Page 31 of A Conflict of Interest

“Shutup,” I said, and I convinced myself that the heat prickling wet in my eyes was tears of frustration, anger, nothing else. “I know I can’t fix that. But I know how much this project has meant to Kelcey and I at least… want her to have that… just please, I beg of you, don’t tell her I’m doing this. She’d probably beat herself up more saying something aboutonly getting anywhere because of other people standing up for herand…”

Lucy and Anna exchanged a look. They had that annoying couple thing where they could have a full conversation just by glancing at each other, and it made me irrationally angry for no reasons remotely relating to how Kelcey and I had been like that too. Lucy smiled drily at me. “You really have got it bad.”

“Can wefocus?I’m here to talk about Kelcey’s job, not… not me being an idiot and screwing everything up beyond repair. I know that. I’d like to have a minute without being reminded of it.” I tried to sound huffy and annoyed, and the tearful wobble in my voice screwed with it. Whatever. As if I cared.

Lucy and Anna exchanged another one of their stupid looks. “I’ll grab something,” Lucy said, with the resolution from having decided in her invisible conversation with Anna, turning to the kitchen, and Anna gave me a gentle smile that made me want to knock her teeth out, just a little bit.

“Let’s go upstairs,” she said, and I folded my arms.

“I’m not letting you baby me. I’m not here to cry on you. I’m here to make things better for Kelcey.”

“Okay, we can stay here,” she said, walking past me and sitting on the couch by the fireplace. “Look, Veronica… sometimes you can’t make things better. And I know it’s hard.”

“Or maybe sometimes you don’t just want to give up like that,” I said, perching on the sofa arm, not wanting to sit down but—admittedly, being close to the fire was nice. “Maybe… there is nothing I can do. But at the end of the day, I’d rather look back realizing I’d done all I could but it was for nothing, than to look back and realize… maybe I could have made things a little better if I’d done just a little bit more.”

“There’s such a thing as doing too much.”

“And there’s also such a thing as doing too little. So it sounds like we’re at an impasse.”

She sighed, hanging her head. “You really are stubborn…”

“Oh, you don’t say. Also water’s wet, and you’re useless whenever Luce is around.” I sighed, hard. “Forget it. Tell Lucy I’m sorry for barging into the house and making a scene. Tell Charlotte I’m… not. I’m going.”

“Veronica—” She stood, turning to me, but I stormed out the door before she could stop me, out into the bitter freezing cold. I rode the frustration, the anger, like a vibrating core in my gut that left me sick around the edges, all the way to the car, where I drove to the office, which I never did unless Danielson was forcing me at gunpoint.

It was just Danielson inside—after work hours now, which meant it was just the guy who had no life outside of the job, and I stormed into the drafty, cluttered space and flung my hat off as I got in, marching over to his desk and planting my hands down.

“Who’s on our case?” I said, and he blinked fast, looking up at me.

“Uh… you seem to be on my case, at least.”

“Who took over for Kelcey?”

He furrowed his eyebrows. “Er… it’s been moved over to Christopher Beckham. How come?”

He was so damn casual. It had probably been phrased like everything was fine,we’ve been loving the work so far, we’re moving Kelcey to a new project and Christopher is taking over this project in her stead, so please address any further communications to him…I didn’t even know who Christopher Beckham was. But I did now. “Christopher fucking Beckham,” I said, and he flinched. “That’s what I thought. I am not doing one thing with that foul, slimy cheat of a man. We’re making it clear we need Kelcey Huntington back on the damn project.”

He looked around frantically. Poor guy looked like I was threatening to shank him. I’d have considered it if he said no. “What’s wrong with Christopher? He’s seemed perfectly lovely so far.”

“Of course he seems lovely at first. The second the project wraps up, you’ll see why they putCost-Cutting Christopheron the case. We’ll get screwed six ways from Sunday and have every technical contingency pulled out to find ways to stiff us, up to and including just not paying us and sayingfuck you, make me.I’ve seen his handiwork before. We’re not doing a damn thing with Christopher.” Poor Christopher. I’d ask Anna to apologize to him on my behalf later.

He put his hands up helplessly. “Okay, I can ask for someone else, but this is kind of a big client. They’re about a million times our size. We can’t really push them too much. And they sounded pretty definitive in Kelcey being needed somewhere else.”

“If we don’t have Kelcey on this project, I am out the door.”

He blinked. “You’re threatening to quit over Kelcey Huntington?”

“I’m notthreateninganything. I’mhelpfully letting you knowthat I’ll leave if we don’t have Kelcey back on.”

“I’m sure there’s plenty of other people in the department better than Christopher—”

“If you put up a fuss just about not wanting to work with Christopher, then we’ll get Miranda on the case, and she’ll be bitterly miserable with our work and always have more criticisms until we run out of money and die.” That one at least was true. Christopher was just catching strays.

“How do you even know all of this?” He frowned. “Wait… you said your sister is in this department. Why don’t you go to her?”

“Already did. She also wants Kelcey back on, but the jackass CEO wanted to wave his dick around and make a point to Kelcey and made her leave the project. So we’re going to make it difficult until Kelcey comes back on. And I’m going to make it difficult for you until you do that. Including that I’m about to leave and go home and get back to those initial drafts, which areonlyon my laptop, and continue to work on them, and if you want them, you know what to do.”

He shook his head helplessly. “What… has gotten into you? Didn’t realize you and Kelcey Huntington had gotten on this well.”

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