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defend all of those poor Mississippi boys and level the playing field.”
       Bree looked alarmed.  She didn’t mean to sound as if she was criticizing what he did.  “I didn’t mean to–”
       “How do you rate your chances here at Colgate?” he interrupted her just as his smart phone chirped again.  He picked it up and began reading another text message.
       Her heart dropped.  Was he underwhelmed by her too, just as Alan DeFrame had been?  “I would rate my chances as excellent, sir.”  She decided to give it one more try .  “Although Mr. DeFrame said I don’t stand a chance.”
       Robert continued to read his text message, although a frown enveloped his face.  “Do you believe you stand a chance?” he asked her.
       “Oh, yes, sir.  I believe I’ll win it all.  I intend to win it all.”
       “You’re in it to win it,” Robert said with a small smile as he sat his phone back on the table.  “Don’t worry about Alan,” he said.  “Just do your best.”
       “And if I do my best and he still doesn’t recommend me?”
       Robert studied her.  “Are you asking me to guarantee an outcome, Miss Hudson?”
       Bree smiled and looked away from Robert.  At that moment she did kind of feel like a used car salesman overselling her wares.  When she looked back at him, however, she was stunned to see that he was staring at her cleavage.  His eyes immediately moved back up to her face, and they were now hooded, lustful eyes.  She flushed so hot she thought she had suddenly entered a steam room.
       “I wasn’t trying to suggest that you guarantee an outcome,” she finally answered him.  “I was just hoping that you would guarantee a fair process.”
       “I’ll get with Alan and assess how well each of you are performing over the next twelve weeks,” Robert said.  “I guarantee a fair process.”
       Bree winced as the door to the outside deck pushed open and two men she remembered Monty had introduced as Colgate attorneys, entered.  When they saw Robert, they moved in his direction.  Robert, knowing that they were there on business, looked at Bree.
       “You’d better get back downstairs, Brianna,” he said.
       Bree quickly stood up, took off his coat, and handed it to him.
       “And put something on your arms,” he admonished her as he accepted his coat.  “You aren’t too young to get pneumonia.”
       “Yes, sir,” she said.  “And have a nice day.”  She left, walking steadily toward the hard-to-open door, sensing that all eyes were trained on her.    
       And they were.  The attorneys coming Robert’s way looked back at her as she fled.  One looked at Robert with one of those who’s that head gestures, but Robert didn’t notice the gesture, or the man making it, because he was still staring at Bree.
 

 
THREE
 
The next day she arrived on the twenty-first floor at Colgate to find all of her competitors already present.  They all stood in the board room parading around like peacocks.  Bree was the only African-American in the group, which was nothing new to her.  She was one of only a handful of blacks in the whole of her law school, and was therefore accustomed to standing out that way. 
       But ethnicity wasn’t the great divider in this group.  Class was.  For they all stood around in their Prada shoes, Versace suits, Dior bags and jewels, and talked a talk that sounded almost foreign to Bree.  She tried her best to join in the conversations, to at least act like she had some sophistication, but she was roundly outmatched.  They all talked about their visits to the south of France, about their Harvard-Yale-Princeton educations, about their father the judge, or mother the CEO, or brother the presidential appointee. 
       Bree was from dirt-poor circumstances, whose father