Like a Boss (Accidentally Viral)

by Anne Harper

  “Something you’re probably going to despise more than the half hour we spent picking out your clothes.” Nell went to her purse and pulled out a stack of notecards. When Quinn saw them, his eyes widened.

  “You’re not seriously about to make me memorize notecards of information for a lunch, are you? May I remind you that we’re not in a movie or some spy thriller. You said she wanted to talk to me, right? Why can’t I just get to the point and ask her about her property?”

  Nell was all head shake.

  “She might have requested the boss, but that doesn’t mean you can just bowl her over the second your tush hits the seat. You still need to caress the situation. And, well, be on your best defense.”

  “My best defense?” he repeated. “What? Is she going to attack me?”

  Nell ignored the question and continued explaining the notecards.

  “I made these months ago because Mrs. McMurray is at all times two things: a shark and a shark who loves to be flattered. She’ll eat you up before the entrees even hit the table if you don’t watch out.” Nell tapped the small deck of cards. “This information is your lifeboat. Things to say, and not to say, to help soften her, to help sway her, and to help show her that we should be the ones to take care of the home she’s loved for years.” Nell pointed to herself and grinned. “And for the next hour, I will be the captain of this learning-to-suck-up voyage.”

  “And you’re sure you’re okay with me going instead of you?”

  Nell didn’t bother mincing her words.

  “I’d rather do it, because I know I can do it well, but she asked for you and didn’t budge on it.” Nell sighed. “Plus, right now the whole team needs this win. Not just me.”

  Quinn quieted at that.

  She still had no idea how Donavon was going to make his decision on who to offer Heart in Hand to but, without saying it, she was sure they were both thinking it came down to Mrs. McMurray. Who she liked or who she agreed to give Dweller’s Cove to. And, considering Quinn was the one about to dine with her, there was a good chance it could be him.

  Yet neither one of them said those words.

  Instead, Nell brought out another smile and went back to talking about wooing the older woman.

  “Now remember, one thing Mrs. McMurray loves more than being flattered is being flattered by a good-looking man. And you, Bestie, are a good-looking man. We just have to make sure that you say all the right things to go along with that good-looking…ness.”

  Quinn grumbled to his reflection, but Nell could have sworn she saw a hint of a smile.

  “You act like I’m a hopeless dud. Last time I was at a restaurant with a lady for lunch, I think I did an okay job.” He cut her a sly look. “Especially since she came in yelling and then left the place laughing.”

  There was the heat again. The off-limits feelings in Nell that often preceded a tingling in places that shouldn’t be tingling when they were on a timeline, among other issues.

  Was Quinn flirting?

  Was she?

  Nell couldn’t tell anymore. Or maybe she didn’t want to know the answer either way.

  “If that’s your best example of having game, let me remind you that you left that restaurant without follow-up plans, her number, or even the free picture of you two. Not exactly brag-worthy if you ask me.”

  That heat, in all of its shouldn’t-be-there glory, expanded at the way Quinn’s voice slid low in an answer. If one of the biggest challenges for their job wasn’t on the line, Nell might have said, fuck it.

  As it were, she bit the inside of her lip and hoped he didn’t see.

  “And yet look who’s standing in my house right now.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  Mrs. McMurray had pink hair, was wearing a blouse covered in cartoon giraffes, and asked Quinn if he’d ever had a threesome.

  All before she’d even sat down.

  Quinn, who had spent nearly the entire morning prepping for the lunch date, found that no amount of notecards or fun facts could have prepared him for the Southern Hurricane, a nickname Nell had mentioned that Mrs. McMurray had proudly worn for more than a decade.

  It was as apt a moniker as the woman was intimidating. At least, that had been Nell’s warning. Now, he supposed, he could see there was some truth to it.

  “Have I ever had a threesome?” Quinn repeated the question as he pulled out the chair opposite him. The restaurant around them was filled with the Saturday lunch crowd, but no one near them turned at the second mention of a threesome. Mrs. McMurray sat down and allowed him to position her back in place.

  She was annoyed already.

  “I’m the one with hearing aids, not you. I want an answer, not a sounding board. If I wanted that I’d go talk to my late husband’s gravestone.” She shrugged with nonchalance. “Although why I’d ask him if he’d had a threesome, I don’t know. I lived with the fool for forty years and the raciest thing he ever did was go commando after I forgot to do the laundry one time. Even then he raised hell about it for a month. Bless his heart.”

  Quinn decided a few things right then and there.

  For one, Mrs. McMurray was like Nell. She’d taken what should have been a normal greeting and somehow gotten them all the way to her late husband going Commando. All within the space of a few breaths.

  For two, Nell hadn’t been pulling his leg or exaggerating about his lunch date. She’d been right to be fussy about his preparation. Mrs. Pink Hair and Threesomes wasn’t like most southern women he’d met. At least not based on the first few seconds of meeting her.

  For three—and this was the big bam boom for Quinn—he decided he was completely and utterly out of his depth.

  Which was going to make for a very interesting lunch date, even with Nell’s advice from earlier floating around in his head.

  “She talks fast, shoots low, and blows in like Hell is on her heels. You can’t just hunker down and take it, though. You’re going to have to dish out some of what she’s serving right back to her if you want her respect. You get her respect, we can get Dweller’s Cove.”

  And to think Quinn had rolled his eyes at the advice.

  He took his seat and smoothed out the thighs of his slacks.

  “I’ll be honest, I don’t think it’s polite to kiss and tell,” he said. “But since I haven’t done that deed, I guess it wouldn’t hurt to say. No threesomes, or more-somes, here.”

  Mrs. McMurray narrowed her eyes. She scanned him like the TSA at the airport. After another pass she stopped for a spell at his hair. If Nell hadn’t already warned him that Mrs. McMurray liked to “scroll” over a person one good time before deciding if she wanted to keep on talking, he would have said something. Instead he gave her an even stare until she started up again.

  “I like your hair. I can tell you took the time and put in the effort. I like that. I like your answer, too. About the kissing and telling. You should never do it without the other person’s, or persons’, consent. It just don’t look good on you to blab.”

  Quinn smiled, relieved he’d passed the first test.

  Take that, shark or hurricane or whatever the seventy-year-old across from him was.

  “Thank you,” he said. “And agreed.”

  The waitress came by with a lot more hustle than before. She knew his lunch date, that was for sure, and fussed over Mrs. McMurray while barely giving him a glance. Once they’d ordered, the waitress looked a bit relieved herself that her job was done.

  Quinn envied her leaving when Professor Umbridge had her attention back on him.

  “So, Quinn Hannigan. Let’s have a frank conversation.” She leaned in and propped her chin up on her hand. If her icebreaker was any indication of what she was going to say next, he was in for a wild ride. “I’ve known Donavon Robertson since he was a kid, which I know dates me. In fact, I babysat him a time or two during my
youth. The little shit. As an aging billionaire, he isn’t that bad, but I still don’t like him the way I don’t like mushrooms—he’s fine with others around him but one-on-one I’m not a fan.”

  She didn’t give him a breath to comment and kept on.

  “Tallahassee and Jones are good enough people, though I can’t say I’ve spent much time with them. They’re kind of like those toffee candies all old ladies are supposed to carry around in their purses. Sweet, solid, but too much and I’ve got a stomach ache.” She moved her hand off her chin and held up an index finger. Her nails were bloodred. Another apt detail for the woman. “But then there’s Antonella. See, unlike the others, she’s been working me for about half a year now because she knew I was getting ready to leave.”

  “I don’t think she’s been working you,” Quinn tried to defend.

  Mrs. McMurray waved him off.

  “I like a woman who knows what she wants and goes full-steam ahead for it. I actually wouldn’t respect Heart in Hand at all if it wasn’t for her hovering around me every chance she got during the last several months. There’s almost a grace to what she’s done. I mean, she came to a dang debutant pageant just to be around me. Do you know how godawful boring those things are?”

  Quinn started when he realized she was looking for an actual answer and not just giving a rhetorical question.

  Nell’s advice went through his head with insistence.

  “Be relatable. If you get a chance to tell a story, you take it. No matter how small.”

  “If it’s anything like being forced to watch the last half of a first-grade spelling bee that your kid got disqualified from, I can sympathize.”

  Mrs. McMurray’s eyebrow rose in question. It was thin and, dare he think it, painted on.

  “Sympathies on having a child, but I’m going to need to know why they were disqualified before I continue with what I was saying.”

  Quinn sighed. The same sigh he’d given his ex-wife before he’d broken the news to her back when it had first happened.

  “One of the kids teased my son about his parents divorcing so he used his mic time to say that Jeremy Bowling smells like butts. Then he spelled out the word ‘butts.’ While shaking his.” Quinn held back the detail that Owen had also made a very unflattering noise before the emcee could awkwardly laugh and remove him from the stage.

  And that Quinn had had to do everything he could not to laugh his own butt off in the audience.

  “I take it back,” Mrs. McMurray said. “If you have to have one, that actually sounds like a pretty good kid.”

  “A pretty good kid who has been banned from all future spelling bees.”

  Mrs. McMurray shrugged. “But now everyone knows that Jeremy Bowling smells like butts. Sounds like a win to me.”

  Quinn smirked. He wasn’t going to argue with that. His ex-wife, however, would. But, like he’d told Nell, he wasn’t in the ex-bashing game, so he let his lunch date continue her earlier thoughts.

  “My point is, Antonella’s persistence at being persistent without being an annoyance scores her top marks. Which I’ve always liked. However, that doesn’t mean that I know her or the others all that well. But I really don’t know you, Mr. Hannigan. So I’m going to kill two birds with one conversational stone.” She leaned forward on her elbows and domed her fingers together on the tabletop like some villain about to unleash her big speech.

  Did that make him the hero?

  Or was he the hapless background character who got crushed by a piano falling out of a second-story window?

  He preferred neither.

  Mrs. McMurray squared up.

  Quinn couldn’t help but stiffen a little in his seat.

  “How long have you worked at Heart in Hand?”

  “Almost a month now.”

  “And in that period you’ve spent a good amount of time with Donavon, Jones, Tallahassee, and Antonella?”

  He nodded.

  “During work hours, yes. Sometimes outside of work.”

  She nodded and did another upper-body scan. Her gaze was a bit slower on the rise this time.

  Screw a shark or hurricane, Quinn felt like he was seated across from a snake with flamingo-colored hair.

  And then she struck.

  “Good. Then you won’t mind if I quiz you on them.”

  “Come again?”

  Mrs. McMurray rolled her eyes. “I don’t work with people who don’t act like good people. That goes double for the person in charge,” she said. “If you care about the folks who you work with, then that means they’re probably happy. People seem to care a lot more about what they’re doing when they’re happy. If all of you are smiling, then I’m hoping you’ll care a lot more about taking care of my baby while I’m gone.”

  “And you’ll know if we’re happy if you quiz me on my employees?”

  Quinn didn’t like that at all.

  “You just said you’ve been in Arbor Bay for almost a month.” She smiled. It wasn’t entirely nice. “That’s plenty of time to get to know the people you see almost every day, especially in a town this small. If you can prove to me that you’re not some businessman looking to make a buck and you actually give a damn, then I’m all in. It’s that simple.”

  That didn’t sound simple to him at all.

  “So, Mr. Hannigan, who should we start with first?”

  “Remember, her nickname is the Southern Hurricane. If you insult her or disrespect her she’ll blow into town with a sea at her back and destruction in her wake. Don’t poke the hurricane, Quinn.”

  Quinn shifted in his seat. He felt the smile on his lips but knew it must have looked strained.

  Who did he know the best?

  Honest to God, he thought he could hear the Jeopardy! theme song playing in the background.

  “I know Donavon pretty well. Since he’s the owner, we could start with him,” Quinn said, finally finding his words. He also found the gaze of their waitress over Mrs. McMurray’s shoulder. She had their drinks on a tray and was on her way over.

  Maybe he could get her to spill them onto his date. Buy him some time to try and remember the very limited information he’d learned about his coworkers since he’d been at Heart in Hand.

  Because that’s what he had.

  An acquaintance level of knowledge on two of the three people he saw almost every day. And he doubted him knowing that the third person’s kiss tasted a bit like cinnamon was going to be on Mrs. McMurray’s quiz.

  “Oh, I know enough about him already,” she replied with a sigh. “Remember? He’s like mushrooms to me. No. I don’t want to talk about him. Why don’t we start with…Antonella instead? Since she’s the one, I’m assuming, who roped you into this meal in the first place.”

  “She goes by Nell.”

  Mrs. McMurray smiled.

  “See, we’re already on the right track.”

  Quinn readjusted in his seat again.

  “Here are your drinks!”

  The waitress swooped in, more chipper than before. It distracted Mrs. McMurray from her question as she fussed over situating her tea and lemon.

  Which was the perfect time for the waitress to pass Quinn his sweet tea and a napkin that had “Check your phone” written on it in marker.

  What is this lunch?

  Quinn took the napkin and quietly balled it up onto his lap. The waitress kept smiling like it hurt and assured them that their food would be on the way soon. Then she was gone like she hadn’t just slipped him a covert message.

  Mrs. McMurray was still focused on her drink. She didn’t notice him follow the napkin’s instructions.

  “I know I’m judgy about a lot of things, but I must say their sweet tea is so good, I’d bathe in it.”

  Quinn made an uh-huh noise and slid his phone from his blazer pocket. He had three unread t
exts.

  All were from Nell.

  The most recent one was as strange as his lunch date.

  Go to the bathroom!

  This couldn’t be good.

  Quinn pushed his chair back and stood, smiling.

  “If you’ll excuse me for a minute, I need to go to the restroom.”

  Mrs. McMurray waved him on.

  “Better go ahead,” she said. “Empty the tank now before we get into the nitty gritty of if you’re a decent man or not.”

  Quinn nodded, as if that was a normal thing to say to someone you just met, and went in the direction of the bathroom.

  There, at the back of the restaurant and out of the sightline of Mrs. McMurray, Quinn ran right into Jones standing outside of the men’s bathroom. The moment he saw Quinn, he motioned to the door, but not without a caveat.

  “Let it be known, I support the plan you’re about to hear but fully expect it to fail spectacularly.”

  “What plan?”

  Jones shook his head.

  “Somehow they always sound a little bit better from her mouth, so go on in. I’ll stay out here and pretend there’s a line so no one interrupts.”

  Baffled was an understatement, but Quinn followed the rabbit down the rabbit hole. He hurried into the single-occupancy bathroom and was met by none other than Nell Bennett herself.

  Why am I not surprised?

  She’d switched her ballcap for a hair band, her T-shirt and jeans for a blouse and skirt, and had a hand on her hip in total exasperation.

  “It’s about time!”

  Chapter Eighteen

  “I don’t want to know.”

  Quinn held his hands up in surrender. He’d spent the last week thinking that maybe he’d gotten used to Nell’s woo-woo ways. Yet now, standing in the men’s bathroom of a fancy establishment that was holding a good portion of Arbor Bay’s lunch community, he decided being used to shenanigans wasn’t the same as accepting them as something normal in his life.

  Nell, however, didn’t care.

  “Well, you’re going to know because I can tell you’re stressed and this will help you not be stressed.” She pulled a small ring box out of her purse. For one wild moment Quinn thought she was going to get down on one knee and blow their professional relationship out of the water. Instead she pulled out something that was most definitely not a ring.