Lee! Someone might hear you!” Lilliana said and stood up at her cubicle and glanced around. She caught the supervisor’s eyes, and quickly sat down. “You’d better sit down, Lee. Ms. Hillman is eyeballing you all the way from her office. And this time, I don’t think she’s got her eyes on your new bag.” Lee swore up and down that the woman was jealous of his collection of Louis Vuitton bags.
“Whatever, chica. I’m not afraid of that overgrown rat.” He talked a good game, but Lilliana noticed he sat down anyway.
“That’s not nice, Lee. She can’t help her overbite,” Lilliana said automatically.
“Braces. How about a nice set of braces? Hmmm? And you know she’s making mucho dinero! The heffa’s been working for Longmire since the Stone Age. Not married, no kids…uh huh, she got money, mami, trust me. She needs to use a few of those greenbacks and get her damn mustache waxed…with her ole evil self.” He quickly turned to his work when the woman turned her eyes on him, a deep frown settling across her mustachioed face.
“Lee,” Lilly hissed, trying to make him be quiet. If he kept on, she knew she’d end up laughing out loud and drawing more attention to herself and give Ms. Hillman a reason to come over to their cubicle.
“We’ll talk about this later!” Lee promised in a low voice.
She turned her headset on and listened to Kem croon low in her ears. Music always helped her work go by faster and she was surprised when they were allowed to listen to headsets in the office.
Lilliana happily began on the mountain of statements she had in her inbox that needed to be processed into the computer and bounced a bit in her chair as she worked.
“So…did you?”
“Boy, you almost gave me a damn heart attack! Did I what?” She’d been concentrating for several minutes when Lee plucked one of the earphones away from her ear and asked the question.
He frowned at her and poked out his lips and she sighed. “You are not going to let it go, are you?”
“No, I’m not! I just don’t think you have the balls to actually go through with it, that’s all.”
“Don’t have the what? Pulleeze! I not only have the balls to contemplate it…I did it! I took out the ad!” Lilliana stated proudly. She lowered her voice when a few co-workers turned their heads in her direction at her confession. “And not only that…it comes out in today’s issue of the Reader!” She smirked when Lee’s mouth literally dropped.
“Close your mouth, you’ll catch flies!” she laughed.
“I don’t believe it! Prove it!” he hissed back over the partition and promptly sat back down when Ms. Hillman came out of her office.
Lilliana dug out her bag from underneath her desk in the cubicle and plopped it into her lap. “I have the proof right here,” she said and rummaged around inside until she came out with a folded piece of paper. She wheeled herself away from her desk and toward Lee’s cubicle and shoved the cut-out to him. “Check it out!” she giggled.
Lee quickly scanned the contents of the ad and raised approving eyes at her. “Oh, snap! You did do it! Girl, I can’t believe it! Oh, how funny, Big Spankable Asses!” he chortled at the words she’d handwritten across the top of the paper. “Did your girlfriends do it as well? I want all the details and don’t leave anything out!” He settled back in his chair with an excited look crossing his handsome face.
“I’ll give you the scoop at lunchtime—right now, give it back! Ms. Hillman is headed this way.” She grabbed the paper and stuffed it into the top drawer of her desk and got busy before their supervisor busted them.
“Fine, but I want all the details!” He went back to work as well, before the woman reached them.
3
“Josh, I want you to take the Bradley case over from Ben,” Allen Longmire told his nephew as they left the top floor suite of offices and entered the elevator.
“No problem, Allen. Is Ben okay with that?” Josh asked and punched the elevator button for the third floor.
“He’s going to be okay with it.” The way Allen said it left no doubt in Josh’s mind that it wasn’t Ben’s idea to be replaced. “You’ve got a proven track history with these particular investments. Ben’s been fucking up lately and we don’t want to alienate the Bradleys. They bring big money to the firm. We need to keep them happy, and money keeps them happy. Making money keeps everyone involved happy, particularly this firm. You’ll do a great job with it, I have confidence in you, boy.” Allen patted his back as they left the elevator. Josh managed not to grimace at the hearty pat and the way his uncle called him “boy.” At twenty-eight, he’d left boyhood behind a long damn time ago. Actually, since his father left his mother when he was six years old, he hadn’t felt like a boy for what felt like eons.
“That’s fine with me, as long as you let him know it was your idea and not something I approached you with.”
“Of course I will, just leave Ben to me! I’ll take care of it.” His uncle patted him on the back again. “Look, it’s lunchtime, do you want to head down to grab a bite to eat in the cafeteria? I don’t have the time to go anywhere else today.”
“I was thinking the same thing. Let me go back upstairs, I need to grab my wallet.”
“I think I can afford to buy my own nephew a five dollar sandwich,” Allen laughed.
“Yeah, well, I have enough shit to deal with as it is, with some thinking I don’t really belong here. I can buy my own lunch, but thanks, Uncle Allen. Besides, I have an errand to run after lunch and I need my wallet,” Josh hedged.
“Hey, you deserve to be here just like anyone else. Nothing was handed to you. You work damn hard, make more money for this firm than any other senior exec, and to hell with what they think. Your father helped me build this firm and you have the same skill and knack for making money that he did…does.”
“I appreciate the words, but it won’t take long for me to grab my wallet from my office. I’ll meet you down there,” Josh said, avoiding his uncle’s eyes.
“Sure. I’ll meet you down there,” he agreed. Josh caught the flash of something in his eyes before he exited the elevator.
Wallet retrieved, Josh waited before he pressed the down button. When the second elevator slid open, he stepped inside and withdrew the badge from the pocket in his jacket.
“I wouldn’t have believed it had I not read it with my own two eyes,” Lee said around a mouthful of tunafish salad he was trying to swallow.
“Well…I’m not all that sure I believe it myself and I took the ad out!”
“But you’re going through with it, si?”
“You mean if someone actually guesses the right answer? Yeah, I think so,” Lilliana said and laughed. “But what’s the likelihood of that?”
“You mean of someone coming up with the right reply?”
Lilliana paused to take a sip her of green tea and answered after she swallowed. “I
