The other woman gave her a warm smile and a firm handshake. “Excellent.” She looked over at her assistant, who was in head-to-toe hot pink including the tips of her chin-length hair. “Billie, let’s take Kinsey around to meet the rest of the team.” Leigh cut a glance her way. “And everyone here calls me Leigh, so I expect you to do the same.”
The three of them took the elevator up to the lab, Kinsey trying not to freak out that the CEO herself had come down to welcome a new lowly junior scientist to the team. Bright and airy, the lab took up most of the third floor. Something warm settled in her chest at the sight of the crisp white lab coats, the clear glass beakers, and the chem shower in the corner. Home was stainless steel and correctly calibrated scales. She should really stitch that onto a throw pillow because it was true, the lab was her happy place.
As soon as they walked through the automatic sliding doors, the handful of people in the lab looked up from their benches. An older man took off his safety goggles and came over.
“Gavin, I’d like you to meet our newest scientist, Kinsey Dalton,” Leigh said. “Kinsey, Gavin Wedgewood is our head of R&D. His team developed the formula for Bonsoir Rajeunir.”
BR to its legion of rabid fans, the overnight moisturizer was a must-have classic in the beauty world, the kind of product with the devoted and loyal following that every company dreamed of having.
“Team, huh?” Gavin smiled, but it didn’t reach his dark eyes. “Well, I suppose that’s one way to look at one man’s accomplishments.” He turned to Kinsey, putting his hands in the pockets of his lab coat and rocking back on his heels, his condescending gaze going over Kinsey from the top of her ponytail to the slightly pointed toes of her shoes. “So, this is your new prodigy, huh? Another one you just had a feeling about?”
He glanced over at Leigh and chuckled when he noticed her narrowed eyes.
“Gavin.” Leigh’s tone hardened, her annoyance as visible as Meemaw’s laugh lines. “We’ve talked about this.”
“Yes, yes, I know,” he said, dismissing Leigh as if she didn’t own the company and therefore control his employment. “But it’s all meant in fun. You see that, don’t you, Katey?”
“Kinsey,” she said, correcting his obviously on purpose mispronunciation of her name.
She was all too familiar with Gavin’s type, already having met people like him in every classroom, internship, and social situation. He was a furniture store apple, the kind employees plopped into the wood bowls placed just so in the middle of a dining table—all shiny and nice on the outside and nothing but stale Styrofoam on the inside.
“Oh, sorry about that,” Gavin said as he tilted his face upward and looked at the ceiling as if trying to recall a minute detail. “Your last amazing find was Katey, or was that the one before that, Leigh? I always forget. At least they pretty up the place.”
What. The. Fuck.
This was her direct boss? This asshole stuck in the eighties?
“Gavin,” Leigh said, her voice firm. “We’ve discussed this. Don’t make me add to the list our attorneys are discussing.”
“Oh yes, can’t acknowledge the obvious,” Gavin said, waving his hand in the air, dismissing his chauvinism as if it were a spritz of rancid perfume. “I’m just a say-it-as-I-see-it type. I’m sure you’ll get used to it for as long as you’re here. As much as I hate to cut short any interaction with you, Leigh, I’ve got to get back to our latest project.”
“Of course,” Leigh said, her jaw tight and her eyes alight with barely repressed fury.
Gavin, though, was halfway across the lab before she even got those two words out.
Kinsey was a little shell-shocked, a lot pissed, and uncertain about her job choice enough at this point that her stomach acid was sloshing around like moonshine in a mason jar during a midnight four-wheeler race across an abandoned field.
“And that is the lab,” Leigh said through clenched teeth. “Let’s get you to HR so you can fill out all your paperwork.”
Kinsey kept her mouth shut, even as a billion and one panicked thoughts were zooming around inside her head, and followed Leigh and Billie out of the lab. They made it halfway down the hall before Leigh paused outside the break room.
“Billie, when is the appointment with the attorney?” Leigh asked.
She consulted her tablet. “Next week.”
“Thank fucking God.” Leigh let out an emphatic exhale and led their little trio into the break room. “Sorry about that. There are”—she waved her hands in the air—“things being worked out that have made it a little tense around here. Gavin’s smart, but he’s also a bully; don’t let him get to you. Now, I’ll leave you in Billie’s capable hands. She’ll take you to HR, and then you’ll be all set for your first full day in the lab tomorrow. You’ll do amazing.”
And with that, the CEO walked out of the break room, took a look left toward the lab and grimaced, before hooking a right and disappearing down the hall. Meanwhile, Kinsey stood there next to one of the oval break tables, each of which was outfitted with freshly cut flowers in glass vases as centerpieces, trying to remember why it had seemed like a good idea to move to Harbor City, home of the apartments with open-concept bathrooms and lab drama that made her gut twist.
She glanced over at Billie. “What happened with the last few hires?”
“They quit,” she said with a shrug.
Uh-huh. She wasn’t buying it. “Sounds like there’s more to the story.”
“There is.” Billie held her iPad to her chest, gripping the white Apple Pencil tight in her hand. “I’m not one to spread gossip, but this bit of knowledge sure could help you keep putting groceries in your fridge.”
Kinsey nodded, relief letting her inch her shoulders down a tad. “I like to eat.”
“Don’t we all.” Billie glanced around the deserted break room as if someone might be hiding by the coffeemaker that looked like it could send a rocket into space. “So, Gavin is a real piece of work.”
Not a shocker there.
“When I transitioned, he made my life hell,” Billie continued, “but he was smart enough to do it so that it was covert enough I didn’t have anything to take to HR—plus under the old regime, it wasn’t like much would have been done.” She plucked a white daisy from the vase on the closest table. “I was ready to walk out on my five-inch heels and never look back when Leigh pulled me aside and let me know she was getting the company in the divorce and asked me if I wanted to be her right hand. Easiest yes I ever gave.”
Billie took a deep inhale of the flower and then put it back in the vase. “Her attorney was a shark of the most glorious kind, but her ex was a stone-cold demon. He made a sweetheart deal with Gavin, giving him full intellectual-property licensing rights to the top-five products Archambeau had developed up until that point. If he decides to walk, Gavin takes eighty percent of the company profits with him—something he lords over the rest of us and turning the culture of that lab into a toxic waste pit.”