Daddy's Best Friend (Forbidden Temptations)

by Sofia T Summers

  “Why? What was the idea?”

  “I, well. I think I’m new and Eliza’s not open to different ideas. She’s got her plan and she’s sticking to it, that’s all. It happens.” I finished up my copying. “I think I’ve got a good idea, though, and it’s just frustrating that she won’t give it a chance. That’s all.”

  “Tell me what your idea is,” Andrew said. “I’m curious now.”

  Well, I didn’t see the harm in explaining it to him briefly. I didn’t do a whole elaborate pitch, just explained the concept and some of the ideas I had related to it. Andrew listened attentively the whole time, nodding along, occasionally asking questions. The contrast between the way he listened, and the way Eliza barely tolerated my presentation was sharp. If nothing else, I was glad that there was at least one person around here who seemed to genuinely give me the time of day.

  “I think you’re right and you’ve got a really good idea here,” Andrew told me. “I admit I’ve been a bit worried about the marketing department. They haven’t come up with anything new in years, the whole ‘if it ain’t broke don’t fix it’ methodology.” He smiled. “And the lack of employees didn’t help. I know start-ups like to stay small and there’s a fear of selling out if you get too big, but just two people this whole time is ridiculous. Anyway. Keep working on your campaign.”

  “That’s sweet of you to say, but I can’t. I’ll have to turn my attention to the campaign that Eliza’s doing. She’s the department head and I can’t devote my work time to something she didn’t give the green light on.”

  “Mm.” Andrew winked at me, and then left without a word.

  Okay, that exit was weird. What was that wink supposed to mean?

  I wasn’t sure, but at least there was someone here willing to listen to me. It felt like Andrew was on the same page as me about the marketing department. Maybe at some point I would get a chance to enact the changes that I wanted to here.

  7

  John

  I was in the middle of an important phone call with a potential distributor when my office door flew open.

  “…Jake?” I said on the phone. “I’m going to have to call you back.”

  I hung up as Eliza stormed in and slammed a piece of paper down onto my desk. “Here’s my letter of resignation.”

  “What?” I stared up at her in total confusion. “Eliza, what’s brought this on?”

  I’d never seen her so upset. Her face was bright red, she looked like she might faint.

  “Sit down, sip some water, tell me about it.”

  “I don’t need to calm down, John,” Eliza snapped. “You need to tell Garrett to stop spoiling that brat of his.”

  “Wow, okay, that’s really strong and uncalled for language and I’m going to need you to take some deep breaths.” I got up from my desk and walked over to the door, closing it. “What are you talking about?”

  “I’m talking about the fact that Garrett’s daughter is throwing her weight around. I’m not going to stand for it, John. I won’t work for nepotism. I knew the second that girl walked in that she was going to be trouble, the kids of the company owners never do shit, but this is ridiculous.”

  “Okay,” I said, keeping my voice low and calm. “How did she cause trouble and throw her weight around?”

  “It’s in my letter,” Eliza said. “My direction for the marketing campaign, for our new launch, was changed at Andrew’s orders—to what Little Miss Greene had wanted us to do instead. Garrett must think I’m an idiot if I don’t realize that he told Andrew to do this. She went crying to Daddy because I didn’t like her ideas, and it’s bullshit.”

  “That doesn’t sound like Garrett,” I told Eliza. “He didn’t even want Izzi to work at this company, I doubt he would’ve changed such a big thing around just because she asked him to. But I’ll talk to everyone and get this sorted.”

  “Are you not accepting my letter of resignation?” Eliza sounded indignant.

  “You’re welcome to resign, Eliza, I can’t stop you. But I will be figuring out exactly what happened, and you can expect a call or meeting with me to discuss this.” I made my voice firm, the kind of tone that I unfortunately sometimes had to get with my employees to remind them without directly saying so that I was the boss and meant business. “We’re sorting this out, whether you resign or not, and I’ll expect your cooperation. Understood?”

  I didn’t have to add the or else. If Eliza left in a huff, claiming this that or the other thing, we could be in trouble. We didn’t want to lose our reputation because people thought Garrett was letting his kid do whatever she wanted with our company. But that reputation went both ways—if Eliza dragged us through the mud without proof, then we could do the same to her. I didn’t want to do that, but I had created this company from nothing with my best friend and I wasn’t going to let anyone fuck with it.

  Not even Izzi, if she really had gone crying to Garrett.

  Eliza, understandably, agreed to let me keep in touch with her. I sent her on her way with the promise to resolve this by the end of the day, emailed both Andrew and Garrett to tell them to make time for me, and then I went to the marketing department straight away.

  Izzi was there alone. I wasn’t sure where Ben was, possibly out on lunch, but I was glad for it. I didn’t want anyone to overhear this and make it an even bigger mess than before.

  She seemed to be in the middle of some project or other. I cleared my throat and Izzi jumped, swiveling around in her chair to look at me.

  Fuck, she was gorgeous as ever. Her hair was pulled half-back so that it was out of her face, but her thick curls still tumbled freely down her back. Her makeup was very simple, just enough to smooth over her face and make her look professional and polished for work, but nothing that detracted from her natural looks. She wore a light green dress today that was just curve-hugging enough to have me thinking horribly inappropriate thoughts.

  “John!” Izzi smiled at me, surprised. “What brings you down here? I was starting to think you were a ghost with how much I saw you.”

  Yeah, that had been on purpose. I’d been avoiding her actively, for the very reason that I was now having to deal with—I wanted to bend her over her desk and fuck her until she couldn’t even remember her name. It wasn’t right of me and it wasn’t fair to her, so my best option was just to keep my distance.

  I could see how well that was turning out.

  “I’m sorry to bother you,” I told her, keeping my tone firm and just hard enough that she would know that this was extremely serious. “But I wanted to talk to you about Eliza. You really upset her, Izzi.”

  “What?” Izzi stared at me. “Why? How? What did I do? If I made her upset then she should’ve come to me about it, not you. I don’t appreciate her going to a higher-up to complain about her own employee, surely she knows how to call me into her office and discuss this with me.”

  “Funny you should say that, because she feels you did the same thing to her.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  Izzi looked genuinely confused. Hmm.

  “Eliza resigned,” I told her. “Because you had your father intervene on the marketing strategy for our new launch.”

  Izzi’s mouth fell open. “What are you talking about!? I would never go behind anyone’s back, especially not to Dad. He didn’t even want to hire me, he’s sure as hell not going to let me complain to him about a decision I don’t agree with. I never spoke to him about my ideas for the campaign, or what Eliza’s ideas were.”

  She did seem genuinely upset and puzzled. “Well then, how could this have happened? Eliza said that Andrew told her the department was switching to your plan instead of doing hers, and she felt it was obvious that Garrett had told Andrew to make this decision.”

  “If Dad told Andrew to do anything then I didn’t know about it,” Izzi replied. “And Andrew’s perfectly capable of making decisions on his own. Did he say that Dad told him to do this? Because if not, then I think Eliza’s
jumping to conclusions.”

  “But Andrew did give that order.”

  “That is my fault,” Izzi admitted. “Andrew saw that I was frustrated and asked me what was going on. I told him about how I presented my idea to Eliza and she pretended to listen to me for a few minutes before telling me that we were going with her idea. I was just blowing off steam and commiserating. I didn’t think he’d do anything about it.”

  She more she talked, the more upset she got. She seemed very earnest, and I wanted to believe her. Partly because while it had been a few years, the Izzi that I had seen growing up wouldn’t have done something like this, and partly because Garrett had made it clear in his interview with her that he wasn’t keen on the idea of having her work for him. Why would he make such an about-face to spoiling her and letting her do whatever she wanted when he hadn’t even listened to her ideas until I’d intervened?

  “Okay, okay.” I held up a hand. “Deep breaths, it’s going to be okay. I’m going to have a meeting with Garrett and Andrew to discuss this, and we’re going to handle this.”

  “I’m sorry,” Izzi said. She sounded miserable. “I shouldn’t have said anything to him, I didn’t realize…”

  “Well, part of this is on Eliza, if she jumped to the conclusion that you’d done this with no evidence to back it up. So, we’ll find out what happened and I’ll be talking with everyone involved.”

  Izzi nodded. I couldn’t resist—I rested my hand over hers. I wanted to comfort her while she was clearly down, and I didn’t want her to think that I was angry with her. I wasn’t. This just seemed to be a case where someone—Eliza—had made an assumption and found the first opportunity to see that assumption proven right—based on a well-meaning mistake that Izzi had made.

  “You’re new to this,” I assured her. “You’re going to figure out how it works. You made a mistake, and that’s okay. It wasn’t done out of mal intent and that’s what matters. We’re going to fix this.”

  “Should I apologize to Eliza?” Izzi asked.

  I realized I still had my hand on hers and retreated. Her skin was so warm, my hand tingled from where we’d been touching.

  “We’ll see how this meeting goes and I’ll keep you informed,” I told her. She probably would have to apologize to Eliza no matter what, but first I wanted to see just how much apologizing would need to be done.

  Izzi nodded, biting her lip with nerves. My stomach went tight with heat. I wanted to bite that lip for her.

  Jesus Christ, I had to get it together.

  I left Izzi and went to deal with Andrew and Garrett at our meeting. I showed them the resignation letter, and explained what had happened. On my way there, I got the news from my secretary that Ben had also quit in solidarity with Eliza. God only knew what Eliza had told him, or what he thought he knew. This was getting out of hand and I had to stop this train before it derailed any further.

  Andrew and Garrett both listened in silence as I explained everything.

  “Now, Izzi’s a good person and I don’t think she’d do something like this, but I can’t go just on faith and I especially can’t go off the fact that I’ve known her while she was growing up, that’ll just make the nepotism accusations worse, so.” I looked from one man to the other. “What happened.”

  “This is the first I’m hearing about this,” Garrett said. “Izzi didn’t come to me and neither did Andrew.”

  “I felt that it was my job as department head to make such a decision,” Andrew said. “Should I consult you next time, sir?”

  “No, no, you were within your rights.”

  “I thought Izzi’s idea was better, period,” Andrew told me firmly. “This didn’t have anything to do with Garrett, he didn’t know and I didn’t go to him. If Izzi went to him about it, I wasn’t there for it. I didn’t know about it. I’ve been concerned with the old blood in this company for a while, no offense to either of you, and I think that Izzi’s idea is the kind of new approach that we need.”

  “And what is Izzi’s approach?” I asked. Partly because I needed to hear him defend it to see if he was being serious about it being better, and partly because I was genuinely curious at this point.

  “She talked about how conventional marketing and advertising isn’t going to work with millennials and Gen Z, which are the two demographics that we really want to hit hard to make lifetime customers out of them. She said that the younger generation is completely disillusioned by capitalism and they won’t appreciate marketing that tries to relate to them or tries to be cool. They know that we’re all trying to sell them something, so it’s better to just be honest about it.

  “She wants us to focus on our product’s durability and long life, and on our good warranty policies. A lot of tech companies have cornered the market and then made products that will break after so long and you have to buy a new one, or the item can’t handle the upgrades to software so they have to be cycled out for new ones. People hate that. She wants us to focus our campaign on valuing good craftmanship that lasts, that isn’t designed in the ‘fast fashion’ style.

  “And we can get older buyers that way, because we’ll be doing a return to old-fashioned values with creating things that were really built to last and not something that is just to be consumed and then replaced. We’ll be appealing across all demographics. People like the new shiny thing, yeah, but more than that, they like it when people are honest and upfront with them. We’ll be building trust and showing how our brand is better and different than everyone else’s.”

  I had to admit that was a really good idea. It grasped the psychology of the younger generation spot on, and as someone who’d grown up listening to his dad bemoan the loss of the ‘good old days’ when ‘people knew how to make things of quality’, I was sure that it would tap into the needs of older people as well.

  “Izzi basically explained that people know they’re being sold something, so they want companies to at least be upfront about it. An honest deal is better to them than one where the company’s trying to be fun and cool and act like they don’t want anything from us. People are cynical now, they know the score, they just want a fair deal out of it. So, let’s give them that. Show them who we are.” Andrew smiled. “I think that’s really great.”

  “I agree that it’s good,” Garrett said. He sounded surprised. “And it will help that this launch is the first we’ve done in about ten years. It boosts the idea that we aren’t going to just roll out a new product every year that you have to buy in order to seem cool.”

  “People will always need reliable tech and software in this modern world,” Andrew said. “And they hate the feeling that they’re being played. We can take advantage of both those things. You see? I was right to pick Izzi’s idea. If Eliza doesn’t like it, that’s on her. I’m not here to play favorites and to go with Eliza’s ideas just because Eliza’s been here longer would be the same nepotism that she’s accusing us of.”

  Andrew had a point, but I couldn’t help but notice the way he kept smiling at Garrett and casting looks Garrett’s way to make sure Garrett was paying attention to him.

  Hmm. Was Andrew really doing this just because Izzi’s idea was better? It was a great idea and I wasn’t denying that. I was glad that we were running with it. And Andrew was also right that it was his job to step in and make choices like this if he wanted to, and to ignore a better idea in favor of a bad idea by a person who’d been in the company longer was, indeed, a form of nepotism.

  But I’d been wary of Andrew since we’d hired him. He was a great guy, sometimes—too great. He used to find excuses to come to Garrett about everything, talking about how he just wanted to really learn and make sure Garrett didn’t feel like a young upstart as trying to run the company without him. Garrett had been flattered and grateful but I’d always wondered what Andrew’s game was. His behavior was just enough that I couldn’t accuse him of anything but it made me question his motives with this Izzi thing.

  Was Andrew really doing this
just because Izzi’s idea was better? Or was he doing this because she was Garrett’s daughter and he wanted to get in good with Garrett? Andrew was young, hungry, and ambitious. He’d already climbed the ladder to a position that was only one or two rungs away from Garrett and me. I had to wonder if he was as altruistic as he was trying to make himself seem.

  Of course—there was the obvious answer, the one that I hadn’t considered until just now.

  Andrew was young. Izzi was young. Andrew was twenty-eight so there was a seven-year difference but I was the last person to be judging that right now seeing as I was lusting after Izzi pretty hard myself.

  Was it not that Andrew wanted to score with Garrett and more that he wanted to score—in another way—with Izzi? That he wanted to impress her by helping her with this proposal and get her to date him that way?

  Jealousy sparked in my veins and ran through me like that long string of powder that led to a dynamite keg in all of those old cartoons. The idea of Izzi going out with someone else, anyone else, even someone who seemed like a fairly good guy like Andrew… it had me clenching my hands into fists.

  I took a few deep breaths to stay calm. There was no way that Andrew or Garrett could see me like this. And there was no reason for me to be jealous in the first place. Izzi was too young for me, she was my best friend’s daughter, she was off limits in every way.

  Either way, whatever his motivations were, I was going to keep an eye on Andrew from now on.

  “Sounds to me like Eliza jumped to a conclusion,” I said. “I’m going to be calling her and talking with her about this—Andrew, you should be on that call with me. I’ll have Izzi write Eliza an apology for inadvertently going behind her back, and I’m sure she’s learned her lesson about talking to others.”

  Andrew opened his mouth to say something, but I leveled him with a firm look. “You should have talked to Eliza in person about this and made it clear how you came to know about Izzi’s ideas and what your reasoning is. You made a good choice but in the process you made it look like our CEO is running his company poorly, and you made Izzi look like a spoiled brat. You have to clean up that mess.”