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Mr. Thurston’s hand moved to rest on a piece of paper… and what looked like a corporate check.
“Your job is safe.” That self-satisfied smile came back, the one that was an internal reflection of his belief that he was superior to most people, and yet not without a heart. “We just want to make things easy on you.”
Anne’s eyes lingered on the check. She couldn’t read the writing from here, but it wasn’t blank and the blue sprawl on the signature line was no doubt Mr. Thurston’s.
“Is there a problem, Miss Wurster?”
“I don’t need any money, thank you.” She got to her feet. “I’m very grateful, however. I’ll just go back to work now.”
Those pale blue eyes narrowed on her, a mask coming over the man’s features, locking all that patrician down—which gave her a sense of exactly how good Mr. Thurston was at his job at the negotiating table.
“You must have a lot of savings,” he murmured, “to turn down our generosity.”
“Thank you for thinking of me.”
“Well. I’ll just keep this here.” He tapped the check and the piece of paper. “But only for a day. I am not going to talk you into accepting the goodwill of your employer.”
Foolish girl, the tone implied. You foolish, silly little girl.
Anne looked past the man to the view. Out on the Northway, morning rush hour traffic was backed up on both sides of the river, the lines of cars crawling toward clogged exit ramps and crowded surface roads.
“Miss Wurster?”
“Thank you, Mr. Thurston,” she said quietly. “Have a good day.”
She turned away without a dismissal, and felt a cool wave of disapproval escort her out the door. On the far side of the inner sanctum, Miss Martle was on the phone again, but the woman’s eyes snapped up from her desk and focused on Anne’s hands.
As a flare of surprise registered on that disapproving cat-eye-glassed face, Anne wanted to go home. And as she went back through the main reception, got to the elevators, and hit the down arrow, she wondered if she had the guts to put the lobby to good use and walk away from the building, tossing the steno pad in a municipal garbage bin—
“Psst.”
Anne glanced to the right, to the head of a back hallway that accessed the service facilities and freight elevators. “Hello?”
“It’s me, Charlie.”
“Charlie—”
“Shh.” A disembodied hand shot out and its forefinger crooked at her. “C’mere.”
Anne glanced at the receptionist, who had her phone up to her ear and her eyes down on whatever she was writing.
“What’s going on,” Anne murmured as she scooted out of view.
R. Charles Byrnes III was a Mr. Thurston in training, with the same bone structure, same Brooks Brothers wardrobe, probably the same family tree, if you went back seven generations of white bread. The difference was thirty years and maybe a little bit of true conscience, although whether the latter would last as time went on, who knew. The guy had it now, though, and that was why she’d gone to him when she’d found out about the wage garnishment.
Plus Bruce had been his paralegal.
“Did you take the money,” he demanded as he brushed back his thick blond hair.
She did a double take. “Excuse me?”
“Tell me you didn’t take the money and you didn’t sign anything.” As she struggled to follow, he got impatient, but kept his voice hushed. “That’s why I saw you walking into Thurston’s office, right? The full story is out—not by me—and he wants to pay you off.”
“Ah—he said the firm would like to take care of my medical bills.”
“Did you take it?”
“Oh, I don’t need the money—”
“It’s not about the cash to them. They want you to sign a release. McDonaldson was an employee and so are you. That asshole might have attacked you off-site, but the partners are not going to want trouble in the press or with their blue-chip clients because a hire they failed to do proper due diligence on assaulted one of their backroom girls. They’ll throw a little cash your way in the hopes this will go away, but you need to hold on for more—”
He stopped talking and looked over his shoulder as a uniformed maintenance worker came out of the stairwell.
In the pause, Anne felt compelled to lean back and check to make sure the Brooke Shields at the reception desk was still busy and no one was by the elevators. Yup. All clear.
“Listen, I appreciate your concern,” she said when they had some privacy again. “But—”
“You’re going to want a twenty-times multiple of whatever their first offer was. At least. If you were my client, I’d go for fifty times over.”
As her brain got scrambled, she thought absently that Charlie’s upset seemed very honest.
“I’m not going to take their money. I’m fine.” She frowned as he glanced across his shoulder again. “Why are you talking to me at all if it makes you so nervous?”
