The Red Eye 3 (The Red Eye Erotic Romance Series) by Avery Phillips
Authors: Avery Phillips
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corporate image the new boss was supposed to project. If I wasn’t careful, Angela would be launching her own discrimination suit.
I lingered in the shower, enjoying the sensation of the steaming hot water pouring over me. I didn’t want to get out and face the world, but I knew that I had to eventually, so, reluctantly, I reached out and shut off the water.
A shower went a long way to helping me rejoin the land of the living, and once I’d dressed and applied some makeup, I felt more like my old self again. Nobody looking at me would know that there was a gaping wound where my heart used to be.
I picked up my purse, made my way downstairs, and grabbed a cab.
Irvine Pilkington had chosen the wrong time to piss me off. He was about to learn what it was really like to feel pressure.
Sixteen
“Right. What have you got for me?”
I looked at the serious faces gathered around the table. Maybe they were too intimidated by me to want to speak up, but silence greeted my request.
At last, a lawyer whose name I didn’t know cleared his throat. “Well, ma’am—”
“Oh, please. You can cut that crap right away. My name is Rebecca Bevan and I’m not old enough to be anyone’s ma’am.”
“Yes, ma—Rebecca. Well, we’ve gone over the suit and we have a few ideas about how to handle this. It’s not as straightforward as we would like. It would appear that some of their claims do have merit.”
“Oh really?”
He blushed and adjusted his tie to cover his discomfort. “Yes, I’m afraid so. It seems that in our zeal to promote Caesar and Krause as an equal-opportunity employer, we have inadvertently been discriminating against certain members of staff in the mistaken belief that this was acceptable, indeed, encouraged by the law as it currently stands.”
“So should the case come to court, we’ll lose? Is that what you’re saying?”
“Not exactly.” Angela took over, casting her colleague a dark look. “If we can demonstrate that we were already in the process of overhauling our policies, we can argue that the plaintiffs are attempting to cash in and are nothing more than bitter opportunists, angry because their incompetency was exposed, and attempting to salvage their careers by the only means open to them.”
“Go on.”
Angela opened the case notes in front of her. “Many of the claims center around one member of HR personnel, a Josie O’Connor. She left by mutual agreement not long after the plaintiffs. We can argue that as soon as we became aware that she was overstepping her bounds and abusing her position to pursue her personal agenda, we disassociated ourselves from her and her actions.”
“What else?”
“There’s also the fact that none of the plaintiffs’ work was of a particularly high quality. We can produce multiple incidences of carelessness, poor judgment, and sheer incompetence. They may well find that if this case were to come to court, their ineptitude would be brought to light, which would have the opposite effect of what they were hoping to achieve.”
“So your recommendation is?”
“Get them in for a meeting with you. Your reputation for negotiation is second to none, so we believe that if you were to sit down with them and explain the futility of their claims, you could persuade them to drop the charges before they go to the press with their side of the story. So far, the case is nothing more than a footnote in the business pages, but it has the potential to become front-page news, and we want to stop it reaching that point.”
“Fine. When’s the soonest you can haul them in?”
“Leave it with me.” Angela snapped shut her case notes and the meeting was over, leaving me to go up to my office.
“Rebecca! I’m so glad to see you. I didn’t think you were coming in today, and I was so worried that something had happened to you.”
More like worried that something was going to happen to your job. I thought it, but didn’t say it. It would be unfair to
I lingered in the shower, enjoying the sensation of the steaming hot water pouring over me. I didn’t want to get out and face the world, but I knew that I had to eventually, so, reluctantly, I reached out and shut off the water.
A shower went a long way to helping me rejoin the land of the living, and once I’d dressed and applied some makeup, I felt more like my old self again. Nobody looking at me would know that there was a gaping wound where my heart used to be.
I picked up my purse, made my way downstairs, and grabbed a cab.
Irvine Pilkington had chosen the wrong time to piss me off. He was about to learn what it was really like to feel pressure.
Sixteen
“Right. What have you got for me?”
I looked at the serious faces gathered around the table. Maybe they were too intimidated by me to want to speak up, but silence greeted my request.
At last, a lawyer whose name I didn’t know cleared his throat. “Well, ma’am—”
“Oh, please. You can cut that crap right away. My name is Rebecca Bevan and I’m not old enough to be anyone’s ma’am.”
“Yes, ma—Rebecca. Well, we’ve gone over the suit and we have a few ideas about how to handle this. It’s not as straightforward as we would like. It would appear that some of their claims do have merit.”
“Oh really?”
He blushed and adjusted his tie to cover his discomfort. “Yes, I’m afraid so. It seems that in our zeal to promote Caesar and Krause as an equal-opportunity employer, we have inadvertently been discriminating against certain members of staff in the mistaken belief that this was acceptable, indeed, encouraged by the law as it currently stands.”
“So should the case come to court, we’ll lose? Is that what you’re saying?”
“Not exactly.” Angela took over, casting her colleague a dark look. “If we can demonstrate that we were already in the process of overhauling our policies, we can argue that the plaintiffs are attempting to cash in and are nothing more than bitter opportunists, angry because their incompetency was exposed, and attempting to salvage their careers by the only means open to them.”
“Go on.”
Angela opened the case notes in front of her. “Many of the claims center around one member of HR personnel, a Josie O’Connor. She left by mutual agreement not long after the plaintiffs. We can argue that as soon as we became aware that she was overstepping her bounds and abusing her position to pursue her personal agenda, we disassociated ourselves from her and her actions.”
“What else?”
“There’s also the fact that none of the plaintiffs’ work was of a particularly high quality. We can produce multiple incidences of carelessness, poor judgment, and sheer incompetence. They may well find that if this case were to come to court, their ineptitude would be brought to light, which would have the opposite effect of what they were hoping to achieve.”
“So your recommendation is?”
“Get them in for a meeting with you. Your reputation for negotiation is second to none, so we believe that if you were to sit down with them and explain the futility of their claims, you could persuade them to drop the charges before they go to the press with their side of the story. So far, the case is nothing more than a footnote in the business pages, but it has the potential to become front-page news, and we want to stop it reaching that point.”
“Fine. When’s the soonest you can haul them in?”
“Leave it with me.” Angela snapped shut her case notes and the meeting was over, leaving me to go up to my office.
“Rebecca! I’m so glad to see you. I didn’t think you were coming in today, and I was so worried that something had happened to you.”
More like worried that something was going to happen to your job. I thought it, but didn’t say it. It would be unfair to
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