Crazy, Undercover, Love. Nikki Moore

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СКАЧАТЬ fine.’ I nodded. ‘So, if you don’t mind?’ I waved a file in the air.

      ‘Don’t let me stop you.’

      The way he looked me up and down made me edgy. Was he intending to make me squeeze past him? ‘Would you mind moving please?’

      ‘Sorry. Of course.’ He stepped back to let me pass.

      Striding out, I chanced a look over my shoulder. He was staring after me, grey suit rumpled and pale-pink tie askew. The whole incident was another odd one, but hopefully he’d got the message.

      The next day when I came in for the evening shift, he was sitting on the edge of my desk.

      ‘Evening, Tony. Can I help?’ Claiming my chair, I gestured him to take a seat opposite.

      ‘I’ve been thinking about what you said yesterday,’ he acknowledged, ‘and we can remove the problem.’ He paused, gave a smirk. ‘If you weren’t my boss we wouldn’t have a conflict in dating.’

      My lower jaw momentarily dropped but I calmed myself, switching on my computer. ‘Sorry, what are you suggesting?’

      ‘If working together is a problem, we could change that.’

      ‘How exactly?’

      Shrugging, he stretched his arms above his head as if totally relaxed. ‘Maybe if you worked at another casino?’

      I stared at him in disbelief, wanting to wind his arms round his neck and throttle him with them. Anger sent tingles along my skin. I couldn’t comprehend what he’d said. Inappropriate didn’t begin to cover it. It was so bloody arrogant. I should give up a job earned through hard work just to have the opportunity to sleep with him? What alternate reality was he lodged in?

      Going into hyper-formal mode, I straightened in my seat, squaring my shoulders. ‘I’m surprised at the suggestion, Tony. I’m very happy here and have no desire to transfer. And I have no desire for us to be involved. If you’re going to stay you’ll need to respect that. Can you work as my assistant on those grounds?’

      ‘Sure.’ He tried to look indifferent but a muscle ticked at the corner of his mouth. ‘It was just a thought. And after the way we talked, and you smiled at me—’

      ‘I was being polite.’ But guilt nagged at me. Had I encouraged him? Been too friendly?

      ‘It was just a thought, as I said,’ he reiterated stiffly.

      ‘Good. Then I think we should regard the topic as closed.’

      ‘Good,’ he repeated. ‘Everything you need is waiting in your in-tray. Goodnight.’ Standing abruptly, he stalked out.

      After he left, I was unnerved enough to rush through the door onto the casino floor for a walk around. I needed to be around people, try and forget I’d just been propositioned by my assistant.

      After sleeping on it, I hoped for the best and that he’d have abandoned his weird ideas. I was conducting staff appraisals for front-of-house staff the following morning so didn’t see him until lunchtime. There was no mention of the previous night’s conversation and I didn’t get an apology, but for a while it was better. The invasion of my space stopped and so did the inappropriate comments.

      Then one evening I was working on a head-office project on rolling out succession planning across the London region. Tony had stayed on to pull data off the system, but was tense, motions jerky, not making direct eye contact.

      ‘Tony, we’re all right aren’t we?’ I asked, pouring us coffee. We were at the meeting table in my office, papers spread out around us, other staff either down on the casino floor or in the security or cash offices.

      ‘What do you mean?’ He looked over, frowning.

      ‘Our conversation the other week—’

      ‘Sure,’ he shrugged but his expression had gone hard, the planes of his face standing out starkly. There was a gleam in his eye which made me uncomfortable.

      ‘I just thought … you don’t have to be embarrassed. We can—’

      ‘Forget it,’ he ground. Holding the milk jug up: ‘White or black tonight?’

      ‘Black, thanks.’ I stared at him but he ignored me, hypnotically stirring sugar into his coffee. He was upset, so trying to pursue the conversation would obviously fall on deaf ears. I let it go, thinking he was having an off day.

      ‘Has your brother got married yet?’ I prodded, to change the subject.

      ‘Yes. Big wedding last weekend. He’s all settled with his perfect blonde princess and Mercedes and new partnership at his law firm now.’

      The bitter tone and twisted expression told me more than the words did how competitive the sibling rivalry was. ‘Ok–ay.’ Clearing my throat, I turned a printed spreadsheet over. ‘Shall we look at this one now then?’

      ‘Yes,’ he agreed, yanking it towards him.

      I remember thinking: He’ll get over whatever he thought might be happening between us. He’s got other things going on.

      Then odd things started happening.

      Staff meetings mysteriously moved so I’d miss them, appointments were changed in the shared diary so I didn’t know when corporate clients would be arriving, making me look and feel hopelessly inept. Deadlines were altered, making me prioritise work in the wrong order and have to ask for extensions or face the embarrassment of sending it in late. I started keeping a paper diary so I could track deadlines accurately, make sure I wasn’t going mad. If I was out of the office, Tony would get everyone looking for me as if I’d gone AWOL, and would apologise quietly after the fact, saying he hadn’t seen the external appointments in my diary. When I asked what was going on he’d express innocence, saying he’d been confused.

      I was so frustrated. His behaviour was unreasonable, but I wasn’t sure what to do. It all seemed so intangible and I wasn’t sure I could prove the ‘confusion’ was anything other than genuine human error. So I looked at our policies and procedures, researched sexual harassment online, went onto forums for research. It didn’t feel like he was bullying me as such and he was the junior employee. When I read all the horrifying true stories on the message boards and chat rooms of how people had ended up going off sick with work-related stress and falling into depression, even losing their jobs, houses and marriages, it made my own fears seem silly.

      I settled for making notes of the date, time, location and content of any worrying conversations or events in my moleskin notebook, and called Human Resources. I didn’t name myself or Tony, wanting to guard my privacy and in hindsight, my pride. The HR Manager advised me to try and resolve the issues with my staff member informally and if it didn’t work to raise a formal complaint under the grievance procedure or take him through a disciplinary process, which would be taken seriously by the company. She took pains to ask if I felt physically threatened in any way but I couldn’t honestly say yes at that point.

      Coming off the phone feeling better, I was determined to have a clear, minuted conversation with Tony, where I’d tell him I knew he was trying to undermine me and wouldn’t stand for it. That it’d be regarded as insubordination and a potential conduct issue. СКАЧАТЬ