slung carelessly over the chair in his cubicle. And instead of the white dress shirts Englund dictated, Turner wore a creamy button-down oxford. He had, however, conceded to the necktie requirement. Of course, the necktie in question had a scantily clad hula dancer painted on it.
Then again, Becca’s suit jacket hung on a peg in her own cubicle, and her sweater wasn’t a dress shirt, either, so maybe she still had a bit of the rebel in her, too. Sorta. Kinda. In a way.
Outside the windows enclosed the boardroom on two sides; a light snow was sprinkling the Indianapolis skyline, even though November was barely half over and it was too early for any accumulation. Twenty minutes had passed since Englund had caught them smoking in the closet, long enough for him to summon them to this very boardroom, where he’d given them a good dressing-down.
He had said, among other things, that he intended to keep a close eye on both of them, and if he ever caught them smoking at work again, he would fire them. Period. And Becca would just as soon not have to look for another job. She liked this one in spite of its conservative dress code and shortsighted no-smoking policy. And its unwillingness to explore brave new advertising frontiers. And its archaic mission statement. And its choke hold on creativity. And its lousy health care plan. And its abrasive receptionist. And its appallingly bad coffee.
All right, all right, so maybe she wasn’t all that crazy about her job. But she didn’t relish looking for a new one, especially with the holidays looming on the horizon.
“Turner?” she echoed when he offered no response. “Did you hear what I said?”
“Yeah, I heard.” He reached the far side of the room and spun around to pace back again. “I just don’t like it,” he added irritably. “Becca, it’s not fair that he can make a rule like that.”
“Maybe not to you, but it’s his business,” she pointed out. “He can make all the rules he wants. And he’ll fire us if we don’t quit smoking.”
“We don’t have to quit completely,” Turner countered, halting in midpace. “We just have to quit doing it at work.”
“Oh, yeah, and that’s going to be so easy,” she said. “When was the last time we made it through an entire workday without lighting up two or three times at least?”
“Then we’ll just go outside to smoke,” he said, crossing his arms over his broad chest in the internationally recognized body language for “I’m right, so there.”
Becca dipped her head toward the window behind him. “I don’t know if you’ve noticed, Turner, but we’re eighteen stories up. Englund takes up the entire floor, and the businesses beneath us are almost all smoke-free, too. We’d have to go down to the street to smoke, and half the time it takes us ten minutes just to get there, because the elevators run so slow. Unless you think we can slip out unnoticed for a half hour here and there, going outside to smoke isn’t doable.”
He opened his mouth to argue, but she quickly cut him off.
“And it’s snowing today,” she added. “If memories of third-grade science serve—which they may not, because most of what I remember from third-grade science is you grossing me out with bug statistics—that means the season of winter is upon us. And I don’t want to stand outside in the bitter cold just to have a cigarette. I’ll end up spending even more on Chap Stick than I already do on cigarettes.”
Turner expelled an impatient breath of air but said nothing.
“And we’ve got that big account we’re trying to win,” she further reminded him.
“That big account we’re going to win,” he corrected her.
She nodded. They would win it, she knew. Because the pitch they were working on was nothing short of brilliant. She and Turner had been at Englund for five years now, long enough to have won some small seniority as account reps, but they still weren’t in line for any major promotions. At this rate, they’d be stuck in Cubicleville until retirement. Winning this account for Englund would speed them much more quickly up the corporate ladder. They’d be headed straight to Officetown.
“And once we win the account, we’ll be stressed to the max,” she pointed out. “Whenever we have to work that hard, we smoke like a pit barbecue for a Kennedy family reunion.”
This time, in reply, Turner only studied her in silence and thrust out his lower