The Game (16 page)

Jane walked down the stairs to the conference room where the familiar faces from Singapore were gathering.  Stephen smiled at her.  Damon didn’t, but neither was the frown in place like the last time they had met in this room.

Damon kicked off the meeting and they recapped the position they were in.  Some design queries had come through from the clients which the structural engineers had to respond to.  It wasn’t a long meeting and they wrapped it up pretty quickly.  Jane stayed seated while the others packed up and left.

“Can I talk to you for a second?” she asked Damon.

“Sure,” he said and stayed where he was.  Jane suspected that he thought she was going to press him for a date or something along those lines.  He leaned back on the table and crossed his arms.  She wondered if he often turned girls down for dates, not that she was going to ask him for a date, she was going to ask something much more uncomfortable.

“Were you planning on using me to influence
Mr. Carmichael?” she blurted out before she lost her nerve.

“Why would I need to influence Carmichael?” he said after a moment hesitation.  “And if I do need to influence someone, I have the means of doing so directly.”  Jane didn’t notice much of wh
at he said after the hesitation. The hesitation meant that it was true.  It felt like a slap, followed by a wave of nausea.  How could she have been so stupid?  He had used her in the most intimate way, just to get influence over an acquaintance.

“Is that all?  I have another meeting I have to show for,” he asked with a hint of annoyance.

“Yeah,” she said and looked out the window.  She could hear him leaving the meeting room.  She felt sick to her stomach, and truthfully it wasn’t just him and his weird outlook on life.  It was more than that, she hated being stuck in the politics of this place, she hated being in a place where people would be used for any purpose.  As much as she had been unhappy at the council, it was nothing compared to how unhappy she had been here.  She’d only just realized it, the pressure of the untenable situation she had been placed in from the beginning.  What was she doing here?  She’d been so grateful for Edmund’s patronage; she hadn’t even blinked at the meaning of it.  She had just assumed it was meant from a kind place, and so she had blindly sworn her loyalty.  Her loyalty aside, he was just as deft a player of the political game as anyone else, maybe even better.  And she was a pawn in this game, and it was placing her in terrible position, even before she ended up being seduced in the name of corporate politics.

She didn’t know why she was sitting here.  This was not what she wanted her life to be, and this was not the kind of person she wanted to be, or become. 
She hated everything about this place.  Well not everything, but the bad parts were overriding everything.  Why was she even doing this?  This was supposedly a fantastic job with one of the best companies in the country.  One could literally take one’s pick of jobs after this, but it wasn’t worth it.  The price was too high.  If she walked upstairs and sat down at her desk, she would basically be saying that she was fine with how things are and how she had been treated.  She would have to live with herself if she let that happen, even if she let it go on for a second.

Jane
marched over to the human resources department and gave her notice to the stunned Human Resources Manager.  She had said it was effective immediately, she wasn’t sure she was entitled to that, but she didn’t care.  She was not going back to her desk; they could take her to court if they wanted to.  They wouldn’t, but they might dock her pay.  It didn’t matter.  She would collect her bag and say goodbye to Angelique, who would probably be even more shocked than the HR Manager.

Damon watched as Jane marched to her desk.  Her question had disconcerted him a little, because there was that little part of it that was true.  On the whole not, he had tried hard enough to not sleep with her, he had just failed, but his original intention had been to get to know her better so he could cultivate a direct line with Carmichael.  That was before things had taken a drastic left turn into the incredibly sweet and quasi forbidden, a turn for which he was still suffering the after effects.  He could not escape the fact that he knew exactly what was under the austere office clothes which delicately hugged her form when she moved.  It was surprisingly difficult to stay away from her as whatever temptation that had drawn him was still there and still powerful.  He had to stay away from her.  He knew that if he didn’t, she would tempt him down a path he didn’t want to go.

On the other hand, it felt good to want something.  Not relenting would just make that want last longer.  He would feel the desire consume him and pride
himself on not giving into it, but then he’d failed at the first hurdle.  That had been a test run, they were still there, in a foreign place, but now they were back here and he could definitely not lose control again.  He just knew there would be dire consequences if he did.

Then he noticed that she was walking back, carrying a
cardboard box.  She was carrying her personal belongings in a box, she was leaving.  He felt an irrational wave of panic.  She had been questioning his intentions and she must have construed something.  She was leaving because of him.  He couldn’t stop himself from pursuing her.

He grabbed her arm as she was about to walk into the
elevator.

“Why are you leaving?” he demanded.  She looked uncomfortable.

“I’ve had enough.  I don’t want to work here anymore.”

“Have you got another job to go to?”  He k
new that she’d had no intention of leaving when she was in Singapore, he would have picked up on it.  She couldn’t have another job organized.  If he got her to consider looking for work before leaving, maybe cooler thoughts would prevail.

“No.”

“Don’t make knee jerk reaction decisions; you’ll live to regret it.”

“Maybe, but I’m still going.”

“If this is about Singapore-“

“It’s
not; this is something that pre-dates that.”  She pulled out her arm out of his hand and stepped into the elevator.  He wanted to stop her, but he knew this was for the best.  She was a threat to him, one he had tried to logic away.  The fact that he didn’t want her to leave proved it more than anything else.  He needed to let her go and he watched as the elevator doors closed with her on the other side.  Somehow he had gotten in too deep without even realizing it.  He hadn’t seen it coming; it had just taken him by surprise.  Her leaving was the best thing that could happen, he reiterated to himself.

Jane cried on the taxi home.  She wasn’t sure why, but she did.  He was so good; she thought to herself bitterly, he’d actually looked concerned that she was leaving.  Probably because he’d cultivated a route to Mr. Carmichael and it was walking out the door with her.  She felt bitterly angry, but also relieved to have put it all behind her.  It felt surreal that she could just let go of the pressure and stress of the situation she was in, being the representative of the enemy camp.  She wondered if that was how medieval ambassadors felt in other courts, required but distrusted.  It was all gone now; she didn’t have to hang onto any of it.  She just wasn’t entirely sure who she was without her job.  She was more than her job; she knew that, she just didn’t really know the details that well.

When she got home, she cleaned for a while,
then jumped onto the computer to see what else was out there on the market.  All that crap was her past and it wouldn’t be her future.  She would never have to deal with it again, or him, whatever kind of human being he was.

Jane considered not taking Edmund’s call, but that would be callous and cowardly, so she answered.  Edmund was of course very disappointed, but she explained how she needed a change. 

“This role does wonders for your CV,” Edmund pleaded.  “Who knows where you could go
if you only stayed.”

“I know Edmund and I appreciate everything you and
the company have done for me, but the joy has gone out of it for me, so I think its best that I move on.”

“Tell you what Jane, a friend of mine runs a publishing house in Sydney.  They’re going through a bit of change at the moment and could use some help.  Why don’t you take that on for a while, try a completely different industry.  It would be a challenging role and you would have Sydney as your playground for six months.  After that, you can decide what you want to do.”

Jane bit her lip.  Spending six months in Sydney would be exciting.  It would mean a bit of a change, but change was her aim.  She would also be preserving her relationship with Edmund, and despite being the political creature he was, she did appreciate the support he’d given her.

“Sounds exciting,” she finally admitted.

It turned out to be a four month contract.  It involved another merger, but she was a
bit more experienced this time.   Jane would be working directly on the merger, which would be interesting.  She set herself up in a little studio apartment in one of the inner suburbs.  It was tiny and it cost an absolute fortune, but she loved it.  She missed her cat, but it was only four months, too short a time to bring it over and short enough for her mom to cat sit.

Being Sydney, she wasn’t exposed to Damon and his model dates every time she opened a magazine.  While she told herself that the whole thing had not affected her, she wouldn’t even consider going on a date with the attractive man at the office who asked her.  She felt
too raw and too betrayed to even consider it.  Even though she knew she shouldn’t feel this way, it’s not like they were in a relationship, she told herself, they’d had a little fling.  She should not be feeling affected at all.  She still wasn’t interested in dating anyone though.

A few months passed rather quickly, the work was exciting and hectic, but tensions were running high as they did when significant change was involved.  She did like to take a bit of time out for lunch and
had started to retreat to this sunny park bench she’d found not far from the office.  She hadn’t made many friends in the office, which was understandable as she was there to specifically mess with people’s jobs.  Although they were lovely, they were a bit wary of her and her purpose there.  Again she was a bit of an outsider.

Jane sat in the small park
and ate a salad.  She liked to escape for a while and recoup.  The sun shone as she read the paper she had grabbed on the way.  An article grabbed her attention; it announced Contil-Symax as the winner of a significant infrastructure account in Singapore.  They had won the contract.  It started sinking in that the work she was involved with had won a major contract, and her part had been instrumental in the achieving it.  She felt proud and a little sorry that she wasn’t there to receive the news with everyone else.  She could well imagine the excitement in the office as the news came through.

She wondered how Damon would be receiving the n
ews.  He seemed so cool about everything, she would be a nervous wreck in his shoes, but he was forever cool.  She wondered if anything affected him. 

He wasn’t specifically mentioned in the article and she wasn’t sure whether that pleased her or not.  As much as she hated it, any little
titbit about him seemed to draw her complete focus.  She wouldn’t let herself seek out any information about him online, but there was always that little hope that she would stumble across something.  She couldn’t quite understand why she reacted every time she thought she was might come across a piece of new information, but it happened more than once.

Her phone rang.  “Hello?”

“Jane dear.” It was Edmund’s distinct drawl.  “Have you heard the news?”

“I am just reading about it.”

“We’re having a bit of a celebration tonight.  I want you to come.”

“But-“

“I’ve had my girl book you a flight later this afternoon, she’ll email the details through.”

“I have work,” Jane said.  She couldn’t just drop everything and get on a flight.

“Do you want me to clear it with your boss?” Edmund asked.  Jane baulked.  Having Edmund approach her boss like she was a child would not do at all.

“No, I’ll do it,” Jane said
with resignation.  He would if she didn’t, she was pretty sure, and she was better off dealing with it herself.  Edmund would have his way; he always did, irrespective of what she wanted.  On the other hand, it was a celebration and she did deserve to be a part of it.  She just wasn’t that sure about being in the same room as Damon.  It wasn’t something she would do by choice, but then again, she was a big girl and she was not going to be chased off because she found something confrontational.

She arrived at the party just after eight.  It was being held at one of the restaurants down by the harbor.  She felt a bit nervous walking in, but she greeted by a squeal from Angelique.

“I didn’t
realize you were coming.  It’s so awesome you are here.”

“Didn’t
Mr. Carmichael tell anyone I was coming?”

“He didn’t tell me.”