A New Resolution (3 page)

“No.” Kathy smiled shortly, turning the faucet on to wash the empty mugs left there by other employees, her effervescent nature all but draining from her body as she faced her current situation. “No. I’m good. But thanks. It’s probably nothing.”

Lore frowned as her gaze caught Maggie’s, still leaning against the far wall. They hated it, but neither woman would do a thing about it. Lore had tried to intervene on Kathy’s behalf on many occasions, but she’d always denied the need for help. Clearly the man was harassing the young woman, and yet she said nothing. Lore understood why she didn’t, having seen what happened when a woman brought Mr. Krueger’s unwanted advances to the attention of the HR department. No less than a week later the women were promptly fired and some even had lawsuits filed against them for unsavory work practices. The women were clearly innocent of anything they were accused of, but Krueger was smart. He made sure his advances were always in private, and he targeted the women who were most desperate to keep their jobs.

Kathy was a young woman in her midtwenties, just out of college. Her parents had recently passed on, and she had a mountain of bills to pay, including estate taxes. Losing her job without a reference now would be financial suicide for her. It made Lore wonder what she would do if she were in that position. Would she take the better paycheck and just endure the harassment, or would she leave and face possible bankruptcy? Kathy’s situation had to be direr than she let on to suffer this sort of sickening treatment.

“Balmer.” Speak of the devil. Lore turned to see Mr. Krueger’s unwelcome girth taking up the doorway once more. It took a massive amount of strength on her part, but she made sure to keep a neutral expression in place. “It’s Beyer, sir.” The asshat continually forgot her name, probably because she wore high-collared shirts and unflattering pants. She knew not to draw attention to herself. Not that Kathy wore anything inappropriate to work, and even if she had, it wouldn’t have warranted harassment from the scumbag. Kathy just had the misfortune of being a beautiful and scared young woman under the thumb of a man too used to getting his way. An all too familiar tale, one Lore was getting sick of hearing.

“What can I do for you?”

His lecherous gaze flashed over to Kathy when he asked, “Do you have the projection reports ready yet?”

“They will be ready tomorrow.”

“Make sure they are. Let’s go, Kathy. Christ, how long does it take to wash a few dishes? I mean really.” He guffawed loudly with a grin. “Am I right, Balmer?”

Lore ignored the egomaniac to watch Kathy give her a short smile in farewell and follow the boss toward his office. This had to stop. Lore liked her job. She liked the steady stream of work she received and how it numbed her mind to complete it. She would work for hours straight, staring at her computer in the small office she was allowed in her senior staff position. It was normal and boring, and she was delighted to have it. No unwelcome surprises, no police officers showing up to tear down the fabric of her reality, nothing but monotony. She needed something steady to keep her balanced. But the harassment her coworkers suffered was far from balanced.

There was a rule her father used to tell her. He would sit her down and just repeat it to her over and over as a child.
Never lose control of the situation
. He meant it as one thing, but Lore had taken it to mean something else. Her personal control. If she kept her head down and kept on producing top-quality work, she could have this job forever. A perfectly normal and boring life, what she’d wanted since she was fourteen. What she had always thought she had as a kid.

But could she truly just stand back and watch day in and day out while women like Kathy were made miserable by a small-minded man who wasn’t worth the dirt on her shoe? No. This wasn’t control. The women in her office had lost the control, and she was going to help them get it all back. Her father would have been proud of the cunning plan her mind quickly crafted, proving just how much of his daughter she was. She sat at her desk and felt her heart beating fast with adrenaline from her excitement at formulating this plan. The realization that she liked being a little devious nauseated her slightly. Lore wondered what else she was capable of and if her father would have approved of those facets of her personality as well.

A week later, after everything had been set in place, Lore watched as Kathy popped her dainty frame into the guest chair across from her desk. The woman was five-foot-nothing with eyes so big Lore always thought she could be the first human being meant for nocturnal living. No wonder the
Lech
had targeted her. She seemed too innocent and naive to ever say no to him. Lore paused her typing after completing the calculation she’d been working on and looked up at Kathy with a polite smile. She didn’t want to put the woman off in case she had an actual work-related issue, but she also didn’t want to give the impression that she was free to just shoot the breeze as Kathy was apt to do if you let her.

“This year is going by so fast. Sooner than you know it, New Year’s Eve will be just around the corner,” Kathy said jovially, destroying Lore’s hopes that this would be a work-related conversation. “What do you think your resolution will be for this year?” Kathy crossed her legs and rested her chin in her hand, waiting for Lore to dish some gossip for her. If she wanted gossip, she’d come to the wrong place.

“I don’t have one,” Lore said with a short smile, returning her gaze to the computer screen.

“Oh, please.” Kathy snorted, waving her hand dramatically. “Everyone makes a resolution.”

“Truly. I don’t have one.” Lore kept her gaze on the monitor, wishing the woman would just leave her alone. She’d gone through a lot this past week to get the boss to notice her and pull his attention away from Kathy. If he came in Lore’s office and focused on Kathy, the whole thing would have been for nothing.

“I have one for you,” the animated woman said with a frown. “I, Lore Beyer, resolve to pull the stick out of my ass just a little this year.”

Lore sighed, looking at her coworker in exasperation. “Kathy, please.”

“I don’t get why you can’t just play along for once.” Kathy stood, taking the hint and walking toward the door. “Humor me, Lore. I’m bored, I’m avoiding the dickhead, and I want to know what goes on in that skinny head of yours when it isn’t focused on work.”

“I’m working
now
, Kathy.” Lore gestured to the perfectly detailed and meticulous spreadsheet she’d been crafting like a master artist the past day. It was a finely organized masterpiece. “I need to make this deadline by Friday. You know that. I’m pretty sure we had this same conversation two hours ago when you came in here pestering me to amuse you.”

“
Pestering me to amuse you
.” Kathy mocked in a high-pitched voice, placing her fists on her hips. “Deadlines. Stocks. Math shit. Boring. I’m gonna go talk to Maggie. At least she has shit to say other than ‘leave me alone; I’m working.’ I hope you realize how sad that is, Lore. An accountant is more interesting than you.
An accountant
. Think on that for a little, hmm?” With that slightly acerbic comment, Kathy spun on her heel and walked back into the buzz of the office without closing the door behind her, of course. Before Lore could breathe a sigh of relief, the woman dashed back in and pointed an accusing finger at her.

“And I don’t know who you think you’re trying to impress with those itty-bitty skirts and low-cut shirts you’ve been wearing this past week. I wanted you to let loose outside of work, not where the vulture can see. You know whose attention those little things are gonna get. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.” Kathy left once more, door still wide-open and a pall of thick judgment hanging in the air.

Lore let her posture slump just a bit, resting her elbows on the polished wooden desk and placing her face in her hands, wary not to smudge her carefully planned makeup. No matter how short her conversations with Kathy were, Kathy always seemed to suck the energy out of any room she entered. Lore was convinced the woman was an alien who subsisted on human energy and attention. How else could Kathy have this constant draining effect whenever she spoke with Lore?

Snorting at her ridiculous and childlike hypothesis, Lore went to close the door to her office, providing herself with the peace and quiet she needed to complete her work. But something bothered her, a voice from the past whispering in her ear to give in to Kathy’s silly fantasies and come up with a New Year’s resolution, one just for herself. Kathy’s would no doubt be about going to the gym or having some steamy love affair. But even that little bit of whimsy seemed anathema to Lore.

Resolutions were for people who weren’t happy with their lives, who thought they needed improvement. Lore was quite content with her quiet life. She’d never needed adventure and had never desired to meet some wealthy billionaire to sweep her off her feet. Self-improvement was an admirable thing to want, but only if it was a cerebral sort of improvement. Slaving hours and hours away at a gym to achieve some magazine-like, socially acceptable figure seemed like a waste of time. Lore took yoga to stay limber and in good health, but that was the extent of her gym endeavors.

Lore was also content with how she looked. She didn’t have a curvy figure to write sonnets about, but she was slim. Her face was what she thought of as passably pretty. In fact, she’d always considered her figure to be slightly boyish with her small breasts. The main feminine feature she went out of the way to maintain was her long and thick, straight black hair. Her mother used to tell her she looked like Snow White, hair as black as pitch and skin as white as snow.

Feeling the usual knot in her throat when she thought about her mother, Lore shook herself out of her reverie and sat back down at her desk, ready to tackle the rest of the marketing spreadsheet. She would get this Mona Lisa of a spreadsheet finished today if it killed her.

Her fingers rested in the accepted typing stance over the keyboard as she found where she left off on the spreadsheet and began to type once more, only to be interrupted yet again with her door banging open.

She looked up sharply, ready to give Kathy a piece of her mind, but was surprised to see her boss standing in the doorway. Lore hated that Krueger was handsome. She wouldn’t have cared what he looked like if the man had been pleasant. He could have been an elderly, overweight, and physically deformed man, and she would not have cared. It was the quality of menace he carried about him that disturbed her. He was a man who knew he could get away with nearly anything in the office and took complete advantage of that fact. As she watched him parading around the cubicles, Lore sometimes found herself imagining the air of darkness traveling wherever he went taking on physical form and blocking the rays of the sun. That’s what it felt like now as he stood before her, like a black hole sucking away all light. She stood to greet him, keeping her hands on her desk. “What can I do for you, sir?”

“We need to talk, Balman,” he rumbled gruffly, shutting the door behind him with another slam.

She gestured for him to sit in the guest chair. “It’s Beyer, sir.”

“Right. Right.” He came around the chair, rudely adjusting his too-tight slacks before sitting down. She nearly winced when the wood of the flimsy office furniture creaked under him.

“What can I do for you?” Lore asked again, sitting back down, then folding her hands on her desk.

Krueger cleared his throat, leveling her with his flat stare, his eyes flashing to her chest and back. “Balman, we’ve been looking over your reports, and we’re seeing some discrepancies.”

“What?” she asked, the conversation going in a completely different direction than she’d anticipated, especially after all the careful wardrobe choices she’d made this past week to lure him in. “I don’t mean to contradict, sir, but my reports are perfect. Flawless, even. I work for days at a time on them. I am meticulous in my—”

“Yes. Yes. I’m sure they’re wonderful.” He waved her worries off.

She frowned, tightening her folded hands to the point of pain. “I don’t understand, sir.”

“Well, I know they’re perfect, and you know they’re perfect.” He shrugged, a hand coming up to scratch his beard. “But we are the only ones who know that.”

Lore began to see a pattern forming, understanding how he sank his hooks into the women of the office. She played along, hoping he’d take it where she thought he would. “The entire office sees my reports, Mr. Krueger. They all know how thorough they are.”

He leaned forward, smiling a white-toothed grin that on anybody else would have been charming. “It’s amazing what a few adjustments can do to throw a marketing plan off, isn’t it? Switch a number here, a date there. Boom! Entire project is blown.”

“Why—why would anyone do that?” she asked, spreading her fingers out on her desk, enough worry and agitation coloring her tone to make her seem in distress. “Has someone done that?”

“Not yet.”

“Yet?”

He stood, placing his hands on the desk and leaning into her, the crotch of his pants all too clearly pressed against the wood. She wanted to gag at the pathetic display. “Go out with me on Saturday, Balmer. Stay the night with me. I’ll make sure no one ever messes with those pretty little reports of yours that you spend all your time on.”

“Are you—are you blackmailing me?”

“Those are your words. Not mine.”

“Where is this coming from?”

He nodded conspiratorially, as though she’d said something in code only he could decipher. “I know your type.”

“My type? What type would that be?”

“Stuffy. Composed. Only showing enough tail to get noticed and not be inappropriate.” He licked his lips and lowered his voice, his gaze dropping once more and lingering on her chest. “You like to tease, don’t you, Balmer? You like to make us think we can’t have it, that we’re not good enough for it.” He reached out for her face, but she slapped his hand away, knowing she needed to walk a fine line of anxiety and disgust at this point.

“Excuse you—”

“Nah. I get you. Doing it this way? Making you think it’s out of your hands? That’s how I get you. That’s how I let you
allow
yourself to get me.”