Brute that knows no Love

Chapter 2

She was sorry now she’d worn the suit. She usually wore pants and a bKellyse, but she was going to a luncheon today and so she’d pulled out all the stops and put on the Armani suit her Cousin Carrie had sent as a present two years ago. The color was a wonderful taupe gray and had a matching sleeveless V neck shell. At one time there had been an obscene slit up the side, but Shion had sewn it together. It was a great-looking suit. Now it would be remembered as the suit she wore the day she got fired.

“Catch,” Jenny said as she threw the new package of panty hose at Shion. “These are the one-size-fits-all kind. They’ll work just fine. You have to wear hose. You know the dress code.”

Shion read the label. It did say the hose would fit every size. “Thanks,” she said as she sat down again. Her legs were long, and she was afraid of tearing the hose when she pulled them up over her hips, but they seemed to fit.

“You’re going to be late,” Gon told her when she stood up again and adjusted her skirt. Why hadn’t she noticed how short it was? The hem barely touched the top of her knees.

“I’ve got four minutes left.” After she’d put on some lip gloss and clipped her hair back behind her neck with a barrette, she slipped the heels back on. Only then did she notice how loose the right heel was. She must have broken it when she slammed into the hood of the car.

Can’t do anything about it now, she thought. She took a deep breath, straightened her shoulders, and limped toward the aisle. With every step, her left knee throbbed.

“Wish me luck.”

“Shion,” Gon shouted. He waited until she turned around, then hurled her clip-on ID. “You should probably wear this.”

“Yeah, right. They’ll want to take it from me before they escort me out of the building.”

Jenny called after her. “Hey, Shion, think of it this way—if you get fired, you won’t have to worry about all the work piling up while you and your Cousin chill out at that fancy spa.”

“I haven’t decided if I’m going to meet my Cousin or not. She still thinks I’m chaperoning those kids around D.C.”

“But now that that got canceled, you ought to go get pampered,” Jenny argued.

“That’s right, you should go,” Kelly said. “You could stay at Utopia a whole month and work on your résumé.”

“Not helping, guys,” Shion said without looking back.

Bright’s office was four flights up. On any other day she would have taken the stairs as aerobic exercise, but her left knee ached too much, and the heel on her right shoe was too wobbly. She was exhausted by the time she reached the elevator. While she waited for it, she rehearsed what she would say when Bright asked what in God’s name she thought she was doing.

The doors parted.

She took a step forward and felt something snap. Glancing down, she spotted the heel of her shoe lodged in the seam between the elevator and the floor. Since she was alone, she hiked her skirt up and bent down on her good knee to pry the heel loose. It was then that the elevator doors closed on her head.

Muttering an expletive, Shion fell back. The car began to move and she grabbed the railing. She clutched the broken heel in her hand and pulled herself to her feet just as the doors opened on the first floor. By the time she reached the fourth floor, the elevator was full of passengers, and she was squeezed to the back of the car. Feeling like an i***t, she excused her way to the front and limped off.

UnfortuFreccsly, Bright’s office was located at the end of a long corridor. The glass doors were so far away she couldn’t even read the name etched above the brass handle.

Suck it up, she thought as she started walking. She was halfway there when she stopped to check the time and give her leg a rest. She had one minute. She could make it, she thought as she started walking again. Her barrette slipped out of her hair, but she caught it before it fell to the floor. She clipped it back in place and continued on. She was beginning to wish Mrs. Speigel’s car had actually struck her. Then she wouldn’t have to come up with any excuses, and Bright could call her at the hospital and fire her over the phone.

Suck it up, she repeated. Could it get any worse?

Of course it could. At precisely the second she was pulling the door open, her panty hose began to slip. By the time she’d limped over to the receptionist, the waistband was down around her hips.

The stately brunette woman wearing a knockoff Chanel suit looked a bit startled as she watched Shion approach.

“Miss Org?”

“Yes,” she answered.

The woman smiled. “You’re right on time. Mr. Bright will appreciate that. He keeps a tight schedule.”

Shion leaned forward as the woman picked up the phone to announce her. “Is there a ladies’ room close by?”

“It’s down the hall, past the bank of elevators, on your left.”

Shion glanced behind her and considered her options. She could be late for the appointment, try to run like hell down the mile-long hallway and rip off the damn pantyhose, or she could—

The receptionist interrupted her frantic thoughts. “Mr. Bright will see you now.”

She didn’t move.

“You may go inside,” she said.

“The thing is . . .”

“Yes?”

Shion slowly straightened. The panty hose stayed put. Smiling, she said, “I’ll go on in then.”

She pivoted and held her smile as she grabbed the edge of the desk, and then tried to walk as though her shoe still had a heel. With any luck, Bright wouldn’t even notice her condition.

Who was she kidding? The man was trained to be observant.

Tall, distinguished-looking, with a thick head of silver-tipped hair and a square chin, Tom Bright stood when she entered. She hobbled forward. When she reached the chair in front of his desk, she wanted to throw herself into it, but waited for him to give her permission.

Bright reached across the desk to shake her hand, and it was then, as she was stretching forward, that her panty hose gave up the fight. The crotch was now down around her knees. In a panic, she grabbed his hand and shook it vigorously. Too late she realized she was clutching the heel of her shoe in her right hand. She hadn’t sweated this much since she took the graduate record exam.

“It’s a pleasure to meet you, sir. An honor, really. You wanted to see me? My, it’s warm in here. Would you mind if I removed my jacket?”

She was rambling but couldn’t seem to stop. The remark about the temperature had gotten his attention, though. Thank God, the rumors were right. Bright did have his own thermostat and liked to keep his office just below freezing.

It was like an Alaskan tomb. Shion was surprised she couldn’t see her breath when she exhaled. That’s when she realized she wasn’t breathing.

Calm down, she told herself. Take a deep breath.

Bright enthusiastically nodded. He didn’t mention the heel that had dropped on top of a stack of files on his desk. “I thought it was warm, but my assistant keeps telling me it’s cold in here. Let me just turn down the thermostat a notch.”