Page 5 of A Matter of Time
His eyebrows shot up in surprise. “Was that almost a Tonia Callahan apology? Has hell frozen over and everyone forgot to tell me?”
“I’m in a bit of a hurry,” I told him, refusing to engage in our usual game of insults. “I imagine you’re busy too.”
In my mind, I quickly scanned through the business names I had noticed on the doors earlier, wondering which of them he worked for, and just as quickly, I shook the thought out of my head. I really didn’t care.
“Always busy,” he confirmed, stepping out of the way so I could go past him. There were separate doors to the men’s and women’s restrooms just inside. “Have a good day, Sugar.”
“You can call me Tonia,” I corrected, but he had already headed out the door, and if he heard me, he didn’t respond.
I used to love when he called me Sugar, his voice growling and low. He told me that he chose that pet name for me because I tasted so sweet. Now, on the rare occasions we ran into each other, he always said it sarcastically, and the last thing I wanted was for anyone from Barnly Oil to hear him speaking to me that way. I needed their respect.
When I had finished and double checked that everything about my appearance remained perfectly in place, I returned to the Barnly Oil office which had grown much livelier in my absence. A couple of people had already taken a seat in the meeting room, and I gave them a warm smile as I walked in, making small talk about the weather and the traffic while we waited for the others to join us. As I expected, both of the early arrivals were young and male, and so were the next two people who entered. One of the remaining empty seats belonged to Jason Barnly himself, so that left only one person who might potentially surprise me.
And surprise me he did when he walked in with the CEO, laughing light-heartedly in that very familiar way of his. Young and male certainly described him, just as I expected.
What Ihadn’texpected was for him to be Cameron FreakingBailey.
~Cam~
As I got back to my new office, my sore toe throbbed where the door had hit it, but the thoughts swirling around my head were the bigger distraction. What were the odds of running into Tonia here? Did she work here in this building? On this floor? The odds of it seemed astronomical.
She looked incredibly good today, I had to admit, and smelled just as good too. Shoot, why did she have to smell so good? She had always been just my type, before I even knew what a type was, and time had done nothing to change that. I’d been doing so well at putting her behind me, and I forced myself to put her out of my mind again as I said hello to Jason’s assistant. Marianne was her name, I believed. Everything here was still new, but this job was a huge opportunity for me, and I’d be damned if I let Tonia get in my head the way she usually did.
“Come on in, Cam,” Jason called out from his desk as he saw me in the doorway. “Just the guy I wanted to see.”
“Is that good news or bad news?” I joked as I walked in and took a seat across from him. Jason was a friend of a friend of a friend, which was how I found out about the job opening in his new company, and I couldn’t be more thrilled to get in on the ground floor of a new startup. I didn’t know a thing about oil; unlike some of my classmates in high school, I’d never worked on the rigs in the counties surrounding us. I did know finance, though, and Jason had been impressed enough that he hired me to oversee his new finance department.
Most people my age with my educational background were getting jobs in big banks or investment firms, starting out as small fish in a big pool, hoping that by the time they got to their 40s or 50s, they’d have swum their way to the top. Me, I wanted to start big, so I’d been looking for a small company that would take a risk on a guy like me, and Barnly Oil seemed like a perfect fit. The other members of the management team were almost all my age and we were all eager to work hard and make the business as much of a success as it could be.
Jason took it seriously too, which was why he’d hired this consultant to come in and make sure that we were all making the best use of our time. When one of the other guys on the team wondered if it wouldn’t be better to just use the time we were going to spend with this consultant on doing actual work, Jason quickly shut him down.
“This is an investment in our company, and in you. The time you spend now in learning how to organize yourself properly is going to pay off in the long run, and that’s what we’re all interested in: the big picture.”
None of us could argue with that.
“It’s nothing bad,” he assured me as I settled into the seat in front of his desk. “And maybe this is out of line, I don’t know, since I don’t know you all that well yet, but everyone who does know you says what a good guy you are, and, well, I could just use some impartial advice.”
He’d completely lost me. “Advice about what?”
“About a woman,” he admitted sheepishly, glancing over at the closed door as if to double check no one could overhear us.
I definitely hadn’t been expecting that, and I couldn’t imagine what he’d been told about me that made him think I would be the right one to come to with that kind of question. My track record with the opposite sex was hardly anything to write home about.
“A woman,” I repeated, trying to keep my voice free of any kind of judgement. “Is this business-related?”
“Well, that’s the issue. You see, she’s someone I’m going to be working with, and I don’t want to do anything that could come across as sleazy, especially since I’m kind of her boss.”
“You’re kind of everyone’s boss,” I reminded him, trying to put him at ease. He obviously felt a little uncomfortable talking to me about this, and although it surprised me that he’d chosen me to confide in, I took it as a good sign too. Being friendly with the boss was never a bad thing.
“Yeah, I guess I am,” he agreed, looking relieved at my response, which made me more confident that it had been the right thing to say. “This is all new to me, both being the boss and being interested in someone I work with. I just don’t want to screw it up, either with her or for the business. I need to set a good example, you know? Maybe I should just forget the whole thing, but she’s really kinda special.”
The plaintive expression on his face hit close to home; the poor guy had it bad.
“Well, because you’re the boss, it’s up to you to set the policy on workplace relationships,” I pointed out. “If you say it’s okay, then it’s okay, as long as you keep it professional while in the office.”
“I guess you’re right,” he agreed hopefully. “Now I just gotta figure out how to find out if she’s interested without coming across as a creep.”
That made me laugh. “I am definitely not the guy to help you with that.”
