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“Anytime.” Chloe shot her an unrepentant smile and a wink. Artfully tousled brown curls fell halfway down the back of her dark blue suit and her makeup was habitually flawless. Simple gold jewelry glinted at her ears and throat, the metallic sheen a well-chosen complement to the outfit and her skin tone.
Normally, Eloise wouldn’t have given Chloe’s attire a second glance but this morning, wearing wrinkled clothes and nothing on her own face but a few swipes of mascara and some lip gloss, she felt unkempt and out of sorts in comparison. It added another layer of irritation to her already sour mood. There was always a light feeling of competition between them all, but Eloise occasionally felt like it was less friendly with Chloe than the others. There was never anything specific she could put her finger on, just a tug deep in her gut.
Beside them, Kim shrugged. “Chloe’s right. Your freckles are showing and I’ve never seen you with a hair out of place before. It’s like you’re … almost human.” She reached up to tug on a piece of hair that had escaped Eloise’s ponytail and laughed when Eloise gently slapped her hand away.
Kim was a petite redhead with an elegant pixie cut and a sweet smile. She was more timid than the rest of them, and shorter at barely five feet in her heels, but even she occasionally joined in on the group’s good-natured teasing, especially when Eloise was the target. Eloise had never seen her without her signature red lips and a cardigan and often wondered if she might not have been happier as an elementary school teacher than working in finance.
“Stop that.” Eloise tucked her hair back into its elastic band and smoothed out the wrinkles in her clothes as well as she was able.
“No, no, they have a point,” Sarah said with a grin, holding up a steaming cup of coffee and waving it under Eloise’s nose. Her smile was bright, and her eyes were full of faintly amused mischief. She had a chin length bob of straight black hair and wore four-inch heels the same bright white as her breezy silk blouse. None of the rest of them ever looked quite as much the part of a professional businesswoman as Sarah. She effortlessly was what Chloe tried so hard to be. Pretty, polished, and faintly predatory. “What happened to you?”
Eloise grabbed the coffee gratefully and took a quick sip, ignoring the burn on her tongue. No cream and very little sugar—Sarah always remembered how she liked it.
“Thank you, you’re a goddess among women,” she said gratefully, taking another sip. “And my new neighbor is what happened to me. Parking his car on my lawn, revving up his motorcycle and letting his buddies do the same. They destroyed my hydrangea! And then he had the nerve to hit on me.”
Sarah laughed as they all turned toward the elevator. “Hasn’t he only been there for one day?”
“Yes! Can you imagine how much worse it’s going to get?”
The elevator dinged as the door opened, and they stepped inside. Luckily, it was late enough in the morning to be empty except for the four of them. They were all headed to different floors, all worked for different departments, but finance was still a boys’ club and hanging on to the other women that worked there had been the only thing keeping most of them sane.
Eloise had been the last to join the group but they’d rallied around her on her first lunch break and swept her away to a café down the street. She’d been fresh out of college and new in town, prepared to be lonely because she’d never been comfortable making new friends. Sarah had taken one look at her and decided she was going to be one of them after that, whether she wanted to be or not.
She was Eloise’s best friend, though Sarah managed to balance Eloise and Chloe on a fine line, her attention and status as her closest confidant switching between them. Perhaps suddenly having to share was what had made Chloe’s attitude a little more sour.
“So, everyone’s all set for a productive day except me?”
Sarah smiled, teeth a bit too prominent for it to be genuine. “Just another day working for the asshole who stole my promotion. Everyone knows he’s useless and has the moral backbone of a limp noodle, but, hey, let’s give the job to him because he’s got a dick.”
The rest of them all nodded sympathetically. Sarah had been furious for more than six months about that promotion, but it was hard to blame her. She’d worked here longer than any of them and had easily made her mark in the accounting department but then she’d stalled out at the next step, none of the higher up executives willing to promote a woman into a position that held any kind of real authority.
“And not just any asshole,” Chloe added with a delicate shudder. “Dwayne.”
“Fetch me my coffee, Ms. DeWitt,” Sarah mocked, her voice dropping several octaves as she pretended to scratch a nonexistent beard.
“Lookin’ mighty fine in those pants today, Ms. Torres.” Chloe joined in with an even more on point imitation, mimicking his exaggerated southern drawl and pretending to scratch at her belly.
Kim cleared her throat, took a second to gather her courage, and then pretended to scowl down her nose. “Ms. Sloane, I need you to fetch me those papers, even though you don’t work for me or even on the same floor as my office.”
Eloise was laughing so hard she was nearly in tears, the problems of the night before practically forgotten. “Ms. Mason, I realize I have never worked in the same department as you and have no training in your area of expertise but, if you will only stand here and let me look at your chest for the next half hour, I think I can explain the best way for you to do your job.”
“Let’s all just run away.” Kim wrapped her arm around Sarah’s waist to give her a quick hug. “To hell with him.”
“We could live on the beach somewhere tropical,” Chloe agreed. “If we had the money for it.”
Eloise snorted. “Where are we going to get that kind of money? Tropical islands are notoriously pricey.”
“Take it from here,” Sarah said with a grin. “Six months of skimming off the top would let you live on an island for the rest of your life. A year would let you buy an island and never have to worry about anything again.”
The elevator slowed to a stop on Eloise’s floor and she stepped out, shaking her head at all of them. “You all have fun with that, and don’t forget to put me on the visitor’s list so I can come see you in prison.”
Sarah smiled and waved when the door closed and Eloise made her way quickly and quietly to her desk, sipping coffee as she went. Every head turned as she passed, taking the opportunity to look at her figure while they thought she wouldn’t notice. It happened every day and, like always, she ignored them.
She settled in , meticulously straightening the supplies and tidying the little box that held her incoming paperwork before she sat down to go over her daily tasks. Investment banking hadn’t been her first choice of career, but it paid well and her parents approved so she’d done her best to make it tolerable.
She felt guilty for not being as passionate as Sarah—she knew what her parents expected of her and she did try her best despite knowing her heart wasn’t in it—but even if she had been, she knew it would likely end with the same result. Without some sort of miraculous intervention, she’d find her own career stalling as well. It was not a comforting thought with her mother breathing down her neck about the speed of her advancements.
Eloise had never been much of a rebel but the frustration of working in a system that was never going to let them succeed was getting harder for all of them to ignore. As a matter of fact, if it wasn’t for her determination to stay on the right side of the law—which she suspected at this point was at least partly motivated by a fear of spending several unpleasant years in an orange prison jumpsuit—she might have given in to the wild urge to try and convince Sarah and the others to take that island money and run. She could open a restaurant on a tropical island, couldn’t she? If she pretended not to get phone service that far out at sea, she wouldn’t even have to answer to her mother about it.
