LITMIR.BIZ

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let this happen.

      Now of all times!

      Well, she just couldn’t let this happen. She didn’t know how she was going to stop it, but she had to.

      She remembered her own words to Johnny—was it just this afternoon? You can’t walk away every time a bully tries to take something from you.

      She couldn’t walk away. She couldn’t just let this guy pull her job out from under her. But how on earth could she stay? She’d been fired, for Pete’s sake!

      She watched, numb, as her friends and colleagues collected thick manila envelopes from a makeshift desk manned by a glossy-haired buxom brunette Kit had never seen before.

      “Are you really going to take this without a fight?” Kit asked Lila Harper, author of a sewing column that had, perhaps, contained a few too many crocheted sweater-vests.

      “The man said he doesn’t need us anymore. No sense in fighting. Plus, I don’t need the work, dear,” Lila Harper said, patting Kit’s shoulder with a thin paper-white hand.

      No, of course she didn’t. Neither did half the people here. They all either had other careers, well-paid spouses or retirement pensions. All the other staff members were in their twenties with no dependents or urgent considerations. For one ugly moment Kit felt as if she was the only one who really cared about keeping this job, the only one who needed it.

      She continued to watch in disbelief as several of her other coworkers took their envelopes one by one and left as if they’d won some kind of prize. A slip-knot tightened in her stomach. It was over. She’d lost a battle without even realizing she was fighting.

      Her house.

      The little yard.

      The school one block away.

      The community pool with two diving boards.

      All of it gone. Unless she could pull off some kind of miracle with this unapproachable man who seemed to have ice water running through his veins.

      “Can you believe this?” Kathleen Browning asked, interrupting Kit’s thoughts.

      Kit looked at her and was gratified to see that the copy editor looked unhappy about the turn of events.

      “No, I can’t. I’m going to fight it,” Kit said.

      “How?”

      The answer seemed so obvious. “I’m going to talk to this Panagos guy. I’m going to tell him I want to keep my job. Come with me. There’s power in numbers.”

      Kathleen looked doubtful. “I don’t know. Men like that make me nervous.”

      “Men like what?”

      “He’s so—” she sucked in her breath “—great-looking. If I try and talk to him, I’ll probably just get nervous and pass out at his feet or something.”

      “Kathleen,” Kit returned impatiently. “That’s ridiculous. Look, I’ll do most of the talking, you just come and agree with me.”

      Kathleen shook her head. “I don’t think so. Actually I saw an ad for a fiction editor just last week and I think I’d like to try moving in that direction.”

      Wimp, Kit thought irritatedly.

      “We’ll get together soon,” Fiona Whitcomb, the etiquette columnist, was saying to Lila as they shuffled behind Kit. “First Derek and I will probably go to Palm Springs for a few weeks of glorious sunshine.”

      Kit watched each of her old friends file out the door, shaking Cal’s hand and smiling as they left. Who were these people? It was as if she hadn’t known them at all. She half wondered if there were pods in the basement of the building, like in Invasion of the Body Snatchers.

      Lucy took her envelope, opened it and gave a delighted exclamation, as if her Pepsi bottle cap had just declared her a winner.

      Jo gave Kit a look, then stood up.

      “Are you really going to do this?” Kit asked her.

      “I don’t have any choice,” Jo said. “Look at that guy.” She nodded toward Cal. “He means business. You can see there’s no compromise there. He walked into this building intending to fire every one of us today and that’s just what he did.”

      Kit felt as if she might cry. But she wouldn’t. No way. “I’m going to change his mind about that.”

      Jo put her arm around her friend. “I bet you will, too. I know this is really important to you, but don’t forget there are other opportunities out there if you can’t make this one work. You’ll find a job and get that house.”

      There was no sense in pointing out that she needed this job now in order to get this loan at this interest rate. “What about you? Did you win the lottery or something? How come you don’t need to worry about work?”

      “I do, Kit, but I’ve been thinking about leaving this job lately anyway. I don’t want to be Mr. Fix-It forever. There are better things out there for me. And if I get to leave here with a good recommendation and a severance package, I’m better off than I thought I’d be two weeks ago when I started seriously thinking of quitting.”

      Kit hadn’t even realized her friend had been so close to quitting.

      “Listen,” Jo said, “if you want to stay and battle this out, I’ll take Johnny home. We’ll go to dinner and swing by your place later, okay?”

      “Thanks,” Kit said. For a moment she’d forgotten Johnny was still waiting in her office.

      That was the kind of thoughtfulness that was going to make Kit really and truly miss seeing Jo at work every day. She’d been so lucky to work with her best friend for so long.

      Now Kit was on her own. And she was going to go forward and change Cal Panagos’s mind no matter what.

      One by one the Home Life staff went until there were only two heartbeats left in the room: hers and Cal’s. And she was pretty sure hers was faster.

      Cal turned from the doorway and looked at Kit with what she saw now, on closer inspection, were piercing pale blue eyes. They were Newmanesque. This guy could be a movie star.

      In fact, if he’d chosen that route, Kit would have been a lot better off.

      “There’s just one envelope left,” he said to her in a voice that had probably melted lots of foolish women’s hearts.

      “Let me guess.”

      He gave a quick smile, the unexpectedness of which took her aback, and held the envelope out to her. “Thanks for your work, Ms. Macy.”

      She took a bracing breath and said, “I can’t take that.”

      He cocked his head slightly. “I’m sorry?”

      “I can’t accept your severance package.” She swallowed hard. She was suddenly self-conscious about her small, mousy self standing in front of him. She’d been in such a rush today that she hadn’t done anything with her wild tangle of auburn hair. And she hadn’t done the laundry in a few days and was wearing her Emergency Work Clothes, meaning gray pants that would have been a lot more flattering if she’d ever been able to stay on the South Beach Diet for more than two or three days.

      Still, she had to work with what she had and she had to pretend she had confidence, even if at this particular moment she didn’t.

      “I need this job,” she finished simply.

      It was clear he hadn’t been expecting an objection from anyone. He cleared his throat and said, “Well, I’m honestly sorry about this, but—”

      She took a gamble. “Moreover, you need me.”

      He gave her look of dry query.

      She nodded at his unasked question. “You do. I’m the only person who knows

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