway, and with her hair always bound tightly to her head, she wasn’t likely to be showing up as a trifold with staples taped inside the locker of a dockworker. Of course, that had been the first thing to grab his attention during her interview five years ago, because the last thing he’d wanted or needed in a personal assistant was someone he might want to get personal with.

      Not that personal to Matthias was all that personal, but the risk for screwing up was always there, since he had, in the past, been swayed by beauty, with disastrous results. He was understandably wary around beautiful things and beautiful women. But he’d never been able to resist either.

      He’d thought he’d solved his problem by arranging a marriage with Lauren Conover that would have provided him with not just a suitable wife for a man in his position, but a beneficial merger with her father’s company, as well. Lauren was beautiful, smart, accomplished and chic, but there hadn’t been a spark of any inconvenient

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