Free Her Man Friday by Elizabeth Bevarly Page B

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."
    Enough was enough, Leo thought. Not even a