Battle Prize Read Free Page B

When the waiter had disappeared with the order, Gage finally confronted his brooding lunch guest. Her gilded gaze flared behind a fringe of bronzed lashes.
    "Okay, Gage, let's have it I've done what you insisted upon. I'm having lunch with you. Now tell me the whole truth about this stupid situation. What does Aaron think he's doing, anyway?"
    "He wants you back in Dallas, Rani." Gage picked up the glass of burgundy he'd ordered for himself and took a meditative sip. Across the rim of the glass he met her accusing glance.
    "Tough."
    "Succinct, but not really a suitable answer, I'm afraid," he told her gently.
    "Tough," she said again, beginning to feel a little better.
    "Is your vocabulary always so limited?"
    "As a prisoner of war I'm only obliged to give you my name, rank and serial number." Rani smiled serenely and took another swallow of margarita.
    "Did you really quit or were you fired?" Gage asked grimly. "If you talked like this to Prescott very often, I can see why he might have lost his temper at some point and kicked you out."
    "Oh, I quit, all right Finally . Should have done it a year ago but I hung on, thinking things might work out"
    "Things between the two of you?" he probed remorselessly.
    "Certainly not! How many times do I have to tell you? I wasn't Prescott's mistress and I had no aspirations to achieve that status! What I hoped might work out was the little matter of my future career at Prescott Services, Incorporated. But I finally realized a couple of months ago that there wasn't much hope."
    "Because you wouldn't sleep with the boss?"
    Rani shook her head half humorously. "That had nothing to do with it It wouldn't have made any difference one way or the other, even if I'd been interested. Prescott Services, I finally decided, is , has been and will continue to be a family operation. Only family members are going to make it into the top slots. There was no sense in my sticking around, wasting time trying for an advancement that was never going to come So I handed in my resignation. Once I'd made myself see that there was no hope of getting to the top, I rapidly decided it wasn't worth tolerating any more of Prescott's antiquated male chauvinism."
    "Tell me about that part," Gage invited with a small smile.
    "Why?" she asked in some surprise. "Fm curious," he admitted.
    "It's the kind of thing that's hard to explain to a man," Rani said musingly. "When you do try, you get accusations of being oversensitive and lacking in a sense of humor. All those things Prescott said about me, remember?"
    "I remember. Try me."
    Rani cocked her head, wondering if he could be made to see her side of the issue, and then sat back in her chair with a shake of her head. "No, you wouldn't understand and I don't feel like being told I'm oversensitive, et cetera, et cetera."
    "Now you're making assumptions about me just because I'm male. Isn't that rather chauvinistic on your part?"
    "Touché," she groaned. "All right, I'll go over it once, briefly. Do you have any idea what it's like to work for weeks on a major presentation to management and then have your boss introduce you to the assembled staff as 'Our very attractive Miss Cameron, who is as easy on the eye as she is on her expense account'? Not a word about the fact that I was one of the firm's top performers during the last two quarters or that I'd closed a deal everyone else had thought was lost forever. Prescott would never have dared introduce his highest-achieving male employee in such a way. It would have been ludicrous and demeaning, to say the least. But he didn't think twice about doing it to me. Then there were all those cocktail parties where I was supposed to ignore his arm around my shoulders and the clever remarks about my 'seductive' salesmanship. How about the annual meeting last year when Prescott told his sales staff to get contacts the color of my eyes so they could try batting their lashes at the lady clients the way I did at the male clients? Then