Her Man Friday(3)
Author: Elizabeth Bevarly

Great, Leo thought. This was just great. The wandering band of rogue executives were now Elliot Ness and the Untouchables.

He shook his head imperceptibly. This had happened to him before. A different company, a different board of directors, but the same damned thing. They’d been convinced that his reputation had preceded him, right down to the guys in the mail room, and they’d insisted he play a game of cloak and calculator. And not only had the charade been totally unnecessary, it had been annoying as hell.

"Well, can I at least go by my own first name?" he asked, masking his sarcasm as best he could, and telling himself that was not petulance he heard in his voice.

"Leonard?" Cohiba Man asked with a shrug. "I don’t see why not."

Leo cringed at the sound of his given name. He really hated being called Leonard. No one but his great-aunt Margie got away with calling him that anymore, and the only reason she did was because she was ninety-two years old. Weil, that and the fact that, even though at six-foot-two, Leo was a solid one-hundred and ninety-eight pounds, Aunt Margie outweighed him by a good fifty pounds. And she watched way too much Championship Wrestling.

"No, not Leonard," he started to object.

But Halston Man cut him off. "Leonard Freiberger!" he exclaimed. "That’s who you could be. It would be close to your real name, but not really. And you won’t be an investigator. You’ll be a… let’s see now… a bookkeeper! Yes, that’s perfect. A mousy little bookkeeper who’s been hired to double-check the files for a few minor discrepancies. And I think Leonard Freiberger is the perfect name for a mousy little bookkeeper. I went to school with a Morton Freiberger," he added parenthetically. "Trust me. This will be perfect."

"That’s interesting," Leo replied blandly. "I went to school with a Butch Freiberger. Son of a bitch beat the hell out of me one day during PE."

Leo also thought about telling Halston Man that he had bookkeeper friends named Trixie LeFevre and Jamal Jefferson, and not a single one with a name like Leonard Freiberger. But the old guy seemed to be having so much fun that Leo didn’t have the heart. Unfortunately, when he said nothing to counter the man’s suggestion, the other executives, incredibly, seemed to warm to the idea.

"Yes, yes," Versace Man chimed in. "That’s a wonderful idea. You’ll need glasses, though." He whipped his own pair of delicate, horn-rimmed spectacles from his face and held them out to Leo. "Here, you can wear mine. Don’t worry—they’re not prescription. They’re mood glasses. Women adore them on men."

Mood glasses? Leo wondered. Now what marketing genius had come up with that idea? One who had never had to wear real glasses, obviously. Leo should know. He’d been wearing contact lenses for half his life—since he was nineteen years old.

"I don’t think—" he began to object.

But this time Grecian Formula Man interrupted him. "And you absolutely must wear tweed," he threw in. "Not the good kind—the Lauren or the Hilfiger—the absent-minded professor kind. Like Peter O’Toole wore in Goodbye Mr. Chips. That would suit the charade beautifully."

Leo pinched the bridge of his nose—hard—and tried not to panic. "Uh, I think you guys are getting a little too—"

"It’s just too bad we can’t do anything about your physical makeup, Mr. Friday," Charlton Heston Man piped up, frowning as he considered Leo from head to toe. "There aren’t many bookkeepers who look like football linemen. Perhaps if you slouched a bit…"

All right, that was enough, Leo thought, dropping his hand back down to his side. He owed it to bookkeepers everywhere to put a stop to this egregious stereotyping ASAP. Otherwise, he’d have Trixie and Jamal up here kicking corporate butt in no time flat.

"Look," he bit out, barely able to contain his growing outrage. "You guys are out of line. There’s no reason for me to affect any kind of damned stereotype. I’m perfectly capable of handling this assignment the same way I’ve handled hundreds of other assignments over the years. Just sit back and let me do my job."

"Oh, we’ll let you do your job, Mr. Friday," Cohiba Man said. "But don’t forget who’s paying your salary here."

"Fine," Leo conceded sharply. "I’ll play by your rules, to an extent." He emphasized those last three words as much as he could. "I’ll go by another name, and I’ll be the simple, lowly bookkeeper doing a perfunctory and very standard survey of the records. But I won’t be a buffoon."

"We never asked you to be that, Mr. Friday," Cohiba Man said. But he smiled as he puffed his cigar.

Leo shook his head once more, not bothering to be imperceptible about it this time. These guys were flat-out nuts. Too much living in the corporate ivory towers would do that to a person, he supposed.

Fine, he thought. He’d play a part. Whatever it took to get these guys off his back so he could do his job, collect his paycheck, and leave them in the dust. One thing, however, was absolutely certain. He wasn’t going to go by Leonard Freiberger, and he wasn’t going to slouch, and he wasn’t going to wear tweed or mood glasses.

He didn’t care who was paying his salary.

Chapter Two

"Leonard Freiberger, ma’am. We spoke on the phone yesterday afternoon?"

Lily Rigby gazed at the man standing on the other side of Schuyler’s front door, blinked a few times in rapid succession, and realized she had no idea what to say in response. His appearance simply left her at a loss for words. She reminded herself that Mr. Freiberger had identified himself over the telephone the day before as a bookkeeper, but still… She hadn’t thought anybody wore that Goodbye, Mr. Chips tweed stuff anymore.

"Lily Rigby," she finally said, extending her hand toward him. "I’m Schuyler Kimball’s social secretary. It’s nice to meet you, Mr. Freiberger."

Actually, she was quite a bit more than Schuyler Kimball’s social secretary, she thought. She and Schuyler had, after all, gone to college together. And he had, after all, been her first lover, however briefly. And they had, after all, lived together for years and years and years. But that was undoubtedly a bit more than Mr. Freiberger wanted to know, wasn’t it?

So she said nothing further as she extended one hand toward him in greeting, then skimmed the other over the straight black hair she had wound into a sleek French twist. She forced a smile as she catalogued the rest of him, scrambling for a bland, polite addition to her salutation. When he took her hand, his fingers closed over hers, virtually swallowing them. He had big hands and a strong, capable grip, and his flesh was warm and rough against hers.