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  Kelly eyed her skeptically, one dark eyebrow arched as she tentatively reached for the folder in Elliot’s outstretched hand.

  “Go ahead, it won’t bite. On the contrary, I’m sure you’ll hurt it more than it hurts you.”

  “I’m not afraid of the file,” she snapped.

  That was about the third time she’d snapped at her in less than an hour in each other’s presence. Elliot hadn’t expected effusive praise, but a simple “thank you,” might’ve been appropriate. Kelly’s flushed skin and clenched jaw didn’t quite mesh with her mother’s meth theory, but something wasn’t right. Kelly didn’t act like a professional mentor. She didn’t act like a professional anything, expect for perhaps a professional asshole. Maybe interns ranked slightly above grubs around here, but if Kelly resented her presence so damn bad, maybe she should’ve kept her job at the college.

  “You weren’t authorized to talk to my clients,” Kelly said as she flipped open the folder. “Financial records are confidential.”

  “Really? I’m only four months from a master’s degree in public accounting, and no one ever mentioned confidentiality before.” This time she didn’t feel guilty when Kelly winced. “You think that would’ve come up in the two separate courses I had to take in business law and business ethics.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “No, excuse me. My presence here seems to be a massive inconvenience for you, and I’m not sure why,” Elliot said. “You agreed to have an intern, you’re a CPA, and it’s tax season. You’re the only other person here, so I assume you’ve got work for me to do. I haven’t broken any rules I know of or spit on your doorknobs— hell, you haven’t even been around enough today for me to do anything to offend you.”

  “You spoke to one of my clients.”

  “Something I wouldn’t have done if anyone else had been here, but you weren’t, and then when you come back you don’t even wait to hear what happened before you cut into me? You busted through the door like you expected to find the place ransacked. What did you think I was going to do?”

  “I don’t know,” Kelly admitted. “I don’t even know you.”

  “Exactly. You don’t know me, and already you’ve made up your mind that you don’t trust me. You don’t like me, and that’s fine. You don’t have to like me, but don’t I at least deserve to know why?”

  “No.” Kelly threw up her hands. “You don’t deserve anything. You’re not entitled to anything. You’re not guaranteed anything, and you don’t get any awards for not destroying my office.”

  “Seriously?” Elliot pushed. The logic didn’t add up. Kelly clearly felt a good bit of disdain toward her, but she didn’t want to admit why. “You’re going to make this about me being entitled? That’s really what’s bothering you?”

  Kelly opened her mouth then closed it and exhaled through her nose. “I don’t have to explain myself to a … to a …”

  Elliot’s stomach clenched as she steeled herself for the slur. Her mother’s warning about homophobia among the “children of the corn” rushed through her ears. She should’ve seen this coming. Deep down she’d known it would happen eventually. Everyone back home warned her about going to school in a rural area. She told them she could handle whatever the locals threw at her, but that didn’t mean she didn’t still get a little nauseated every time one of them let fly a rabid bout of homophobia. She refused to let the fear show, though. She lifted her chin. “Go ahead, say it.”

  Kelly stopped her stuttering. “Say what?”

  “Dyke.” She practically had to spit the word out. She’d said it plenty of times. Dyke march, dykes on bikes, dykes to watch out for. She knew the politics, but all efforts to reclaim the word be damned. It still sucked.

  Kelly took a step back and her eyes went wide and white, but Elliot wouldn’t let her off the hook. “That’s what you meant, right? You don’t have to explain yourself to a dyke?”

  Kelly shook her head almost frantically, but her face flamed red. “Don’t put words into my mouth. Especially not that one.”

  “What word did you intend to use then? Queer? Homo? It doesn’t matter which one you choose. Your judging me based on my sexual orientation is discrimination, and it’s illegal in the state of Illinois. It has been since 2006, even in the little hick towns.”

  “How dare you!”

  “How dare I what? Stand up for my rights under the law?”

  “How dare you talk to me like this in my father’s business. You are so far out of line right now.”

  “So far out of line that what? You’ll fire me? Try it,” Elliot challenged, “but look over the work I did first, because it’s flawless. If you fire me after one day of perfect work, I’ll hit you with a lawsuit so fast you won’t even have time to pick your jaw up off the floor.”

  “Did you just threaten to sue me?”

  “Try me and find out.”

  “Get out,” Kelly said, her voice full of steel. “Get out of my office.”

  “Fine,” Elliot said, “but look over the work I did today and talk to your lawyer, because I’ll be back tomorrow, and if I’m not judged on my merits you’ll hear from mine.”

  She grabbed her coat, then brushed past Kelly and slammed the heavy back door on the way out. She loved the way the metal crashing into metal echoed through the frozen alleyway. She arched her head back and took deep, gulping breaths of sharp, icy air as she stared up at the high brick walls enclosing her. If she were in Chicago, she would worry about getting jumped in an alley like this, but after what had happened inside, she felt like she’d faced the worse and survived. Sure, her hands shook and she might vomit at any moment, but no one else had to know that. Especially not Kelly Rolen.

  Kelly stared at the door as her chest rose and fell rapidly and the sound of her own pulse pounded through her ears. Her fists trembled from the comedown of her adrenaline rush, or maybe from the anger still coursing through her. Both emotions combined with sheer exhaustion to blur her vision. Or maybe those were tears causing the haze over her eyes. She blinked them away. She would not cry, not now, not after everything else she’d been through. Not over that smug little shit’s gross mischaracterization of her motives. And the worst part was, Elliot wasn’t even the first person to level those accusations at her. More than a few people over the last few years had suggested she and Beth weren’t as close as they used to be because she couldn’t support Beth and Rory’s relationship. Well, maybe that part happened to be true, but not for the reasons they suspected.

  Why did everything come down to sexual orientation? First Kelsey Patel and now Elliot. In the space of one hour she’d had to defend herself against charges of being gay and of being a homophobe. How could she possibly be both? She shook her head to prevent the answer to that question from lodging there. Couldn’t she just dislike someone because they annoyed her? Couldn’t she be close with a woman without fear of being called a lesbian?

  Or better yet, couldn’t everyone just leave her alone?

  People generally meant well, but they couldn’t help, not really, and maybe that’s what bothered her most. No one could help in the ways she needed. No one could heal her dad, and no one could fill the void his absence had left in her life. In the years since she and Beth broke up, he had been her only constant, the only person in her life who had never left her for something better, the only person she could count on to do right by her, no matter what the cost.

  Not to mention, her dad always lived up to high standards. He’d taught her to do the same. To accept less than perfection in the business he’d built would be a disservice to his legacy. What would he think if the first time he missed a tax season she let the whole place fall apart? He’d think her unworthy. He wouldn’t say so, but he’d think it, and more importantly, she would, too.

  She couldn’t let that happen.

  Which brought her back around to Elliot.

  She tapped her fingers on the outside of the file folder the intern had pushed on her before storming out.
She didn’t even want to see the forms inside, didn’t want to face another mess, and yet she had to. It was her fault for putting herself in this situation. Well, hers and Beth’s. Also, Elliot had to take some blame for barging in like she owned the place, with her long legs and her hot temper. Kelly shook the image of her, flushed and indignant, from her mind. Who cared who held the blame? She had to deal with the outcome.

  She flipped open the file and carefully eyed the client organizer. At least Elliot had excellent penmanship. She’d neatly filled out all the information Kelly already knew about Mrs. Anthony, her name, address, place of employment at the local grocery store. Anyone with a third grade education could fill out the top part of the intake forms. She quickly moved down to the numbers, unclipping Mrs. Anthony’s W-2s and receipts as she went down the lines for wages, investment income, social security, and Schedule A deductions. She spread the documents out in orderly fashion, finding they didn’t take much rearranging as Elliot had already put everything in the appropriate order. Still, with all the scanning she’d done, she’d had ample opportunity to memorize the correct order. Paying attention to detail wasn’t a plus in this business, it was essential.

  She grabbed a pen and slid it down the side of each form, connecting numbers on original documents to their counterparts in Elliot’s clear, concise strokes. She reached the bottom of the form and immediately flipped back to the beginning. She ran through the process twice more before putting everything back as neatly as she’d found it and closing the folder.

  She clenched and unclenched her jaw before straightening her shoulders and lifting her chin. Then taking a deep breath, she picked up the phone and dialed a number she’d dialed so many times before she didn’t even have to look at the keypad.

  Chapter Five

  A knock on her apartment door pulled Elliot off the couch. She’d been trying to cool down for an hour, but breathing exercises and meditation had done little to assuage her frayed nerves. After walking home in the frigid cold, she’d convinced herself that her trembling hands were merely a product of the bone-deep chill, but after running them under lukewarm water and chugging a cup of coffee, she felt thoroughly warmed through, and still she shook. She hated herself for getting so upset, but bravado went only so far when it came to covering real pain.

  “Who is it?” she called through the door. She might be in Darlington, but today had reminded her that “small town” didn’t always mean “safety.”

  “It’s Kelly Rolen.” Her voice was muffled through the door, but Elliot still heard the mix of hesitancy and annoyance.

  “Shit,” she muttered. She did not want to see her. She certainly didn’t want Kelly in her personal space, alone, not without having time to get her guard up. But if she sent her away, wouldn’t that reveal Kelly had gotten under her skin? If she couldn’t hold her own with one bitchy bigot, how did she ever stand a chance with something bigger at stake? The risks of facing Kelly Rolen seemed slightly more bearable than the risk associated with not.

  She cracked the door enough to get her face through, but not enough to expose her whole body. Kelly seemed equally conflicted. She had her arms folded across her chest and one hip cocked to the side almost defiantly, but her eyes remained firmly fixed on the toe of her slick black shoes as she mumbled. “Can I talk to you?”

  “How did you get my address?”

  “I called Beth.”

  She swallowed a wave of mixed emotions. Had Beth betrayed her by delivering her up to a homophobe twice in one day? Surely not. Nothing about that scenario rang true to what she knew of Beth. But Rory had told her to be careful. She’d seemed to leave something unspoken, too, and Rory didn’t usually keep much to herself. How did she reconcile those two things? Especially with Kelly at her door.

  “Look,” Kelly said, still staring at her feet. “I know you don’t trust me, and that’s fine, but I didn’t mean what you thought I meant.”

  She didn’t know how to respond, so she simply didn’t.

  “You jumped to a very unfair conclusion. I felt attacked in my own place of business.”

  “So you mentioned. Loudly. Did you come over to repeat yourself, in case I missed you shouting the same thing at me an hour ago?”

  Kelly blew out a frustrated breath. “No. I came over because of the files you worked on.”

  Her heart rate accelerated. What was Kelly accusing her of now? Had she messed something up? No, her work had been flawless. Maybe she was being framed. This was how they always got rid of you. They couldn’t fire you for being gay, so they had to trump up some charges.

  “After you left, I looked over the intake forms. Then I looked over the documents you scanned into the computer. I also noticed you’d begun to input several of the returns.”

  “I didn’t have anything else do to,” she sulked.

  “You could’ve left,” Kelly said, her voice tight, but not raised. “You could’ve played on your phone or rummaged through my stuff.”

  “That’s not the kind of person I am.”

  “I’m glad to hear it,” Kelly said. That thought hadn’t crossed her mind. Had she really grown that used to being disappointed in the people around her? And how had Elliot, of all people, been the one to buck that trend? “Surprised maybe, but glad. You did everything right, by the way. All the work on Mrs. Anthony’s form and the scanning and the inputting.”

  Elliot nodded, trying not to gloat or get too comfortable. “I know.”

  Kelly’s jaw twitched a little bit, but to her credit she plowed on. “You can come back to work tomorrow.”

  “I planned to.”

  Kelly let her arms drop to her sides. “Okay then, fine.”

  “Is that really all you came to say?”

  Kelly hesitated a few seconds. “I guess so.”

  Elliot stared at her, incredulous once again. So she admitted Elliot had done everything right at work, and she also asserted she wasn’t anti-gay, and yet all Elliot got was, she could come back to work? Something she’d told Kelly she planned to do all along. That hardly seemed worth a trip to her apartment. No apology. No explanation. Nothing personal in any way.

  “Look, I said you did fine today, and you can come back tomorrow. What more do you want from me?”

  “How about you explain why you were in such a bad mood?”

  “That’s none of your business,” Kelly snapped.

  “Oh, are we back to that again?” She shook her head. “Forgive me for thinking that when someone screams at me unfairly, I have a right to know why.”

  Kelly clenched her jaw again, and Elliot wondered how the woman hadn’t given herself TMJ yet, but when Kelly met her gaze, her eyes were no longer defiant. She blinked a few times, as if fighting back tears, but by the time she focused, Elliot saw no evidence of them. Whatever emotions she was concealing all seemed to lead back to anger. “I’m not going to stand in a hallway and explain myself to my intern.”

  Back on familiar footing, Elliot should’ve been able to respond in kind, the sharp tone, the angry retort. But she’d seen something human in the half-second between Kelly’s tirades, something that pulled at her chest in an uncomfortable way. “You could come inside,” she offered. “I mean, if you’re afraid of being overheard.”

  “I just … I, um,” she looked toward the ceiling and bit her lip. “I had a really bad day.”

  Now Elliot’s heart thudded for a different reason, this one less to do with fear or anxiety and more to do with compassion she didn’t really want to feel for Kelly right now. Whatever this woman’s problem was, she’d made it clear it was her problem, not Elliot’s. She didn’t need her boss crying on her shoulder any more than she needed her to yell. She didn’t need her to be anything other than a normal freaking boss. She needed intern hours to graduate. She needed a letter of reference. She needed practical experience that would allow her to get a job and move on to bigger and better things. She needed to get away from anything and everything that complicated her plans.
r />   Instead, she took a step back and swung the door open wide.

  Rented couch. College housing. Frat boys. Stains. Body fluids. Those were the things Kelly thought about as she took a seat as lightly as possible on Elliot’s furniture. Those thoughts, horrifying as they were, kept her mind off less pleasant subjects like the ones that caused her to cave, in one of those increasingly common moments of weakness.

  “So, here’s the magic elixir,” Elliot said, setting down a rainbow-shaded mug on a coffee table that had more dents and scratches than she had reasons to want to get out of there.

  She picked up the mug and sipped the steaming liquid more for a distraction than out of any real desire to taste anything, but as soon as the coffee hit her taste buds, everything changed. The light seemed brighter, the air lighter, even Elliot’s wary expression seemed bearable. “Wow.”

  “Wow?” Elliot asked, a little grin showing over the rim of her own mug.

  “That’s, oh—” She took another sip and closed her eyes to savor the flavor filling her mouth. “What brand is this?”

  “Oh, it’s not a brand. I buy it on the black market.”

  Kelly coughed and quickly wiped her mouth. “Does it have drugs in it or something?”

  Elliot threw back her head and laughed, the first unguarded show of emotion Kelly had seen out of her all day. She had a great laugh, hearty, deep, and so wonderfully full it made Kelly forget she was the one getting laughed at.

  “I know a guy,” Elliot said, as her laughter trailed off. “He orders the beans raw from all over the world and he roasts them himself to whatever specifications I need for any given situation.”

  “Any given situation?”

  “Sure. Some days you need a dark roast to get you through. Some days you need a medium roast to keep you in your groove. And some days, you have a girl over who can’t handle her java like a grown-up, and you need to ease her in with a blonde roast.”