EDIE AND THE CEO blurb
Edie Rowan is passionate about workers’ rights, wanting her
Sixties protester grandparents to be proud of her. But championing the little
guy gets her in trouble with sexy CEO Everett Kirk. Kirk is Mr. Ultra-Executive
with his expensive hand-tailored suits and his eyes the steel blue of a finely
tempered sword—but for the intriguing contradictions of his neat ponytail and
square workman’s hands.
Edie’s latest disaster, a teambuilding exercise gone facepalm
wrong, leads to a knockdown drag-out with rival manager Bethany “The B”—or add
the “Itch”—Blondelle. The incident is the last straw for Kirk. He sends Edie to
management camp and to her shock, announces he will drive her there himself.
She wonders why he would want eighteen hours of enforced intimacy with her,
even as she’s dazzled by his sparkling white smile and killer dimple.
Everett walks away from the confrontation with a headache. For
years he has protected Edie from the fallout of her righteous crusading, but
this may be the last time. A corporate backstabber is trying to eject Everett
from his job. Even so, he’s looking forward to spending time on the drive with
Edie, attracted to her sunny red curls, fiery personality and fine dark eyes.
Then a snowstorm forces them to seek shelter in an empty
mountain cabin. Edie thinks she will take the lead in wilderness survival but
Kirk proves more durable than his Italian loafers and silk sweater would
suggest. The extended stay rubs them together in all sorts of ways, kindling
emotional and physical flames. But when their corporate shells burn away, what
secrets will be revealed?
An excerpt from
Edie and the CEO
Copyright © 2013 Mary Hughes All rights
reserved — a Crimson Romance publication
Edie
wants to make her 60s protester grandparents proud. But championing the little
guy gets her in trouble with sexy CEO Everett Kirk. Someone's trying to force
Everett out of his job, and Edie's latest escapade hasn't helped. A snowstorm
and an empty cabin makes them confront their attraction.
Chapter
One
Smack in the middle of the workday, because her brain was fried,
Edith Ellen Rowan made her computer chirp Old MacDonald. Naturally
that got her into trouble with The Bitch.
At first, Edie didn’t even register the problem. Four sunny bars
bee-booped before it hit her—her computer was playing a children’s nursery song
in an office full of conservative, nitpicky ears. Houghton Howell Enterprises
was staid like an insurance company’s gray suit (fun was something you had on
the golf course, or once a year at the Christmas party, but never ever on
the job).
“Suck it to shell.” Edie hit the escape key. As ee-eye-ohhh died,
she braced against the proverbial fan scattering the proverbial manure in the
form of Bethany Blondelle, known to most of the company as The ‘B’ if they were
feeling kindly, adding the ‘itch’ if they were not.
Shoulders hunched and breath held, Edie waited. She’d only been
trying to motivate her people. Managing a team of programmers at HHE, a firm
that sold innovative (read: expensive) solutions in accounting for large
companies (read: deep pockets) wasn’t easy. Her team members were getting as
fried as she, and so she’d proposed the music-writing contest.
Nothing happened. Edie gradually relaxed.
The Star Spangled Banner burst lustily from Jack’s cubicle next door. Edie groaned.
“What the HELL is that NOISE?” Bethany had her vocal caps lock
on again. This would be bad. “Who’s making all that racket? Edie? Edie!”
Edie face-palmed. The contest was supposed to be a bit of fun,
not cause for Armageddon. She’d have preferred to ignore The B, but “Bethany”
and “proactive” were so synonymous they were hyperlinked on Wikipedia.
Sure enough, a long leg popped through the opening of Edie’s
cubicle, followed by the lady herself in eye-bleeding red. Bethany’s fashion
sense was from the DoMeHard channel. Her snappy skirts were hemmed just below
her panty line. Today’s suit also featured a plunging sweetheart neckline, a
chunky citrine necklace getting suffocated in her Wonder-enhanced cleavage. Her
long, sleek hair was dyed crayon yellow #6.
Edie looked down at her own lacy teal tee, navy pants and wool
blazer and wondered if she was underdressed.
Nah.
“What is the meaning of this racket?” Bethany leaned on Edie’s
desk, looming over her. Invading personal space—“A” in the ABCs of corporate
dominance.
“Project Pleiades. We
had a month to deadline—until your good buddy Junior chopped that to a week.”
“Respect, Edie. Mr. Howell, not ‘Junior.’”
“I’ll respect Mr. Pharaoh Howell when he
respects the workers. That deadline is a nightmare. My team has been working
twelve-hour days and more. I’ve tried to push back, but you know Junior. Only
the Evil Overlord can buck him.”
“Stop it.” Bethany tossed her head, a fleeting remnant of the
girl Edie once knew. “The issue is not our executives. The issue is
that...racket.” She waved her hand toward Jack’s cubicle, where the anthem was
on its final verse.
“Handling Stress 101, Bethany. Work on something else.”
“Playing music on company time?” Bethany glared down her
high-bridged nose.
“Stupidity 101. You should listen to me if you want to go
anywhere in this company.” She pointed to her cleavage, fingertip disappearing
to the first knuckle. “After all, my team’s twice the size of yours.”
“Bigger isn’t better. It’s all about how you use it.” Edie
grinned. “How about you run your team and I’ll run mine?”
“You don’t run your team.” Bethany sneered. “They run you.”
“It’s called empowerment.” Edie took pride in her outspoken
team. She wanted her grandparents, hard-core sixties protesters, to be proud of
her. They’d raised her from a little girl when her parents had died, and she
loved them to pieces. “It’s a proven management style.”
Jack’s computer shifted to A Hundred Bottles of Beer.
“Management?” One corner of Bethany’s perfect lips curled. “The
only management I see is mis-management.”
“Ba-dum-bum.” Edie was suddenly tired of the whole conversation.
And, as Jack’s
computer continued to tweet bottles down, doubt gnawed at her. It was quite
a racket.
“Other people are trying to work.” Bethany went for the kill.
“Keep your hooligans under control or I’m going to have to tell Mr. Kirk.”
Edie suppressed a moan. Of all the straight-laced overbearing
big shots at HHE, Edward Everett Kirk, president and CEO, was the biggest,
straight-laciest. Like laced corsets...naughty corsets in Kirk’s competent
hands—
“The way you two fight, it’s only a matter of time before he
gets fed up and fires you.” Mme La B’itch drew a red-enameled nail across her
slim throat.
Edie winced. “It’s called ‘corporate unfriending’ now. And I
couldn’t help the janitor incident. Or the thing with the Super Soaker. Look,
I’ll talk to my people. Just cut us some slack, okay? We’ve been working
ridiculous hours.”
“Edie, you idiot. Has it ever occurred to you that your
ridiculous hours are because of you?”
Them’s fightin’ words. Edie raised narrowed eyes. “I beg your pardon?”
Bethany leaned knuckles on the desk. “Only one kind of project
manager confuses effort with efficiency: a bad one.”
“Enough.” Edie jumped to her feet, nearly head-butting Bethany.
“Outside. Now.”
“And freeze my butt off? Hardly.” Bethany’s
nose was inches from Edie’s. “You have absolutely no decorum, do you? That
shouldn’t surprise me, considering the hippies who raised you.”
Edie lost it. “My grandparents were heroes! They fought for what
they believed in, rallied at protest marches—”
“Pretty stories. Your grandpa was a long-haired unwashed bum.
Your grandma wasn’t much better than a free love hooker.”
Edie snarled. “Now you listen here, you b—”
“If Mr. Kirk were here—”
“Mr. Kirk,” a deep voice rang with power, “is here. And I want
to know what, precisely, is going on.”
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