Winter Storms (20 page)
Except for a neat chestnut ponytail and square workman’s hands.
Edie found those elements a startling … intriguing …
annoying
contradiction. She shivered, stifled it. Something about Kirk pushed all her buttons.
“Mr. Kirk!” Bethany smoothed her skirt. “I’m so glad you’re here. Edie is totally out of control — ”
“One moment. Edie.” Kirk stepped into the cube and suddenly Edie couldn’t breathe. His gaze bored into her like a silver-blue drill. “The whole department is rumbling over an out-of-tune rendition of
Hundred Bottles
and a cat fight. And whom do I find at the center of it? Edie Rowan.”
Edie chewed her lip. “I know it looks bad, Kirk. But — ”
“
Mr
. Kirk.” Bethany sliced an evil little look at Edie. “Let me remind you, company policy requires that HHE officers be called by their courtesy titles, to show our
respect
.”
“Respect isn’t ordered.” Edie gritted her teeth. “It’s earned.”
“Mr. Kirk, it’s high time you do something about her.” Bethany jabbed a finger at Edie. “Not only was she at the center of this disturbance, she proposed this whole absurd contest.”
“Contest?” Kirk’s flashing eyes, in another man, might have been amused. “Edie. What contest would that be?”
Edie opened her mouth.
“She bet lunch,” Bethany jumped in. “On the company credit card, if you can believe it. Lunch for any of her hooligans who — ”
Kirk raised his hand. That was all it took to chop Bethany off mid-tirade. “Excuse me, Bethany. I asked Edie.” His nod gave Edie the floor.
She was impressed despite herself. Which teed her off. It wasn’t impressive, it was the Great Man allowing the Poor Servant to speak. Her chin kicked up. “My team needed a stress valve. We’ve been putting in twelve-hour days, and — ”
“A project manager,” Bethany chirped, “should make the project manageable.”
“What are you, the Sphinx?” Edie said.
“Can’t stand the truth? Bad manager, bad manager … ”
Edie came around her desk so fast her curls snapped. Her head barely cleared Bethany’s shoulders, but her blazing temper towered. “Can. It.”
“I certainly won’t — ”
“You
will
— ”
“Conference room.
Now
.” Kirk effortlessly sliced through their tirade. He strode away without a backward glance.
Edie exchanged a murderous look with Bethany. But they both trailed Kirk to the conference room.
As soon as Edie shut the door, Kirk whirled and snapped, “You two bicker like small children. You’re managers. Act like it.”
Edie jerked straight as if she’d been slapped. “Yes, sir. My apologies, sir.”
“No sarcasm, please.” His narrowed eyes could have sliced steel. “You’re pushing the line already.”
Bethany said, “If you ask me, she’s not only pushing the line, she crossed it and rubbed it out after her.”
“Nobody asked you,” Edie and Kirk said at the same time. Edie gave him a surprised look.
He simply nodded. “You were explaining the music. Please continue.”
Edie took a calming breath. She wasn’t trying to get fired but tact wasn’t her strong suit. Honesty was. “My team is working really hard with an impossible deadline. They were burning out. So I made up a little contest to re-energize them. I challenged them to write a music program before I did.”
Bethany broke in with undisguised glee. “She should spend less time playing at programming and more time working at managing.”
Kirk cut her out of the conversation simply by turning his shoulders on her.
Edie was grudgingly impressed. Not by the breadth of those shoulders. By Bethany actually shutting up. Although those shoulders, besides blocking Bethany’s scowl, obliterated half the conference room. No. Not gaping at his shoulders, or his strong lithe body, or his clean, rugged jaw. Definitely not falling under the spell of the gleaming intelligence in his eyes … She slammed hers shut.
Only to drag in the scent of male heat and power instead.
She tried to stop breathing. Choked. Her eyes snapped open.
He was watching her, irises so bright they were almost silver. Steel blue, emphasis on steel — Kirk used his eyes the way other men used swords. That gaze made her want to cower, to run for cover … bed covers, rolling under them in the dark, hot and sweaty … She covered her face with both hands.
“Tell me the rest.” His voice was a buzz of pleasure along her skin.
“There’s not much more to tell, Kirk … I mean Mr. Kirk.” She uncovered. “I needed a diversion for the team. It was perfectly innocent. If Jack’s music had played after hours, no one would have cared.”
“But it isn’t after hours, is it?” Though Kirk’s tone was gentle, his eyes, sharp and demanding, held her to a higher standard. “Other people work here, Edie. There are other people to consider, besides your team.”
“It was just a song or two.” Edie’s cheeks heated. “No big deal.”
“The whole department was ruffled and distracted. I felt it just walking through. Didn’t you sense it, right in the middle as you were?”
“Um … eye of the storm?”
“Bethany was kind enough to inform you of the disturbance in person. Didn’t you listen to her, even a little?”
“She was gloating, not informing!”
“Edie.” He shook his head, sadly. “You haven’t learned a thing about cooperation and compromise in the workplace, have you?”
Edie’s blood drained. That killing tone of voice … this was it. She was going to get fired. Again. “Look, I’m sorry. I’m doing the best I can for my team. Sometimes that means I lose sight of the big company picture.”
Kirk frowned, his silvery eyes mirrored surfaces, unreadable.
A lifetime’s silence passed. Edie chewed her lip. She wanted to scream.
Through it all, muffled by the conference room’s walls, Jack’s computer cheerfully took down bottles of beer and passed them around.
Her lip was in tatters when Kirk’s frown finally eased. “Very well. You have a choice.”
Okay. Not fired yet. Though, from the wicked curl to his lips, she wouldn’t like his “choice.”
“There’s a management seminar in LA on Monday. Either attend it, or … ” His steely eyes finished the sentence for her. Attend the seminar or get in the unemployment line.
“What kind of choice is that?” Bethany’s pinched face peeped around Kirk’s massive shoulders. “A week of half-days at a gorgeous ocean resort? It’s a fantasy vacation, not a choice.”
“What’s the catch?” Edie said.
“No catch,” Kirk said.
“Right.” Edie grimaced. “Since it sounds like I take it or leave — I’ll take it.”
“Excellent.” He smiled.
His smile caught Edie off-guard. Sparkling white teeth and gently crinkled eyes zapped her for ten points of damage before she could even think of getting her shields up.
His smile widened.
Fry her motherboard. He even had a killer dimple in his left cheek.
Belatedly her shields raised. The teeth were probably capped. The dimple was … unfair.
“That’s settled,” Kirk said. “I’ll pick you up at six forty-five tomorrow morning.”
She blinked. “What?”
“Your seminar is on the way to my conference. I’m driving anyway so I’ll drop you off. No sense wasting the company’s money.”
“You’re driving from Colorado to California?” No catch? A two-day drive through the mountains
alone
with Edward Everett Kirk? Sealed in with those shoulders, that chest, that smile?
Huge
catch. “I can drive myself.”
“You could.” He stepped closer, so close she heard his tie rustle against his shirt, felt his heat. So close she could shut her eyes and lean forward and raise her face … she snapped straight. “But why should you, when I’m already driving?” His voice deepened. “Let me do this for you, Edie.”
“Is that … ” Her voice was breathy. She swallowed, tried again. “Is that an order?”
“An order.” He sighed. “If I must. Now go home and pack.”
“
Now
? But it’s only Friday and my team — ”
“Will be perfectly fine for a few hours.”
“But what about Project Pleiades? The deadline — ”
“Mr. Kirk!” Bethany wedged a sharp elbow between Edie and Kirk. “While Edie’s gone, why don’t I take care of her team?” She shoved.
Kirk was a mountain and didn’t move, but Edie got drilled in the diaphragm. She managed to gasp, “Over my dead — ”
“No need, Bethany,” Kirk cut in smoothly. “I think they’d be best off without
both
of you for a while.”
He smiled, unleashing the dimple. And while Edie stood stunned, he sauntered out.