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“Sorry, guys,” she said, raising her hands to squeeze out from the throng. “Direct all of your queries to Ms. Corvi. Good luck.”
Pushing into the office, she was greeted by Cuckoo glaring across the room from behind the desk. Her tight expression betrayed how unamused she was. “Isn’t that cute,” Cuckoo said.
“You should get someone into that office next door,” Zara said, nodding toward her old office. Pretense fell and she sidelined her ego. Zara did care for this company and those people. Someone needed to be looking after them. “They’re used to working from one set of instructions. A single go-to gal, you know? Do they have those in Italy?”
“My focus is not so narrow. I have worked in corporations all over the globe. I was educated at Oxford. I’m far more worldly than you,” Cuckoo said, folding her hands on the desk, but her shoulders were too tense for Zara to believe she was relaxed. “And they do work from one set of instructions, mine.”
Cuckoo was on form, so Zara donned her snide cloak again. Cuckoo wasn’t interested in putting their differences aside for the good of the company, all she wanted to do was play games. “Grant never had time to delegate all the things he needed done to run this office smoothly,” Zara said. “I suppose you’re not quite up to speed. You probably don’t have that many balls in the air. The board is probably going easy on you, you know, because you’re…”
“Italian?” she offered.
Zara began to walk across the room. “No, not that.”
“A woman?” Cuckoo offered another option, but Zara shook her head and continued to ponder until she reached the desk and sat in the guest chair.
“A bitch,” Zara said with a triumphant smile. “That’s the word I was looking for.”
“Raven didn’t think so last night.”
Scanning the room, Zara understood that this woman didn’t like to be ignored and was used to commanding attention, so the less of it she could give her, the better. “He’s been distracted recently with real life. You know, actual important concerns. He doesn’t have the time to consider your attributes negative or otherwise.”
“If you’re not curious about the time we spent together last night, why did you come?”
Now Zara couldn’t avoid looking at the European or absorbing the satisfaction reeking from her. It was pungent beneath the expensive perfume she seemed to have bathed in. “I came because you told me the world depended on it. If your preferred topic of conversation is Raven’s cock, I think the sun will rise tomorrow whether we discuss it or not. I’m going with not.”
Preparing to stand and leave, Zara began to think about her next meeting. Cuckoo spoke before she was all the way up. “Game Time,” Cuckoo said, and the temperature dropped in the room by twenty degrees.
Sinking back into the seat, she watched Cuckoo push back and unfortunately, she had everything to be smug about now. “What?” Zara asked, and the time for playing was a distant memory.
“Tell me everything you know.”
She owed this woman nothing. Cuckoo was the perfect example of a person they didn’t want to be in command of Game Time, so Zara had no intention of telling her anything that may titillate her unwanted attention.
“Not a chance,” Zara said, exhaling a snigger behind her words.
“You have an obligation to this company—”
That was a joke, it had to be. “I have no obligation to you,” Zara said. “If you want to get the majority shareholder in here, he can ask me all the questions he has and I’ll answer every one.”
Brodie knew everything about Game Time and would take Zara’s side in this fight. Cuckoo didn’t appreciate being reminded of her former lover’s allegiance.
Zara sensed anger simmering around the frustration. “I am in charge here,” Cuckoo said.
Examining the fraught nerves trembling below Cuckoo’s perfect exterior, Zara noticed the lock grip of her interlinked fingers was making her knuckles white. Zara would like to take credit for causing Cuckoo’s state, but it had come too quick and too intense to be all her responsibility. The only person who would have the skills to affect the European so deeply was Brodie. This random meeting and Cuckoo’s insistence took on new significance.
Zara smiled. “You asked him last night, didn’t you? At the meeting you’re so desperate to pretend was something more than it was. You asked him about Game Time, and he didn’t tell you anything, did he?”
“Why would you think that I—”
“Because you would never ask me for a favor, and that’s what this is,” Zara said. “You’d rather rip off every one of those acrylic fingernails and set your hair on fire than admit you needed something from me.”
From the tension radiating up to Cuckoo’s jaw, Zara knew she was right. Resting back in her chair, she crossed her legs. The power was shifting. Zara could take her time and enjoy erasing the smugness from Cuckoo’s aura. Tilting her head, she was going to recount the play-by-play of what she envisioned had happened last night.
“Let me see if I’ve got this right,” Zara continued. “You hear those two words somewhere, I don’t know, maybe you hacked a computer or someone came in asking about it. Then just as you get interested, you’re intrigued, Raven shows up. Wow, you think you’ve scored, he’ll tell you everything, right? He resisted, maybe reacted the way I did and laughed in your face. So you offered a little incentive, you got on your knees, maybe did a bit of rubbing, batted those sultry eyes at him, it always worked before, didn’t it? This time was different. He shut you down or he had no reaction to you. He wouldn’t be manipulated. Not only did he refuse to give you answers, but he refused to screw you too. It’s driving you crazy that he won’t give you what you want.” Zara smiled but furious fury was building in her adversary. “Isn’t it? Cuckoo?”
“Do not call me that!” Cuckoo exclaimed, flying up from her seat and smacking a hand on the desk as she lunged over toward Zara.
Zara took her time to breathe and admire the beauty with her feathers ruffled. “Art was right about you all along. You are a complete nut job. You agreed to come here, to manage CI, because you thought Raven would come back to you. That he’d owe you one, so maybe he’d take you along for the ride when he was working. But it’s not working out, because he has me and we have something real. Something that involves actual emotion.”
