She sounded like him, more than ten years ago, trying to persuade his dad to let him try the data mining route. Crossing his arms, he heard her out. “You can?” The look on her face told him he'd chosen the dead-wrong response, as she collapsed all emotion into a pin prick of indignation. What had he said? Why the sudden change?

“I may be just an administrative assistant,” she began, cheeks bright red and eyes narrowed in anger. Ah. That's what he'd said.

“I wasn't implying – “

“Yes. You were,” she retorted, establishing control once again. Accustomed to having the upper hand in every business situation as Michael, he found himself unsure as Matt. Should he let her win this one? With cameras rolling, maybe that made better television? He frowned. Thinking like that wouldn't get him anywhere with Lydia.

Yet thinking about Lydia right now wouldn't help him raise profits.

Her idea, though, might.

“Don't tell me what I'm thinking,” he said, voice low and rough. He waved his hand, knowing it would piss her off, wanting to see how much fire she had in her belly.

It worked.

“Don't snow me and claim I'm wrong,” she answered back, voice steady, jaw clenched, standing ramrod straight now. The business suit she wore was more formal than her normal dress, which tended toward tasteful V-neck sweaters, dressy skirts and leather heels. Why the heathered grey wool suit and silk shirt? Lilac suited her, the blouse's shimmer bringing attention to her rich hair, those dark eyes, and adding a femininity to her carefully-cultivated professionalism. Quite different from her frumpier, casual look on his first day at the job. He liked both.

What he'd prefer most, though, was if she wore nothing at all. Those curves, that ass, the ample body that seemed poised for so much more, all soft and swelling. The outer packaging of a mind he was coming to respect. A body that he wanted to savor.

The resemblance to Catherine Zeta-Jones was uncanny. Did she ever do any nudes scenes in her films? He'd have to check. No, he'd have to ask Jeremy – he would know.

His khakis and cheap oxford seemed out of place, suddenly. Pausing, he told himself that this was one for Mike – not Matt – to handle. It was safe to stand now, so he did, taking a few steps around his desk and facing her, two feet feeling like five miles. A faint odor of something sweet, like vanilla, tickled his nose.

“You're projecting your insecurities onto me, Lydia.” Wide eyes met his. Aha! He was right. “Just because some part of you doesn't feel like being an administrative assistant is 'good enough' and that people downgrade your intelligence doesn't mean I'm one of those people.” He huffed, a bit incensed on her part, for no reason he understood. “That's the lazy way.”

The slope of her mouth changed, jaw jutting less, tension easing in the muscles. Her brow furrowed and breathing slowed. A little flag of victory waved inside until she said, “I hadn't thought any of those thoughts, Dr. Phil, but apparently you have projected them onto me. Gender politics at work.”

That flag was suddenly white. Shit. Not the reaction he expected. Lydia began scooping up her files, muttering to herself.

He stopped her with a hand on her forearm. Frozen, she didn't move. Didn't breathe. Didn't blink. “How is that gender politics?”

Sputter. Smirk. Eyeroll. “How isn't it? Dave's known for more than a year – no, two years – that I wanted a chance at the social media job. You come in here strutting like the CEO's nephew and bam – instant boss. You're going to tell me my ovaries have nothing to do with that?”

He frowned. “You're conflating two issues. Am I here because of perceived favoritism or because I'm a man?”

“Both, apparently. So you are his nephew!”

“Whose?”

“Michael Bournham.” She raised her eyebrows in a look of contempt. “You know. The owner of this company?”

At the mention of his real name, it was his turn to freeze, the sound of it rolling off her tongue and lips like some sort of answered prayer. He wanted to hear her hiss it in his ear, riding him, sweat pouring onto –

Shake it off, Mike. “I'm no one's nephew.” Fake laugh. “All my parents' siblings are girls who didn't marry or have kids.”

“There you go. Girls. Unless they're all prepubescent females, you sound like Don Draper from Mad Men.”

“I've been called worse.”

“You know what? Forget it. I came in here to explain my new proposal, which I'm presenting to Dave tomorrow, but you aren't any different from the rest of them.”

Gender politics? He had women as vice presidents, on the board, and in high management positions. What was she nattering on about?

She continued, her voice shifting to a sarcastic, sultry tone, the incongruity charging the air. “Shall I get you some coffee? Email the email you ask me to email to some work group? Schedule your lunch reservation? Bring you slippers and the newspaper? Meet your,” she paused, her lips shifting into a pout, her face softening, eyes hard and cold as she whispered in a Marilyn Monroe, breathy voice, “every need?”

With that, she marched out, papers jutting here and there in her hastily-layered stack, hips swaying out of sight as, once more, he cursed his too-tight pants.

Slam!

Nearly hyperventilating, Lydia couldn't believe how quickly that whole scene had fallen apart. She went in there with her professional heart on her sleeve, showing him the results of months of work. Him! The guy who stole her job. And he didn't deny that he might be Bournham's nephew. Damn it!

Hot tears threatened to flood her eyes. Being an angry crier sucked.

No matter how hard she had tried over the years to find a way to rein it in, to not cry when she was angry, or pissed or overwhelmed, Lydia still turned on the waterworks. Involuntary, the prickly sensation of indignation, of fury preceding the tears in her eyes, the swelling of her throat, always meant she would break down. She hated that salty taste that meant she would be incapable of logical thought or speech until she could reign in whatever chemicals coursed through her bloodstream to make her turn into the stereotype of the crying little woman. She despised it. She absolutely despised it.

And there was nothing she could do. She had tried hypnosis. She had tried therapy. She had tried cognitive behavioral techniques. It just was part of her emotional landscape, some sort of coping mechanism built into her psychological DNA.

The complication it caused for her, though, was that she wasn’t taken seriously in a corporate setting. She knew, from her graduate studies, that this was incredibly common. She knew that she wasn’t anything special, that her situation wasn’t unique, but the politics of gender in a corporate setting meant that crying was viewed as a weakness, that she was viewed as weak, as less serious, as someone who would end up on the ‘mommy track’.

As much as she fought that hegemony, the reality was that here she was, sitting in the closet, pretending to get supplies and trying to get the tears out before anyone saw her. It wasn’t the fact that her idea had been dismissed so out of hand, before she could really delve down into the details, could really peel back the deep layers that explained why the kernel underneath this large project was so critical for Bournham Industries. She could accept that. She could (she hated the phrase) man up and deal with that kind of rejection.

It was that she hadn’t even gotten started. Going to Matt with her idea was a test of sorts because she knew that going to Dave was going to be the ultimate battle in trying to prove that she was a serious contender for a job that Matt now had.

Argh! She slammed her fist against the wall, shaking one of the shelves filled with paper clips. Everything fell apart in one decision, in one morning. Ten seconds before Matt Jones tapped on the window of her car and caught her reading mommy porn she was in line for a promotion, or at least a shot at it, and to prove that moving away from home had been the right choice, that she could make her way in the big city. That she was strong, and vibrant, and intelligent, and grounded. And that gender had nothing to do with success.

Yet, here she sat, crying in the supply closet. Her idea was good. The youth market was already oversaturated with advertising. Putting together a network of about fifty different romance novel sites hadn't been easy, but she'd done it. From bloggers like Smart Bitches, Trashy Books and Dear Author to The Romance Man, a really offbeat, unique blog written by a guy with a sense of humor and a penchant for getting to the heart of a story, no matter how ridiculous, to novel sites, eBook retailers like All Romance eBooks or Book Strand.

Lydia had gone through and very carefully cultivated allies in this approach, talking to bloggers, talking to eBook site owners and getting a sense of what drives women in the 26-44 market to buy. It wasn’t just about Fifty Shades. Fifty Shades was a trigger but it wasn’t everything, and she thought there was so much untapped potential for that market, for driving products to them, for speaking to them on their level, not condescending, and not over-sexualizing. It was time to treat those women like they were the intelligent, well read, analytical, and fun loving women that they were.

It didn’t hurt that their demographic had money. Money that could fuel profits for potential clients in her division in Bournham Industries. That was going to be the problem. Dave would view this as some sort of threat to his job and he was going to shoot it down in about three seconds. Matt, being brand new, was going to shoot it down in two seconds. The threat to his job not as strong, though, because how often are you threatened in the first week of employment? Matt didn’t seem to be the type to be threatened by anyone. He had somehow walked in the door and just acted like he owned the place and she was mystified by it, intrigued. Jealous.

Aroused.

She slammed her fist against the wall again and this time a box of binder clips fell off a top shelf and hit her on the head. Why did Matt have to muddy the waters too? Her tears were gone, thankfully replaced by an internal sense of repulsion as she rubbed the crown of her head, putting the box back in place. Not at Matt, not at Dave, but at herself – that someone who called herself a radical feminist would be falling apart, crying in the closet at work and aroused by her new boss. There was a word for that, too. Gender traitor. No, an even better word.

Sucker.

“Mike that was damn near perfect. We loved the scene in the parking lot, with you and Linda – “

“Lydia.”

“Whatever – it was pitch perfect. We have some great clips we can use from that for teasers and promo. It's like she's writing her own script.”

Mike sized hm up. The excitement seemed over the top for a simple little show. Did they really invest themselves so much in this reality series? Were viewing audiences that easily manipulated? He only had twenty minutes for this meeting; a charity event he couldn't avoid was scheduled for the evening, and he'd removed the contact lenses, washed out the temporary hair dye, and gone back to being Mike Bournham, 100 percent.

With an underfed stick on his arm, to boot. When you have to look like a playah, you have to date the type. Diane was about his age, but looked ten years younger – from twenty paces. Up close, though, the signs of heavy cosmetic surgery intervention were evident. With eyebrows that never moved, lip lines that stayed in place through tight smiles, and a neck that was stretched tighter than a Jackson Pollack canvas, she had the same coloring as Lydia – rich, chestnut hair with perfect waves, and brown eyes that were more the color of manure than Lydia's multi-colored jewels – yet somehow looked washed out. Too manufactured.