Page 3 of A Conflict of Interest

“Not going to. Kevin already said before we started that he didn’t want anything to do with this, so it’s up to me. The boys don’t care about anything other than when I’m going to cook for them next.”

“Jeez, that sucks. Hold on, I have something urgent I need to take, but thanks for the help! Good luck with the kitchen!”

I turned and ran away, nearly bumping into someone at the corner—Lucy Masters, coming in from the elevators, dressed in a snappy red coat over her regular black pantsuit today, blonde curls and signature red lipstick curled up in an odd smile.

“Look like you saw a ghost, Kelce,” she said.

“Saw someone who needs a visit from three ghosts… I kinda made the mistake of asking Miranda how her kitchen renovation was going.”

She smiled dryly. “Dangerous game to play, Kelce. Should I take that to mean Anna passed along your videography task and she told you to take the initiative on it and figure out your own path on how to start it, and you went and asked the furthest person from Anna’s office?”

I swayed, hands clasped behind my back, looking at Lucy’s lapel. “Um… no.”

She smiled wider. “Guess I was wrong, then. Well, good luck with the assignment.”

“Um—” I stood up taller. “By the way… do you know off the top of your head who the videographers we contracted for the last ones were?”

“Can’t remember the name, but it doesn’t matter. Their house folded.”

“Damn, that’s worse than what happened to Miranda’s house.”

She paused, thinking it over. “Not in Miranda’s mind, it’s not. We’ll trust you with scouting out some names for other teams to contract, and you can pass them to me and Anna for review.”

“Ah…” That sounded like something I could do. I’d just be looking up their portfolios and watching a bunch of videos, right? Maybe they’d have some fun movies. “Yeah, I can do that,” I said. “Just watch! I’ve been waiting for my opportunity to show what I’ve been doing andproveto Veronica—to everyone that I’m perfectly capable.”

She smiled sadly. “I look forward to seeing what you do, Kelce. You’ve got two fans in the executive office to support you.”

“Is it… going to get really hot? It’s almost Christmas.”

She blinked twice before she smiled wide. “I wouldn’t count on that,” she said. “One of the fans is really hot.”

“Huh?”

“Don’t worry about it,” she said, turning and walking past me, raising a hand as she went back towards the executive office. “See you, Kelce.”

I didn’t get it. Was I supposed to be using fans in the project? Should I have been worried about overheating? But—if one of the fans was really hot, wasn’t that a problem? Didn’t it need to get checked on?

I’d cross that bridge when I came to it, I guess. With an uneasy sensation, I sat down at my computer, shifting in my seat, adjusting my jacket, adjusting my hair, touching up my hairclip, checking myself in my phone camera and making sure my makeup still looked nice, used a breath mint spray, checked my manicure to make sure the polish was still staying nicely, and I took a sip of my coffee, spitting it back into the cup. It was cold. And coffee after a breath mint spray was always gross. I never learned.

I went and got more coffee, and I repeated the whole process when I sat down again, minus the spray, and between it all, I already had a message from Miranda when I opened my computer.

Bayton Video is the name of the team. Good luck with getting anything useful out of that. It’s probably all broken up.

One quick google search confirmed it had gone under four years back, and I scrunched up my face, picking through the wreckage of their digital footprint until I found one Liam Danielson, animation lead for Bayton Video, operating with a new group now, ECR Animation and Videography.

“Oh, bingo,” I said, humming happily to myself as I pulled up their website, suddenly filled with visions of glory. I’d do more than just present a bunch of names and tell them to pick. I’d intelligently track down our leads and find the exact match for what we’d had before, and I’d even start communications with them. Anna would be amazed when I showed up with the work half done already, and she’d probably talk to Lucy about how much I was really shaping up and turning into an office star, and it would probably get to Veronica, and she’d think about how much she missed out on with me, and she’d know I wasn’t dumb at all—I was great at what I did, and what I did wasnot thinking about Veronica.What was I doing? I pushed her out of my mind again and dug up the contact for ECR and put downthe phone number, pushing away from my desk and closing my laptop as I stood up.

This called for a coffee, a muffin, and a very fruitful phone call that would make turn me into the office superstar. And everybody would be jealous.

Nobody in particular. Just everybody.

Chapter 2

Veronica

Cold weather was the death of me. I stepped into the studio, a cramped space that was messy enough it gave me war flashbacks to my childhood bedroom, and I stopped to shed my earmuffs and my beanie and my scarf and my coat and take off the massive boots I needed to survive the blizzard and put on my work shoes instead I kept here for the winter, and I slipped off my jacket and took off my second scarf, and I was standing there like a coat rack covered in my own things when I realized the actual coat rack wasn’t there.

“Danielson, you sick son of a bitch,” I called into the back. “Where’s the coat rack?”

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