Why hadn’t she anticipated this? Of course Keighleigh would pull this kind of bullshit move, despite every single person on their team knowing that she was once again usurping Samiah’s idea. This is what she got for scheduling her conniving, spotlight-stealing coworker’s portion of the presentation to go right before what should have been her big finish.

“This is ingenuity at its finest,” Barrington said once the other woman was done. “How do you suppose we implement these potential fixes, Keighleigh?”

Samiah caught the flash of panic behind Keighleigh’s strained smile before her coworker pointed to the back of the room and said, “I’ll leave that to our fearless team leader to explain.”

Seething, Samiah started for the other end of the conference room before Daniel’s words stopped her.

“Why don’t you go ahead and do it, Keighleigh?”

Every head in the conference room turned to him, but his eyes remained on a stunned Keighleigh Miller. The smile on his face belied the tension emanating from him. He was pissed. For her.

Samiah’s heart melted.

“Daniel’s right,” Barrington said. “Bring this home for us. I’m sure Samiah doesn’t mind.”

If there was a dictionary entry for scared shitless, Keighleigh Miller’s face would be in the little square box right next to it. Her wide, panicked gaze flew from Daniel’s to Barrington’s to the smart board, and finally to Samiah’s.

A small part of her—the tiniest, most infinitesimal part that was still capable of empathizing with a fellow human being, even if said human being was straight-up trash—felt sorry for Keighleigh. But then Samiah mentally gut-punched that tiny part of her and sat it in a corner, facing the wall.

Keighleigh deserved every second of the excruciating misery she was no doubt feeling right now. She’d manipulated her way into this job, riding coattails and passing off the ideas of her fellow coworkers as her own, with no thought about the consequences of her actions. Well, it was time baby girl faced the music.

The atmosphere in the room quickly reached nails-down-a-chalkboard levels of discomfort as they all sat there waiting for Keighleigh to continue. In what she could only describe as an attempt to bank a few brownie points to get into heaven, Samiah finally decided to have mercy on her coworker.

Her phone began vibrating in her dress pocket, but she ignored it as she continued onward, plucking the stylus from Keighleigh’s hand and tapping the smart board’s screen.

“Thanks for setting that up for me, Keighleigh, but I’ll take it from here.”

Samiah dismissed her with a brief tilt of her head, then went on to succinctly explain the implementation plan. She answered every single question her superiors lobbed at her, showing them just why Trendsetters was lucky to have her. She was impressive as fuck, and everyone in this room knew it.