Rispel deliberately glanced around her office: one wall, a second, a third. It was a technique she used when she needed to slow things down. Absent that discipline, she might have felt too keenly her shock at the indignity of Devereaux addressing her as though she were some green recruit. She might have given in to the temptation to shout back. But if there was one thing she had learned in this man’s world, it was the danger of doing anything that could be disparaged as “emotional.” Men could shout, they could rant, they could even cry, and they were just being assertive, or passionate, or
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