Mr. Personality Read Online Free Page A

mean anything.”
    Nicole felt the urge to slap the woman. People’s feelings always mattered. And where did this woman get off, kissing up like that to Maxwell Tucker? He was probably loved hearing he could behave anyway he wanted.
    Glancing over to see his reaction, Nicole was surprised to see scorn disturb his impassive features. But before she could draw any real conclusions, a stifled sound like a swallowed sob, drew her gaze back to the younger woman. The poor thing sat on the edge of her chair, gripping her purse as if she were preparing to bolt from the room. Job interviews were clearly not her thing.
    “I’m very eager to work with you,” the older woman persisted, demonstrating all the sensitivity of a rhinoceros. “I could maybe help my brother. Seeing how you do things might give me some ideas—“
    “I doubt that.” Max’s words were blunt. “In any case, I’m not here to further anyone else’s career. There’s more than enough dreck on the store shelves, as it is.”
    “Well!” The older woman puffed up, finally insulted. “You’ve got no call to say—“
    “But I can say anything I like. You just told me my ‘genius’ gives me the right.” A malicious smile coasted over his mouth.
    He turned, gesturing toward the door. “You can go now. You aren’t the one for the job.“
    Gasping at his blunt dismissal of the older applicant, the younger woman started to cry.
    “Let’s not be hasty.” The older woman’s tone was now placating. “I was just trying to—“
    “I don’t care what you’re trying to do. You are wasting my time. I have no interest in hiring you.” Tucker stood by the door, clearly immovable and, just as clearly, tired of the whole situation.
    “Well!” Affronted, the older woman got up to go.
    From the chair beside her, the younger woman rose, too. Nicole was surprised to see she was now openly weeping.
    “Where are you going?” Maxwell Tucker asked the young woman abruptly.
    “I’m sorry.” She gulped back a sob. “I’m just…not good…with hostility!”
    Unconsciously, Nicole had risen too. She moved toward the weeping woman, holding out a tissue.
    She could understand Max Tucker’s annoyance with her excessive timidity, but the woman’s obvious distress left Nicole with the urge to say something in her defense.
    The woman might be overly-sensitive, but her emotions were genuine. With difficulty, Nicole repressed an urge to put a comforting arm around her.
    “Hostility?” Max Tucker echoed, annoyance on his handsome features.
    “You…,” she struggled to speak, “you’re so unfeeling !”
    “My feelings are not the issue and I’m not here to flatter anyone,” Max Tucker said incisively. “This is a job interview.”
    The older woman, pausing as she exited the room, turned and announced in a loud voice, “I can see the employment agency certainly didn’t exaggerate when they said you’re difficult to work with! No amount of money would be enough!”
    She turned and swept out of the room.
    The younger applicant, still sobbing into Nicole’s tissue, was understood to say she couldn’t stand hostility. “No one told me he was this difficult to work with! I can’t work surrounded by so much anger!”
    Despite the compassion the younger woman’s distress drew from her, Nicole also shared some of the impatience radiating from Tucker. It wasn’t like he’d called them names or anything. Of course, he was about as warm and reassuring as a handsome chunk of ice, but no one said bosses had to be cuddly.
    Watching the weeping younger woman follow the other woman out the door, Max said with a bite, “Good. I don’t need sobbing, idiots—“
    His cold words mingled with the younger woman’s fragmented indication that she’d heard Bloomingdale’s had dental.
    “—who can’t behave in a business-like manner!” he finished crisply.
    “…even if I have to stand on my feet all day…” her words trailed off, punctuated by the closing of a