Page 2 of Analysing Her Assets

She could picture Gideon’s self-deprecating smile.

“Nah, we came down here because Nir wanted to see it too. Anyway, good for you, man, Tamar has been leading for far too long. She could use a challenge.”

“Thank you. I’m not leading by much, and there are still two months to end of year.”

“She is so ridiculous.” A third male voice sounded, Nir, Danny’s best friend from the brokerage. “Always wearing her pantsuits and her jackets. With those fat thighs, she looks like a mini fridge.”

The insult landed right in Tamar’s solar plexus, making it hard to breathe. She moved sweaty palms along her infamous thighs. She needed to leave. Turn and go. Yet, she stood frozen, a salt statue, rooted to her spot.

“And you asked her out! Twice!” Nir, again. “Even though she has this no-dating-at-work rule.”

“Well,” Danny drawled, “rules are meant to be broken. How shall I say it? She is well endowed. I’m dying to see what’s hiding under her jacket.”

She should burst in there and talk right back to them. Put them in their place. Chew their faces and spit them out.

No clever retort came to mind.

“Do you always talk about women like that?” There was a genuine incredulity in Gideon’s question. If she walked in now, she would be both humiliated and pitied.

She took a deep breath and finally found her feet. Which took her to the toilets, where it was quiet and dark.

She placed her mug next to the sink, her hands slightly shaking, then stared at her reflection, willing the redness to dissipate from her cheeks and neck.

She didn’t care about Nir. Really, she didn’t. He had confirmed a well-known point. It was her fat thighs, after all, that made her sister Tally, a wannabe fashion designer, use Tamar as her model. “I’m training on you. You’re a chubby size 42 with a Middle Eastern behind. That’s my market,” Tally used to say.

Danny had asked her out a couple of years ago, and then again a few months ago, right after he got his promotion. Truth be told, she’d been flattered. She refused because ‘Rina Feynman’s Rules of the Workplace for a Working Woman’ were very clear on this point. If a woman wanted to get ahead, her mother had drilled into her from infancy, then Rule Number One decreed she should neither date nor sleep with her colleagues. That way she would be taken seriously, never becoming a water-cooler gossip nugget.

Rina Feynman, her mother, was a trailblazer. The first female financial analyst recruited at the end of the last century. She would have become chief analyst for sure, if she hadn’t gotten ill.

Ever since she could remember, Tamar wanted to become a financial analyst like her mother. Odd dream, perhaps, unsexy, maybe, but before and during her illness, almost right until her death, her mother used to work right here, in Peaks.

Rule Number Two was ‘Never show weakness.’ She had certainly shown weakness walking away. Yet Rule Number Three was ‘Pick your fights wisely, then fight them. Don’t wait for anyone else to do it for you.’

Her mother would have told her this wasn’t a fight worth picking. But Rina Feynman was gone, and in her stead there was a laminated list of rules Tamar kept stuck to her fridge. Out of long habit, she moved her fist over her sternum. Sometimes, she missed her mother so much her heart would actually clench. These moments were becoming rarer as the years went by, but they weren’t becoming easier.

She splashed cold water on her burning face, then used her damp palms to comb back her hair, re-pulling it into the ponytail, and then coiling it into a bun. She straightened her shirt, tucking it into her pants. Re-buttoned her jacket.

Taking a deep breath, Tamar talked to her serene face in the mirror.

“Guys, you’re a bunch of shmucks with small, teeny, tiny brains!” She cleared her throat. “Watch it, Gideon. Nir’s mediocrity is already rubbing off on you.” Wait, wait, she had it! “Wow, Gideon, good thing you don’t pick your stocks like you pick your friends.”

She took her empty mug and left the toilets heading to her desk.

And bumped straight into Gideon Sela.

2. Gideon

He heard his name being called and turned to investigate.

Then a plump breast squashed his biceps, a ripe round thigh pushed against his hip. Gideon’s every nerve had suddenly awakened to a supple female presence crammed with him into the small space.

“Tamar...” His voice croaked. “Sorry. Are you okay?”

His left hand grabbed her above her right elbow, her soft flesh yielding under his fingers.

“Fine, thanks. For a mini fridge.” Her gasped breath warmed his neck, spreading goosebumps.

Gideon flinched, but he didn’t let go of her arm, and she didn’t yank it away.

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