Her Man Friday(16)
Author: Elizabeth Bevarly

"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.

Chapter Five

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."