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Glancing at his watch, he says, “I’ve got twenty minutes before I have to leave for dinner. ”
He hesitates, and then he adds on, “Bill and I are meeting our accountant tonight. ”
I shrug my shoulders, as if I could care less that he is making a concerted effort to let me know exactly what his plans are. Sorry, bub… it’s a little too late. “Not any of my business. ”
Matt just stares at me, and I don’t get the nice little jaw pop that I’ve come to gain sustenance from, so I add on, “Sir. ”
There we go… the jaw is popping away, and I feel a peaceful calm enter into my heart. It’s easier than f**king Yoga to find my Zen place by antagonizing Matt.
He continues to stare at me as if I grew a second head, and I just placidly look back at him. Finally, he says, “I want to know what was going on between you and Lorraine. ”
I shrug my shoulders again. “Nothing. Just a little misunderstanding, but it’s solved now. ”
“Misunderstanding?”
“Misunderstanding,” I reiterate.
“Lorraine was screaming at you. Just before I walked in, she called you a f**king screw up. I don’t care what the reason was, but we don’t talk to each other like that at this firm. ”
“I’m sorry. It won’t happen again,” I tell him with genuine remorse.
“Fuck, McKayla,” he says in exasperation. “Why are you apologizing? She was the one screaming at you. ”
“And like I said… it was just a misunderstanding. No harm, no foul. ”
Now he’s in full jaw-popping mode, and his teeth are clenched. I cannot believe how much I’m reveling in the fact that I’m getting under his skin. Finally, he manages to grit out, “I’ll just have to talk to Lorraine myself, I guess. Give your degrees to Miss Anders and she’ll get them fixed for you, at my expense. ”
“No, thanks,” I say politely. “I can handle it. ”
Now I can practically hear his teeth scraping against each other, and I get almost giddy over the thought. I give him a lovely smile, so he knows that my non-cooperation, which is in turn causing him discomfort, is giving me quite a bit of pleasure.
I’m so f**king childish, but I just can’t help it.
Matt stares at me a long moment until I see a bit of a hard glint reflecting back at me. His jaw stops popping, and his mouth parts slightly. Finally, his lips curve upward in a smile that says, You’re not going to win this one, Mac, and a slight feeling of dread starts to creep up my spine.
Standing from his chair, he leans over his desk and presses the speaker button on his phone. After a small chime, I can hear Lorraine pick up her extension.
“Yes, Matt?”
“Lorraine… can you come into my office for a minute?”
I can almost hear Lorraine take a nervous gulp on her end before she says in a voice filled with a tinge of fear. “Sure. Be right down. ”
Matt presses the button to disconnect and turns toward me. He leans back against his desk, crosses his arms over his chest, and just stares at me with a triumphant look.
I get a nervous feeling in the pit of my stomach that magnifies once his office door opens, and Lorraine steps in. Matt’s gaze lingers on me for just a second, then he steps away from his desk and motions for Lorraine to sit down beside me. King Connover takes his throne on the other side.
I watch as Matt leans back in his chair, confident and casual. My nervousness increases because this was the pose he assumed just before deposing the witnesses in Chicago.
Just before he shredded them.
Oh, shit… he is going to expose our lies. He stares a moment at Lorraine, and I can almost feel her shudder in fear. His gaze then lazily moves over to me, and the glow in his eyes almost takes on the look of a lion hunting its prey. I suppress the urge to run, and stick my chin up a little higher. I can tell this amuses him by the way his eyes crinkle.
He leans forward slightly, like he’s getting ready to pounce. I recognize this move. He’s getting ready to go in for the kill.
“Lorraine… I’d like to know exactly what just happened in McKayla’s office. ”
I can see Lorraine’s hands shaking just a bit when she says, “It was just a disagreement. No biggie. ”
“So I’ve heard,” Matt says drily. “But any time you scream at someone and call them… what were the words you used? ‘A f**king screw up’… well, I need to delve a little deeper, you see?”
Lorraine nods her head but doesn’t say anything. Matt leans forward a bit more and places his elbows on his desk, steepling his fingers as he stares at her. “Let me see if I can put this together… you had a hearing this morning?”
Lorraine dutifully answers, “Yes. ”
“And you couldn’t find the Order the judge was supposed to sign?”
“Yes. ”
“And you assumed that McKayla had failed to draft the Order and put it in the file?”
“I couldn’t find it while I was in court—”
Matt holds his hand up to cut her off, and her mouth snaps shut.
“Yet the Order was, in fact, in there?”
“It appears so,” Lorraine grits out.
“So, you went into McKayla’s office and slammed the door shut, causing one of her degrees to fall and break?”
“Yes. ”
“And then you screamed at her for failing to draft the Order?”
“Yes. ” she says, her voice now a whisper.
“And then yelled that she was a ‘fucking screw up’?”
“Perhaps I was a bit hasty—”
Matt holds his hand up again, and Lorraine snaps her mouth shut for the second time.
I feel like I’m in the Twilight Zone. I had dutifully kept my mouth shut about what had happened between Lorraine and me because I’m not a rat and I can handle my own battles, yet within just a few minutes, Matt has Lorraine spilling her guts.
He’s amazing.
Matt stands up from his chair and looks down at Lorraine with determination. “I’m going to honor the deal we made with each other Monday night, but I’d like you to go ahead and pack up your stuff and leave now. I don’t condone that type of behavior in my business. ”
Lorraine looks sick to her stomach, and I can’t help but blurt out, “What? You’re firing her?”
Matt walks to his door and opens it, motioning for Lorraine to leave. “That’s right. Effective immediately. ”
Lorraine stands from her chair and smoothes her skirt down. Then she turns on me, and her eyes are blazing in fury. “You f**king bitch, you just had to rat me out. ”
What? I did no such thing. “Lorraine… I never said a word. ”
“Save it,” she spits out, and yes, by spit I mean I get hit again with her saliva. I reach up to wipe it off my cheek, even as she leans toward me to sneer. “You’re f**king him, and you have him wrapped around your finger. All he talked about Monday night was ‘McKayla this and McKayla that’. And now you have him doing your dirty work for you. ”
I’m so stunned by what Lorraine is saying that I can’t even think to defend myself. But apparently, I don’t need to because Matt’s voice is deadly dangerous when he says from the doorway. “You need to leave right now, Lorraine, before I change my mind about sticking to our deal. ”
Lorraine spins on him, and her voice is icy. “Try to go back on your word, and I’ll sue you. ”
“I’d like to see you try that, but I’m giving you to the count of three to get out of this office… or I’ll have security escort you out. ”
I just watch this interplay with my jaw hanging open. I have no clue what’s going on. But that’s a good way to describe my overall feeling since I met Matt Connover.
I’m freakin’ clueless.
Lorraine looks at me once more and growls, causing me to shrink back just a little in my chair. Then she stomps out of the office. As soon as she’s gone, Matt closes the door a
nd walks back over to his phone. He dials an extension and says, “Please go to Miss Cummings’ office and watch her pack up. Do not let her on her computer and escort her out of the building. Get her key before she leaves. ”
He hangs up and sits down in his chair with a sigh. “I’m sorry you had to go through that. ”
“Sorry I had to go through that?” I blurt. “You just fired someone because we had a little fight. You’re an ass**le. ”
I can’t help myself. I’m not just angry he fired someone so quickly. I’m angry at everything Matt has put me through the last two weeks. I’m pissed he seduced my body and mind, I’m pissed he doesn’t want anything but sex, and I’m pissed that he has secrets that keep me in the dark.
An idea strikes me though.
“Wait… you didn’t fire her out of some misplaced sense of obligation to me because we were h**ing s*x, did you?”
Matt’s eyes narrow at me. “Absolutely not. While I enjoyed your charms immensely, I don’t make business decisions based on how good my last f**k was. And watch who you call an ‘asshole’. I just fired someone for practically the same thing. ”
I reel as if he slapped me in the face, and I can see the regret already forming on his face. His words are softer… gentler, when he says. “Look Mac… I didn’t fire her because of you. Lorraine had been exhibiting some very bad behavior the last two weeks. She’s been yelling and screaming at the staff left and right, and she’s pissed off a few of my clients to the point they’re threatening to fire our firm. She’s not a good fit here. ”
“And what was the deal that you mentioned to her? Or is that none of my business?”
“It’s none of your business,” he confirms, but then he adds on, “but… for the sake of making sure you understand that Lorraine being fired wasn’t your fault, I’ll tell you. Bill and I decided this weekend to let her go. But we were generous… we offered to buy out her caseload and give her a severance package to help get her on her feet if she wanted to start her firm back up again. ”
Bells go off in my head. “That’s why you took her out to dinner… why you bought her champagne. ”
“I took her out to dinner because I didn’t want to do it at the office in case she made a scene, which I’m betting she would have. And yes, I bought champagne so she would understand what a sweet deal I was offering her. We weren’t going to have the deal go into effect until the end of the month, so she could make some plans to re-open her firm. But I’m not going to leave poison in this firm to cause discontent. And she is poison. ”
I nod my head and gaze at the floor, thoughtful. Yes, she is poison, and yes… it seems Matt did a kind thing rather than a vicious thing. It appears he had a lot of reason to fire her other than her screaming at me.
“It’s also why I couldn’t cancel my dinner with her Monday, and because it was firm business, I couldn’t tell you what it was about. ”
My head snaps up. “Wrong, Matt. You could have just said I’m taking her out for a business matter. You could have said that, and it would have been fine. I would have been fine. ”
We would have been fine.
“You should have trusted me it was about business. I shouldn’t have had to explain myself. ”
“Trust?” I ask with a laugh that sounds semi-hysterical. “What trust? You pointedly told me over and over again, it was just sex. We’ve never even had a real discussion other than over the five minutes it took to wolf your pancakes down. You don’t do relationships, Matt… remember? So tell me… why should there have been trust?”
Matt has no answer. For all of his wit and razor-sharp intellect, he has no response. He just stares at me, his eyes almost filled with resignation that perhaps he had screwed up. But I also see determination that he’s not going to apologize or admit he was wrong.