Fair Game by Jasmine Haynes

of his lip in an unattractive snarl. “Sure you can do it. You just can’t do it better than any of the rest of us.”
    “Hell, yes, I can,” she snapped, hands on her hips, then immediately felt like she was engaging in some childish game of no-you-can’t /yes-I-can. “My family has nothing to do with it.”
    He smiled, all smarmy. Gotcha. She’d fallen into the trap.
    “Your family has everything to do with it.”
    “I’ve been here longer,” she stated.
    “I’ve got more experience,” he challenged.
    “A couple of years, big deal.” There’d been major delays on his last two projects. He’d said it was the customer’s fault, changes they’d wanted, contingencies they’d added, but that wasn’t supportable in the end.
    She sure as hell wasn’t going to start listing all his faults. She was the manager now; she had to be the adult. Arguing with him in the hallway wasn’t going to cut it.
    “Ronson, let’s meet in half an hour.” She’d been busy setting up meetings with all her new employees. This was just pulling in Ronson’s time slot a bit. “Ernie’s office,” she added. She wasn’t ready to call it her own yet. “We can discuss your grievances and go over your projects at the same time. Kill two birds with one stone.”
    His weird turquoise eyes were blazing, and he had a helluva lot more to say. But for the moment, he realized he would only come across looking like a jerk if he didn’t agree to the meeting.
    “Sure. Whatever,” he said.
    Josie sidestepped him with a smile, heading to her original destination, the ladies’ room.
    Ronson’s beef made her think of Trinity and that bimbo Inga Rice, who had given her such a hard time at work back in the spring. Same thing; Inga thought she should get the job, but Trinity got it because she was “daddy’s little girl.”
    Now Josie was “Connor’s little pet.”
    That bastard Ronson. Okay, she wouldn’t get mad, but she didn’t get this job because of her family. Or because Connor had favored her. She got it because she worked hard. Right out of college, she started in program management. She knew her stuff. Connor had given her a chance to prove that. In fact, Faith’s father, Jarvis, hadn’t believed Josie could handle lead on the Dominican job. See, family didn’t think you were special just because you were born into their midst.
    She now had a lot more empathy for Trinity’s plight, and a lot more admiration for how she’d solved it, too. Not to mention that Trinity had gotten her man in the end. Jeez, that reminded her. She, Trinity, and Faith had to go shopping for Trinity’s wedding dress soon. The wedding was in April, and eight months seemed early to Josie, but Trinity insisted she was already behind schedule. Then there were the bridesmaid dresses to choose at some point after that. Ugh. Shopping sucked. As did bridesmaid dresses. It was nice to be asked, though. Josie had never been in anyone’s wedding party. Faith didn’t have a wedding, just a trip to city hall. Still, despite the honor, Trinity damn well better pick something that didn’t look Cinderella-ridiculous. Of course, with Trinity’s elegant fashion taste, Josie shouldn’t worry.
    Feeling bitchy about shopping helped put Ronson’s comments out of her mind. Not that she had a whole helluva lot of time to dwell on them anyway. She had back-to-back meetings with Ronson and Eastman, then individual conference calls with Jenkins and Walker. They went as expected, with Ronson giving her the most crap about which of her projects she and Ernie had decided to hand over to him. He questioned why this job and why that job, then criticized the work she’d already done. Par for the course; she’d known he was pissed, and she took his crankiness with as much equanimity as possible. Being a manager was not so easy.
    Then Human Resources had dumped a stack of résumés on her desk. She read so many, the words all blended together until the applicants began to