Asking for Trouble
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Authors: Rosalind James
Tags: #Literature & Fiction, #Women's Fiction, #Contemporary Women, #Romance, #Contemporary, #Contemporary Fiction
Asking for Trouble
The Kincaids, Book Three
By Rosalind James
Text copyright 2014 Rosalind James
All Rights Reserved
Cover design by Robin
Ludwig Design Inc.,
http://www.gobookcoverdesign.com/
of Contents
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and
incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and
are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons,
living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Alyssa Kincaid’s Tuesday started out badly. And then it got
worse.
She’d begun to hate Tuesdays anyway, the last year or so.
When the past weekend was a memory, the next one four long days away. When her
Sunday-evening pep talk, about how this week was going to be different, had
proven fruitless yet again in the face of another meeting with her sales
manager.
“I’m seeing the calls,” Tim was saying now. “But I’m not
seeing the orders for Mylexa.”
“I’ll meet my quota,” Alyssa insisted, trying not to get
rattled at the sight of the graph behind his desk showing all his reps’
numbers. Hers weren’t bad, she reminded herself. Not the best, but still right
there in the middle. A solid performer. So she didn’t have the killer instinct.
So what?
“Your quota includes Mylexa. You’re supposed to be pushing
it.” Tim bent his head over the contact report, giving her a great view of his
new hair plugs. One hateful, pudgy, micromanaging forefinger stopped at an
offending line. “Olsen’s office. Where’s his order?”
“His order’s right there.”
“For Mylexa. Where’s that?”
The recklessness came over her like a rising tide. “Not
there. Because I told him to stick with Zylase.”
“What?”
“It’s a better drug. You know it is, I know it is. And Dr.
Olsen knows it too.”
“And manufactured by the competition,” Tim said, his heavy
face mottling red. For a pharmaceutical company employee, he didn’t exactly
walk the walk. “Did somebody neglect to tell you that you’re supposed to be
pushing
our
drugs?”
“My way’s working pretty well so far, isn’t it? I have
credibility. Ask any of my doctors. They know I’ll tell them the truth, and if
I say it’s good, it’s because it’s
good.”
“I don’t care about
credibility,”
Tim snapped. “I care about numbers. Yours are down this month.”
“Most people’s are down. It’s December.”
“Electra’s aren’t.” His lips were drawn thin with
displeasure, his face seeming to swell above the tight collar that squeezed his
fat neck.
Because Electra makes
every doctor she calls on think he’s about to get lucky,
Alyssa didn’t say.
And half of them probably do.
She’d been so excited when she’d been hired by Moreau
Industries, into what was by far her best-paying, most prestigious job ever.
But it hadn’t taken her long to realize that most pharma reps were young,
female, and good-looking. Just like her. And now she knew exactly why that was.
“I’m not going to prostitute myself for sales,” she said.
“I’m not going to mislead anybody, I mean,” she added hastily. Too much honesty
was not necessarily good policy, even for her.
She didn’t fool Tim, though. “This job isn’t about saving
humanity. It’s about getting sales any way you can. I don’t care if you have to
give the guy a blow job in his office. Do what you have to do, just get the
sale. That’s what it’s about. That’s what you’re paid for.”
And that was it. That was what turned another bad Tuesday
into the last Tuesday.
She shoved her visitor’s chair back and stood abruptly,
reaching for her wheeled sample case. She could feel her cheeks flaming, the
wave of anger heart-high now and rising fast, about to push her past the point
of no return. “Find somebody else for that,” she got out. “I quit.”
Tim looked startled. He didn’t want her to leave, she
realized with a mixture of astonishment and satisfaction. These were just his
normal bully tactics, what he thought of as motivation. Well, they sure didn’t
motivate her. Except to motivate her right out the door.
“You’d better rethink that right now,” he said. “You’re not
going to get another job that pays like this. You don’t get an attitude
adjustment, you’re not going to make it anywhere, doing anything. You’re sure
as hell not going to make it in sales.”
“I’ll take that chance.” She turned, started to wheel her
case out, then stopped in realization, hitched her shoulder bag up and left the
case where it was, laptop, samples, and all. “Have a nice life.”
Her indignation carried her through the long drive in the
usual creep of traffic on the 10 to Santa Monica, but then the doubts started closing
in. They were raging in full force by the time she pulled into the smoothly
paved parking lot of the white-stuccoed garden apartments set in the midst of
towering palms and landscaped grounds, grabbed her purse, and stepped out into
another gorgeous Southern California day. She walked up the curving white
sidewalk and through the glossy green front door of an apartment she wasn’t
going to be able to afford much longer. Not unless she got a new job right
away, one that paid as well as the one she’d just walked out of. Which, right
now, didn’t look too likely.
She picked up the phone to call Dennis, because she needed
to tell somebody, needed somebody to tell her that she hadn’t been an idiot,
and that was your boyfriend’s job, right?
Which was when her Tuesday went from bad to worse.
“So you just quit?”
he
asked her incredulously. “What the hell, Alyssa! You don’t quit a job until you
have another job, didn’t anybody ever tell you that? That was just
unprofessional. You never,
ever
do
that, walk off like that.”
“What else could I do, though, after he said that?”
“I don’t know, let it roll off you, like every other rep
does with their sales manager? And started scouting other jobs?”
Dennis repped for a software company, had been in the
industry for years, moving smoothly from one position to another when he got
restless or something wasn’t working out, always seeming to land in a better
spot. He’d been more than a boyfriend, he’d been a mentor, too. She’d met him on
a Sierra Club outing, and over the past few months, the relationship had
changed from casual to something more.
He was still talking. “What were you thinking? Why didn’t
you stop and consider before you burned your bridges?”
“I was supposed to overlook what he said? Are you serious?”
“I’ve heard worse. Sales managers are all assholes. It’s
part of the job description. Quitting was bad enough, but it’s December. Who
hires in December? You aren’t even going to be able to start looking for a
month.”
She was getting mad now. He wasn’t even going to be outraged
for her? “I don’t want to do the job any more anyway,” she said, and recognized
the truth of it. “I can’t sell things I don’t believe in. It feels like . . .
pimping.”
“No.” She heard the frustrated exhalation of breath, the
Alyssa screwing up again
sound that
she’d heard so many times in her life, and felt her temper ratcheting up
higher. “It feels like sales.”
“Helping the customer make the best decision is sales,” she
insisted. She was walking up and down the black-and-white tiled floor of her
little kitchen now, pacing in her agitation. “This is pimping.”
She had to calm down, she told herself. She got too hasty
when she lost her temper, the events of today being a sterling example.
“Anyway, I can’t do the Utah trip, that’s for sure. I’ll have to eat the plane
ticket, but you should be able to get the hotel room refunded, right, almost
three weeks out?”
They’d planned a ski vacation for before Christmas, a trip
that had loomed large and promising on her horizon. Their first real vacation
together, doing one of her favorite things.
“Oh, come on,” he said. “Don’t bail on me now. It’s not that
pricey, just your half of the room and some meals, lift tickets for a few days.
And all right, maybe I overstated. You’ll have a job within a few weeks, I’m
sure.”
She waited for him to suggest that he could help out. He could
afford it, and then some. But he didn’t.
“I need to save my money,” she said when no offer was
forthcoming. “I’m sorry to spoil your vacation too, but maybe we can do
something local instead.” He was bound to be disappointed, she reminded
herself. And he wasn’t obligated, after all.
He hesitated so long that she thought she’d lost the
connection. “Dennis?”
“Well, I’m sorry too. I’ll miss you, of course, but I think
I’ll still go,” he said. “I’ve been looking forward to it, and the snow’s great
this year. Who knows when I’ll get the chance again?”
She actually held the phone away from her ear and stared at
it for a minute. “You’re going to go without me,” she was finally able to say.
“I said I was sorry. But I’m not the one who quit my job in
a huff because my boss was mean to me. It isn’t really fair of you to expect me
to cancel my plans because of your—somewhat naïve, I have to say,
idealism.”
“I thought we were building a relationship here,” she said. “I
guess I was wrong. I guess we’re not.”
“What, I’m supposed to say, ‘Alyssa, right or wrong? I’ll
take care of my woman?’ I respect you too much for that. We’re two independent
people.”
“I see. Not a couple. Well, all right, fine.” The temper was
right back again. “That pretty much tells me everything I need to know.”
“What, you’re going to break up with me because I won’t
cancel my hard-earned vacation for you, because you had a snit fit? That’s just
childish.”
“No. I’m going to break up with you because you’re selfish.
Because you don’t care that my boss insulted me so badly I had to walk out.
Because you don’t support me. And that’s not my idea of how a relationship
works.”
“You’re just setting yourself up to be disappointed, then,”
he said, and she could hear the anger in his voice now too. “Over and over. The
world doesn’t revolve around you and what you want and how you think things
ought to be.”
“No. But my world has rules. And when you break the rules,
you’re gone.” And with that, she hung up.
Minus one boyfriend. Minus one job.
“Any luck on the job search yet, Liss?” Alec Kincaid asked
his little sister.
It was late in the evening, two days before Christmas, and
Joe Hartman was sprawled in an easy chair in the living room of the Chico home
belonging to Alec Kincaid’s parents, listening to two of the three Kincaid
siblings catching up. Alec and his wife Rae were on the couch across from him,
Alec with his stockinged feet on the coffee table, Rae with hers tucked beneath
her.
Alyssa, of course, wasn’t doing anything nearly so decorous.
No, she was sitting on a big, bright green exercise ball, rocking in circles, her
hands behind her head, which made the front view a whole lot too interesting.
And twisting her pelvis in ways that Joe was having a hard time not watching, although
he was doing his best not to. As usual.
“No,” she sighed mid-rock. “Because I think my heart isn’t
in it. I got the unemployment, though,” she added. “Thanks for coaching me on
that, Rae.”
“What unemployment?” Joe asked. “What job search?” This was
the first he’d heard of it.
Alyssa swiveled her hips again, a grimace on her pretty
face, her shiny dark hair swinging around her shoulders. “I quit my job a few
weeks ago. A little unexpectedly.”
“Because her boss made some comments that were beyond the
pale,” Rae explained. “Alec didn’t tell you about this? What do guys
talk
about?”
“Hey,” Alec objected. “We talk about work. Which is
important. And sports, and . . . cars. Lots of things. Joe’s not exactly the
best conversationalist either. Not my fault.”
Rae ignored that, turned back to Alyssa again. “But the
unemployment came through?”
“Yeah,” Alyssa said. “Because I was able to show a pattern,
like you said. Like how he started off telling me to wear my skirts short. That
I should show some cleavage, lean forward when I talked to my doctors. All
that. And then that thing he said at the end.”
“What thing?” Joe asked, already feeling his blood pressure
rising.
Alyssa didn’t look at him. Instead, she swung around so her
stomach was on the ball and rolled forward, walking on her hands all the way
until her slim brown toes were the last thing balancing, then walking back
again. In her tight jeans, which stretched over her curvy body. Which Joe really
didn’t need to be looking at right now, with her brother looking at
him.
“He said,” she said through the curtain of hair swinging
over her face as she made it back onto her stomach again and prepared to take
off once more, “that I should give the guys a blow job if I had to, to get the
sale. Which turned out to be for the best, because it was bad enough to get me
unemployment.”
“Though it would have been a whole lot better,” Alec said, while
Joe was fighting the urge to hunt the bastard down and strangle him, “if you’d
taken that up the chain at the time instead of quitting on the spot like that. Who
knows, you might have even got him fired, got a better manager. It’s a good thing
the company decided just to take the unemployment hit and make it go away,
because you really didn’t have a case.”
“You think I don’t know that?” Alyssa sat up again, her face
red, whether from embarrassment or her exertions, Joe couldn’t tell. “I know
that. I got mad. What would you have done if he’d said that to you? Or if he’d
said it to Rae?”
“Yeah, well,” Alec admitted. “Punched his teeth in, probably.”
“Don’t think that didn’t occur to me too. And I didn’t. I
think I was quite restrained, all in all.”
“But seriously. You need to learn to handle things that come
up,” Alec pressed. “That’s a big company. All right, walk out of the meeting,
fine. But then you should have written it up, given Moreau the chance to make
it right. You’d have had documentation too, then, even if they hadn’t come
through. Maybe a settlement as well as the unemployment, who knows?”
Joe could see Alyssa getting mad, and Rae could obviously
see it too, because she jumped in. “Well, live and learn. Glad the unemployment
worked out. Any leads? I can probably connect you with some tech outfits, if
you want to stay in sales.”
Alyssa shrugged and started the stomach thing again. “I
don’t want to sell software, or drugs either,” she said from her face-down
position. “I want to do something that matters, that’s going to make a real
difference in people’s lives.”
“Hey,” Alec objected. “We’re making a difference. That’s the
whole point, that the software we create makes people’s lives easier. If it
didn’t, we wouldn’t have anything to sell.”
“You know what I mean,” she said as she made it back to her
ball again. “A real difference.”
“Maybe you should have majored in social work, then, instead
of business.”
“Wait, now,” Rae said. “That’s not fair. Every kind of
organization needs people who can think in a businesslike way, and who can
persuade. Alyssa doesn’t have to be a social worker to contribute.”
“I hope not,” Alyssa said, “because I don’t have the
patience. But, yeah. Something that matters. I thought this was it, but it’s
clearly not. But I don’t know what would be.”
“Something that matters isn’t going to pay much,” Alec
pointed out.
“So?” She balanced with her knees on the ball, her palms on
the floor, looked up at him with a frown.
Joe was listening, honestly he was, but he was also noticing
that her position, and the scoop-necked, stretchy top, gave him a view of some
major cleavage.
“So you don’t exactly have a track record,” Alec answered
with the bluntness that could only come from a big brother. “You like to play
too much. And you never stay and work it out when things don’t go your way. Never.
You just quit.”
She rolled off, got to her feet in one neat motion, picked up
her ball and cradled it in her arms. “Well, yeah. I quit. I admit it. You heard
why. And that was
this
time. I was doing
well, before. Pretty well, for almost two years. Two
long
years. And maybe I’m changing. I’m thirty, or did you forget?
And I want to do something. I want to get somewhere. That’s what I’m telling
you.”
“And now you’re going to stomp off,” Alec sighed. “This is exactly
what I mean.”
She didn’t answer. She just stalked out of the room, and
then spoiled her big exit completely when she hit the doorway hard, jolted to a
stop against her big green ball and bounced off it. She gave it another huge
shove that did the trick, popping through the door after it like a cork shot
out of a champagne bottle.
The three of them sat silent for a moment, listening to her
feet on the stairs, the soft thud of her bedroom door shutting.
“Alec . . .” Rae said. “She’s trying. That wasn’t too
helpful.”
“She needs to grow up,” he said in frustration.
“It sounds to me,” Rae said, “like that’s exactly what she’s
trying to do.”
“Now I’ve got both of you mad at me,” Alec said. “Double
trouble. Come on.” He stood and held out a hand to help her up. “Time to head
back to your grandma’s. You can yell at me in the car all the way home.”
“I should get a room.” Joe tried once more. “You should stay
here. This isn’t right.”
“Nah,” Alec said. “Rae would be the one in trouble then. And
me too, for stealing her away from her grandma. Can’t have that. Besides, I
have a special fondness for that mobile home. It has a definite spot in my
heart. Enjoy that twin bed, though.”
Joe could see the elbow heading right into Alec’s ribs as
Rae laughed reluctantly. She said her goodnights and the two of them headed out
the front door, leaving Joe in sole possession of the Kincaid living room. Even
though he was not even close to being a Kincaid.