She turned it over, set it facedown on the marble, and patted it twice.
“Anyone can print a card,” she said.
“We had a man last month with a fake badge. Walked right in. Stole three laptops from the fourth floor. So forgive me if I don’t roll out the red carpet for walk-ins.”
A beat.
Deliberate.
“Or roll-ins, I suppose.”
The associates by the elevator laughed out loud this time.
Candace’s smile warmed at the sound.
A performer finding her audience.
Across the lobby, a young woman in a green apron stopped wiping the espresso counter.
Tasha Cole had worked Meridian’s lobby bar for three years.
She had watched Candace sort human beings like incoming mail for all three of them.
Something about the woman in the wheelchair, particularly the stillness of her, made Tasha’s stomach knot.
She filled a glass with ice water, came around the bar, and crouched beside Irene’s wheelchair.
“Here you go, ma’am,” she said quietly. “It’s a long ride in from that cold.”
“Thank you.”
Irene took the glass.
Her hands were steadier than Tasha expected.
“Tasha.”
Candace’s voice cracked across the lobby like a ruler on a desk.
“We don’t serve loiterers. Get back to your station before I write you up for the third time this quarter.”
“She’s not a loiterer.”
“Third time this quarter.”
Candace let each word fall separately.
Tasha’s jaw tightened.
She gave Irene an apologetic look and retreated, but she did not go far.
She stayed at the end of the bar watching, her phone half out of her apron pocket.
Irene placed the water on the counter’s lower ledge.
“I’d like you to call Walter Brennan’s office. They’re expecting me.”
For the first time, something flickered behind Candace’s eyes.
The chairman’s name was not nothing.
But eleven years of guarding this desk had taught her a simple arithmetic.
The cost of insulting a nobody was zero.
And everything about this woman read nobody.
“Mr. Brennan,” Candace repeated, almost amused. “The chairman of this firm is expecting you?”
“That’s right.”
“Let me guess. He met you at one of his little community events, shook your hand, said, ‘Come by anytime,’ and you actually believed it.”
She shook her head slowly.
“Honey, men like that say those things the way other people say bless you. It doesn’t mean you sneeze your way into the boardroom.”
“Call his office,” Irene said. “Two minutes. Then I’ll be out of your hair either way.”
It was reasonable.
It was calm.
And the reasonableness of it was the most infuriating thing Candace had heard all morning.
People like this were supposed to get flustered.
They were supposed to apologize and leave.
This woman just sat there asking Candace to do her job in front of everyone.
Candace leaned over the high counter so she could look directly down at Irene.
“I am not bothering the chairman’s office because a woman rolled in off the street with a printed card and a story.”
Her voice dropped, sweet and venomous.
“Now, you can wheel yourself back out that door, or I can have you removed. Those are the options, sweetheart.”
“You’re refusing to make one phone call?”
“I’m protecting this firm. It’s my job.”
A pause.
“Some of us work for our money.”
The sentence hung there, shining with everything underneath it.
A woman near the sofas inhaled sharply.
Even one of the associates stopped grinning.
Irene looked at Candace for a long moment.
The waterfall murmured.
Chandelier light trembled on the marble between them.
“Okay,” Irene said softly.
She slid the cream card back toward herself.
“I want your name.”