Page 45 of The Trouble with Love and Ink
Wesley did treat him like royalty. That last name probably sealed the deal for him to get the senior associate position. I glared at him as the pieces of the plan clicked into place.
“How convenient that the plan involves no lying on your part.”
“I’m not as good at it as you are.”
I did stomp on his foot for that.
“Ow!” Beck doubled over and then laughed. I stalked off toward the dressing room. “I’m kidding! Lane, wait!”
I didn’t see him again until I stopped by his cube right before our four o’clock meeting. “You coming?”
“Was about to head that way.”
Beck closed out of an Excel sheet and clamped his laptop shut. That’s when I noticed the Capiz shell at the corner of his desk with his title in gold: Senior-level Asshole. I turned so Beck wouldn’t see my smile and nearly tripped over his backpack. He kept it at the mouth of the cubicle, probably for a quick escape. It was Thursday, after all.
“Careful, Lane,” Beck said in a hushed voice. “Costa Rica won’t be much fun with a twisted ankle.”
I shoved his backpack with my foot. “You don’t need working legs to sip margaritas on the beach.”
He halted. “Does that mean you’re coming?”
The hopeful look on his face was cute, so I shut it down immediately. “Nope.”
We walked to the huddle room in silence. I didn’t mind. I’d need my voice as much as possible to get through the meeting with Frank.
“Explain one more time why this won’t work?” Frank demanded, his voice already abrasive, ready to weather whoever contradicted him.
I went over the workflow again, dumbing it down as much as possible without being condescending, and, God, I should have gotten an Oscar for that performance.
“You could make an umbrella change,” Frank parried.
“No. We would have to make that change in over a hundred companies.”
I thought of Beck’s idea to take that vacation. No way in hell that would work now. Even the royal Mr. Atteridge wouldn’t be granted leave. We’d both be stuck here, trudging through these changes.
“Well, tough.” Frank leaned back in his chair, fingers steepled. “Corporate office does stuff like this all the time.”
“Corporate only has thirteen companies.” I knew I needed to watch my tone, but we’d spent a huge chunk of time fixing parameters that Frank had originally agreed upon. He’d barely confirmed our solution would work before he wanted to make changes again.
“I don’t know what to say. This isn’t what we communicated, Emily.”
“Actually, it is.” Beck’s voice surprised me as much as the authority in it. “I have our notes from a month ago, on March 24th.” Beck read the meeting minutes, his voice calm and professional. I recognized them as my notes. “I sent you these the day they were taken, and I have your email stating everything looked good. Do you want me to resend the document?”
My mouth dropped. Beck was sticking up for me. Beck had taken my notes seriously.
“What the hell do those notes matter? We need these fixed. This is the way family office wants it done, so that’s what’s going to happen.” The coloring on Frank’s face deepened to a dangerous—someone should probably check his blood pressure—shade.
“Now, hold on.” I thought Wesley would choke on his spit the way he sputtered across the table, working to get a handle on the direction of the meeting. “Don’t worry about it, Frank. I will see to these changes myself.”
My head snapped in Wesley’s direction. Did the king of delegating just offer to take on a project of this magnitude? Maybe I needed to take a page from Beck’s book and get mouthy more often.
This seemed to appease Frank, and the meeting adjourned shortly after with tense, awkward silence. Beck got up to leave with everyone else, but I gestured for him to come over.
“Hey, I’m having a hard time with this error. Do you think you can look at it?”
By the time Beck had made it to my side of the table, we were alone in the huddle room.
“Thank you,” I said. “You saved us both a mountain-load of work.”
