Her Man Friday (9 page)

As a student, he'd also been very poor. Then again, so had Lily. Back then, neither of them had been able to afford any more than the basic necessities of life, and often, they'd gone without even those. In fact, their shared poverty had probably been what had initially bonded them so quickly, even though it was something else entirely that fueled their friendship today.

But by the time Lily had met him, poverty had been a constant companion of Schuyler's, from the day he was born. She, on the other hand, had enjoyed all the benefits of excessive wealth until shortly after her sixteenth birthday, when her father's business had failed—miserably—and the Main Line Rigbys had lost everything. She and Schuyler had often joked about how they'd both come from entirely different backgrounds only to end up in exactly the same place—with less dollars than sense.

In spite of that—or, perhaps, because of it—he had always placed infinitely more importance on money than she ever had. He had determined early on that he would make a fortune someday that was truly obscene, and that he would spend it entirely, frivolously, selfishly on himself. Lily, in turn, had pointed out that the billions he intended to keep as his own, the billions with which he intended to indulge himself so shamelessly, could instead be used to feed and clothe and make warm people who needed and deserved it far more than he did. But whenever she reminded him of that fact, Schuyler had always scoffed at her, had always responded the same way.

"Lily. Darling," he had always said on those occasions. "Someday, if someone puts billions of dollars into your hands, then you can take it and spend it on all the bleeding-heart social programs you want to spend it on. But until that day comes…" He had always left his statement unfinished, his meaning clear.

And always, in response, Lily had offered up the same reply. "Fine, Schuyler," she had always told him then. "Someday, if someone puts billions of dollars into my hands, then maybe I'll do exactly that."

Her steps slowed as she thought again about Leonard Freiberger and the work he claimed to be doing here at Ashling. And for just the briefest, slightest, most faltering moment, something else to worry about nudged its way into her brain. And for that moment, Lily wavered a bit in her conviction.

No, she finally decided. Mr. Freiberger would never uncover all of that. Although she still questioned his reasons for being at Ashling, whatever he was up to, Lily could handle him.

Although he would have sworn such a thing would be impossible, Leo's second day at Ashling turned out to be even stranger than the first. Not just because he was slowly coming to realize that Schuyler Kimball's files were, as Miss Rigby had readily assured him, a mess—even for an eccentric billionaire—but because Leo met the rest of Kimball's family and constituents, starting with the illustrious, the mysterious, the felonious… Chloe.

"I'm up!" a female voice shouted from outside Kimball's office as Leo struggled to break into one of the billionaire's many booby-trapped personal files. "Lily?" the girl continued, her voice moving into double-digit decibels. "Did you hear me? I said I'm
up
!"

She rounded the office door just as she shrieked out that last bit, coming uncomfortably close to shattering Leo's eardrums. The potential loss of hearing, however, didn't concern him nearly as much as the prospect of being arrested did. Arrested for the crime of… of… of being in a room with a minor who wasn't dressed the way a minor should be when she was in a room with a man who wasn't a minor.

Or something like that.

Because Chloe, in addition to being all the other things Leo had begun to suspect she was, was also, evidently, an exhibitionist. Fourteen, he reminded himself as he took in her attire. She was only fourteen years old. That didn't stop her from dressing like a Frederick's of Hollywood model, though. Or perhaps, more accurately, undressing like one.

Normally, Leo would consider something like red vinyl, platform thigh boots to be pretty much the focal point of a woman's ensemble. Unless, of course, they were paired with the other thing that Chloe—almost—had on. What appeared to be a dress was made—sort of—from something brief and purple that looked like what Leo's sister called crochet. From waist to neckline, the garment
should
have been laced up the middle with red satin ribbons, but Chloe had evidently gotten bored with that particular chore before completing it. Because the laces hung free, the dress open, well below the neck.

But Leo barely noticed that particular aspect of her attire, because the moment he realized it, he jerked his gaze back up to the girl's face. Unfortunately, moving his gaze to her face made him no less uncomfortable. Because Chloe, he realized much to his distaste, was into that body piercing thing. Big time. Each ear sported a good half dozen earrings… and things. A silver circle winked from her left nostril, a gold one from her right eyebrow. For a moment, he wondered why she hadn't bothered mutilating her lips, too, then he realized that they were probably too full to be pierced with anything smaller than a Hula-Hoop.

Her hair was an absolute riot of mahogany curls that she clearly had trouble containing, and her face was obscured by far too much makeup—enough so that, had he not already been told she was fourteen, he would have sworn she was in her twenties. All in all, Chloe was absolutely nothing like he would expect a fourteen-year-old-girl to be. Unless, of course, she was involved in activities like, oh, say, leaving pigs' spleens on the beds of unsuspecting nannies.

She seemed to be as surprised by Leo's appearance as he was by hers, because she stopped dead in her tracks the moment she laid eyes on him, an expression of stark, raving terror overtaking her features. Before he had a chance to wonder why a girl who'd jabbed her own face repeatedly with sharp objects would be afraid of him, her fear evaporated, to be replaced by an attitude of… well, attitude.

"Who the hell are you?" she asked.

Nobody spoke to Leo with such utter disregard. Nobody. He rose from his seat behind Kimball's desk, flexed every muscle he possessed, and glared at her with all the lack of concern he could muster. It was a pose he'd affected many times with excellent results, always reducing his victim to full, blithering idiot status. Yet Chloe didn't so much as flinch. Amazing.

"So?" she spurred in a tone of voice one might use when addressing a cabbage.

"Fri… Freiberger," he said. "Leonard Freiberger." Then, showing her the same total disrespect she'd shown for him, he asked, "Who the hell are you?"

But instead of answering his question, she said, "No, I didn't mean who the hell are you. I meant,
who the hell are you
?"

Leo bit back a growl and reminded himself that she was nothing more than a mouthy fourteen-year-old girl, and that he was, for all intents and purposes, nothing more than mousy little bookkeeper Leonard Freiberger. And although Leo Friday wouldn't tolerate this kind of crap from some teenage girl—even if she did sport more hardware than Sears—Leonard probably would. So he forced himself to relax a little.

"I'm a bookkeeper for Kimball Technologies. And you are?" he tried again, already pretty certain of the answer he would receive. She had to be either Chloe or a harbinger of ill fortune. And his money was on the former. Pretty much.

"I'm Chloe," she said. "I'm Schuyler Kimball's
daughter
," she added in a voice that made clear she was in no way happy about that particular fact. "Not that he'll ever admit to it, the prick."

Having absolutely no idea how to respond to that, Leo chose to remain silent.

"Where's Lily?" Chloe asked. "What did you do to her?"

Not nearly everything I'd like to do
, Leo thought. Aloud, he said, "I haven't done anything to her."
Yet. "I
don't know where she is."

"Well, when you see her, tell her I'm up."

He narrowed his eyes at the girl. "Up? Up where? In your room?"

She rolled her eyes in a manner he suspected was endemic to all fourteen-year-old girls, regardless of where they stuck their jewelry on their person. "Just tell her I went out, okay, Einstein? And that I'll be back whenever."

Enough was enough, Leo thought. Not even a mousy, little bookkeeper with a name like Leonard Freiberger would put up with this much crap. Unable to help himself, he snapped, "Hey, tell her yourself, Lolita. I'm busy."

"Yes, do tell me yourself," a third voice piped up.

Leo snapped his attention to the door, where Lily Rigby stood, her posture, if possible, even more menacing than young Chloe's. Her outfit today was as borderline professional as it had been the day before, her charcoal-colored skirt a little
too
fitted, topped by a berry-colored sweater set that was a little
too
clingy. Dressed as she was, with her hair wound up the back of her head again, she reminded Leo all too uncomfortably of Audrey Hepburn, for whom he had always harbored a major,
major
lustfest.

Tiny as she was—nearly a foot shorter than he, and certainly a good eighty or ninety pounds lighter—Miss Rigby was clearly a force to be reckoned with, something that Chloe seemed to realize immediately. Because as mouthy and militant as the girl had been to Leo, at the arrival of Schuyler Kimball's secretary, her posture became almost meek. Which was interesting, considering the fact that, even at fourteen, she, too, was taller than and outweighed Miss Rigby by a significant amount.

"Uh, hi, Lily," she said. But she dropped her gaze to the floor and didn't turn around.

Miss Rigby considered the girl in silence, seemingly oblivious to Leo, whom she had yet to acknowledge. She strode slowly and purposefully into the room, her attention focused intently on the young hooligan, her gaze sweeping up and down the girl's body with unmistakable disapproval.

"Don't you 'Hi, Lily' me, young lady. Just what do you think you're doing dressed like that?"

Chloe glanced down at her get-up, then back up at Miss Rigby, injecting a confidence into her posture that was dubious at best. "Me and Lauren are up, that's all," she said. "Not that it's any of your business."

Miss Rigby arched her eyebrows incredulously, her mouth dropping open at the slight. "I
beg
your pardon," she said in a clipped voice. "Don't you
dare
speak to me that way."

"Um, sorry," Chloe muttered, dropping her gaze again. And strangely, she did seem to be genuinely apologetic.

"You are not
up
today," the secretary answered imperiously.

God, Leo loved that tone of voice from a woman. It was just so cool, so commanding, so controlled. So
hot
. It made a man itch to say—or do—something that would shatter her self-control. Involuntarily, he reached up to loosen the tie at his throat, then remembered that he'd already done that earlier. So he inhaled as deeply and imperceptibly as possible to steady his pulse, releasing the breath on a slow, silent, not quite steady sigh.

"You are not
up
this week, for that matter," Miss Rigby continued in the same tone, still addressing Chloe, but sending Leo's pulse rate into triple digits. "You'll be lucky if you are
up
for the rest of this year after that little stunt you pulled over the weekend. And as far as Lauren is concerned… You know how I feel about that girl. She is
not
a good influence."