“I never met your father, but I do know this. What he did wasn’t business. It was despicable, and you are nothing like him. You’re a good man, Connor.”
Need built in his chest, and he pulled her in close, unable to resist. “Yeah? How good?”
She let him kiss her thoroughly before murmuring, “So good.”
The seriousness of the moment faded back, and Connor kissed her again. He didn’t know how long this thing between them would last, or what it even was. But right now, he felt better than he had in…fuck, he didn’t even know how long, and he wasn’t about to waste it.
Wrapping his hands over her hips, he lifted Harlow with ease, a bolt of want kicking through him when she wrapped her legs around his waist and laughed.
“What are you doing?” she asked, and he answered her with a dirty, delicious grin.
“You’re not using your kitchen to its maximum potential, sweetheart. Now come let me show you what this island is really for.”
20
Harlow made it all the way to lunch on Monday before she admitted that the old “don’t mix business and pleasure” adage might just be a flaming crock of shit.
Yes, a lot of the pleasure part had been the otherworldly sex she and Connor had shared over the weekend (so. Many. Times. The man had some serious stamina, not to mention a ridiculously talented tongue). But that hadn’t been all that had tapped Harlow’s emotions. There had also been the shocking apology he’d given up for not being more forthcoming with her before the press conference, then the even more shocking truths he’d revealed about his father.
It had taken every last scrap of Harlow’s restraint to keep her emotions from parading over her face as Connor had told her why he’d abruptly left Remington after Duke had been indicted, and why he’d come back when he’d retired from the Air Force. He’d clearly been holding the story inside for years, and even though he had dozens of friends—some of them as close as family—who he could’ve chosen as a sounding board, he hadn’t.
Instead, he’d opened up to her. He’d trusted her.
And that had felt even better than the otherworldly sex.
Harlow lowered the cardboard-style turkey sandwich she’d grabbed from the hospital’s cafeteria to the takeout container on her desk, finally giving in to the temptation to replay the weekend in all its glorious, laid-back detail. She and Connor had spent every minute of yesterday together, with the exception of him taking a quick trip to his apartment for a shower and a change of clothes. They’d gone out to lunch—that Asian fusion place Natalie and Charlie had raved about really was good—then gone back to her place, where she had eventually given him that tour, then they’d settled in to binge watch old episodes of Grey’s Anatomy. Afternoon had slipped into evening, then evening into night and Connor back into her bed. By the time morning had arrived, and the work week along with it, they’d simply fallen back into business as usual, with Connor bringing her breakfast and her reviewing the agenda for today’s board meeting with him. They worked together as they had for the past week, disagreeing in philosophy but still compromising enough to make progress, and Harlow had to admit it.
Connor might still be reluctant to believe that business was important, but if they kept this up, they might just have a shot at getting the clinic running the way it was meant to.
The way her mother would’ve wanted it to.
“I hope that smile is for the update you’ll be presenting at today’s board meeting,” came a familiar voice from the doorway, and Harlow nearly jumped out of her skin.
“Dad!” Schooling her expression to get rid of both her grin and the shock that had chased it, she arranged her features into a polite smile. Damn it, how had she let so much emotion rise to the surface, where anyone could plainly see it? “I wasn’t expecting to see you here today.”
“I thought I’d come to surprise you and see how things are going for myself.”
The reply was smooth enough, Harlow thought as she rose to usher him into the office. But her father was far too calculating for things like surprises. For God’s sake, he didn’t even roll out of bed without a business plan for how to get his feet from the carpet to the coffeepot.
Her belly tightened. “If I’d known you were coming, I would’ve met you out front.”
Okay, so maybe the rare showing of pique wasn’t a spectacular idea, especially since the lift of her father’s brows showed that it had made a direct hit. But if he wanted to know whether or not she was prepared for the board meeting, he could just ask rather than springing a “surprise” visit on her.
“That’s quite alright,” he said, coming in, but not sitting in the chair across from her (cluttered…damn it, she knew she should’ve tidied at least some of this mess up) desk. “The woman at the front, Miss...”
Shit. Harlow scrambled for Macie’s last name for a full three seconds before striking gold. “Hall. But we don’t really stand on too much ceremony here unless we’re addressing the doctors in front of their patients, so she goes by Macie.”
“I see,” her father allowed past pursed lips. “Well, Miss Hall told me you were here and that I should just come back. Interesting protocol, but I found my way well enough.”
Harlow bit the inside of her cheek to force herself to select her words with care. “Macie knows who you are. She’d never have let you past the desk if she didn’t.” In fact, she’d probably been trying to show Harlow’s father a courtesy by telling him to come on back, welcoming him in the way she did all of the staff. “But she can’t leave the intake desk in case an emergency comes in, so she was following protocol.”
Her father nodded, seeming to accept the explanation, although it took a beat or two to get there. “Things seem to be running at least a bit more smoothly in the waiting room than the last time I was here. I take it you’re making progress?”
“Some,” Harlow said. Always lead with the good. “The staff training went incredibly well, and we were able to proceed without making any cuts.”
“Hmm. And how did that affect the budget?”
A legitimate question, but one that made her stomach clench nonetheless. “The budget is still a bit complicated, but I’ll be reviewing some of our options for changes at the board meeting.”
The budget had been the most challenging component of this contract by far, and the fact that she and Connor hadn’t made any staffing cuts didn’t help. The overhead and operating costs were challenging enough to juggle on their own. Compounded by how grossly mismanaged the clinic had been for the nine months it had been running before Harlow had gotten her hands on it only hammered home the number-one rule when it came to managing money.
Getting into debt was far freaking easier than getting out.
This was not, as it so happened, a rule that was lost on her father. “Options are different than results,” he pointed out. “The numbers are still quite underwhelming.”
“The numbers were a dumpster fire when the hospital hired us,” she reminded him. Her predecessor had made a career out of spending money the clinic hadn’t yet made. “In fact, the numbers are a large part of why the hospital hired us.”
“Which is a large part of why I chose you for the job,” her father replied. “You’re usually excellent at strategizing budgets and righting the financial side of a business that’s operating at a loss,” he said, his tone all but emphasizing the fact that “usually” didn’t include now.
It stung, because damn it, he wasn’t wrong.
“I can assure you that I’m doing all that I can to work through what’s here and find ways to get the clinic back on track financially,” Harlow said quietly, so she wouldn’t scream. “But the numbers are a lot worse than we’d originally thought, and I don’t have a magic wand. Fixing the finances will take more than a few weeks.”
“You’ve already had a few weeks to start making progress. Nearly four of them, to be exact. I understand that the time constraints are a bit unorthodox—”
“Nearly i
mpossible would be more accurate,” Harlow said, but her father countered by showing her just how honestly she came by her mettle.
“And yet I’ve seen you manage contracts with just as many challenges before. I realize that this is a difficult contract, Harlow, and can appreciate the effort you’ve invested. But we are running out of time. The clinic can only operate at a loss this big for so long before we won’t have a choice but to close the doors.”
Her dread swirled in her chest, becoming so strong that it felt like an actual presence, sitting there on her shoulder, whispering insidious little reminders of everything that was at stake. Her reputation. Her father’s opinion of her.
The clinic named after her mother, who she missed so much, it hurt.
No. “That’s not going to happen.”
Harlow might not know how she’d get out of this, but she was too determined not to find some way to get this job done. The clinic could not fail.
For a moment, her father remained quiet, studying her with a look on his face that she couldn’t be sure she’d ever seen before, let alone translate. Then he smiled, as well-mannered as ever, and said, “I certainly hope you’re right. But for the time being, why don’t you let me take you to a proper lunch so we can catch up? After all, a person can’t survive on takeout alone.”
With the tension broken—at least, for now—she looked at the ho-hum sandwich on her desk, and ugh, he was right about that.
“Lunch sounds lovely. Just let me get my coat.”
Harlow forced her feet beneath her and her determination into place. She and Connor had made some progress over the last few weeks. They were both dedicated to making the clinic successful.
Now all they had to do was step up their game.
Being in the Air Force had honed Connor’s instincts into a precision instrument, and his four years as a nurse had kept those instincts scalpel sharp. So it went without saying that even though Harlow had told him that Monday’s board meeting had gone “as expected”, the thing had surely been a shit show. He had access to their budgets, same as she did, even though the task of balancing them fell largely under her umbrella—at least, for now.
Plus, Connor had sat down and strategized with her enough times over the past couple of weeks to know they were still operating at a not-small loss, despite how hard she’d been working to turn things around. In fact, other than a quick couple of hours mid-week when he’d all but forcibly carried her from the building so he could make her some dinner and hide her laptop for at least one night, he hadn’t seen her at all outside of work.
And damn it, even though he knew it was dangerous, he missed her.
“Hey,” Connor said, sticking his head into the office, where Harlow had become a near-permanent fixture behind her desk. He must be rubbing off on her—either that, or she’d caved in to the fact that it was Saturday and had taken a casual approach to celebrate. The long gray sweater hugging her curves was bad (good?) enough, but her black leggings and knee-high boots were surely designed to kill him slowly, if not give him a socially unacceptable and equally permanent hard-on.
But then Harlow looked up, revealing a tired smile and a set of shadows beneath her eyes, and Connor’s gut made a move that defied description.
“Whoa. You look…”
“Like I’ve had the longest week of my life?” she supplied, a lock of hair breaking free from the soft knot at the nape of her neck as she took off her glasses to rub her temples.
Connor took a lightning-fast look over his shoulder to be sure the coast was clear before moving to tuck it back behind her ear. “Like you’ve been working really hard.” He gestured to the work spread over the desk in front of her. “You know we’re going to get there, right? We’ve already come too far not to.”
Harlow’s smile was weary, but man, it still threatened to wreck him. “You always see the glass as half full, don’t you?”
Ah, he loved it when the questions had easy answers. “Yes, ma’am. That’s because it is half full.”
“I wish I shared your enthusiasm.”
“Why don’t you share the workload to help get you there?” Connor asked, and Harlow let out a shocked pop of laughter.
“What do you mean?”
He slipped behind her and sat down in his desk chair. One of these days, he was going to get his head around the fact that camaraderie was a foreign concept for her, but today? So not his day. “We’re a team, right? Me and you? So, let me help you.”
Harlow’s brows lifted, but she didn’t protest. Much, anyway. “Unfortunately, I’m not sure I can be helped. I feel like I’ve gone over all the possible strategies to right-side the budget a thousand times. If we cut staffing, we’ll have to cut services, and that hurts our productivity and our bottom line.”
“Not to mention it leaves people without the health care they need,” Connor said, his chest tightening beneath his scrubs.
“Exactly,” Harlow agreed. “Thanks to the staff training, we’re operating more efficiently, which is good. But we’re still not covering our overhead, and it’s not as if those costs are negotiable.”
Shit, she was right. The electric company didn’t exactly haggle. “I can take another look at the inventory budget, but we’ve cut pretty much every corner we can without sacrificing quality care.” He’d even negotiated a new agreement with their biggest medical supplier to get the lowest prices possible.
She shook her head with more resignation than argument. “Even if we catch up on operating costs—which, in theory, we could do within about six months if all goes according to plan—the debt we inherited puts us so far in the hole that we might as well be bailing out the Titanic with a pair of thimbles. The smaller changes won’t be enough to fix that with the time we have—or, more to the point, don’t have. What we really need is a large influx of cash, and we need it fast.”
Connor was afraid to ask, and yet… “How large?”
He wasn’t low on fortitude, yet the number Harlow forked over made him more than a little nauseous. “Wow. Ah, okay. What about outside donations?” he tried. “The hospital relies on private donors for a certain amount of its projects. In fact, without those charitable offerings, a decent amount of their programs and research grants wouldn’t exist.”
“And neither would this clinic, remember?” she asked gently. “We’ve already relied on a private donor once. It’s actually part of the problem.”
“How’s that? Aren’t financial gifts a good thing?” They sure could use a whopper of one right now.
Harlow sat back in her desk chair and exhaled. “Most of the time, yes. But in this case, other donors will see that the clinic’s previous gift, which was significant enough to build the entire facility, ended up being mismanaged. No matter how much we promise them we’re working to rectify the problems, they’ll be too hesitant to donate—especially enough to cover the amount we need. I know I would be.”
“Maybe…well…shit,” Connor finished lamely. “I’m sorry.”
Harlow blinked. “It’s not your fault this is such a mess.”
“No, but it’s not yours, either,” he pointed out. “Roper’s the one who left us in this jam, and he managed to hide it from the hospital for a long time.”
For a beat, he was sure she was going to argue. The flash of emotion turning her eyes the color of a stormy ocean certainly suggested she had the words ready to go.
But then she simply shrugged and averted her gaze. “I guess.”
Oh, he was tempted to push. She’d been hiding her emotions from the start, and while normally he’d respect a person’s need for privacy, something told him whatever was brewing beneath Harlow’s veneer of composure was hurting her—or at the very least, angling to get out. She was hardly used to the sharing is caring route, though. Like Declan, if he wanted her to open up, he’d have to give her the space to do so.
And the outlet.
“Come on,” Connor said, standing up and holding out his hand.
“Wh
ere are we going?” she asked, and he’d deal with the feeling that had expanded in his chest when she’d placed her hand in his without hesitation later.
He smiled. “Well, it’s just about closing time, and we’ve had one hell of a week. What do you say we see if Dee will let us sneak in a bucket of balls before we grab some empanadas from the place up the street from my apartment? I’ll even throw in margaritas if you’re feeling feisty.”
And, score. She laughed and closed her laptop with her free hand. “Tequila, huh? That’s awfully brave of you, considering my mood.”
“Ah, it’s all good. We’re a team, remember? I’ve got your back.”
Her lashes arced upward, glinting gold and outlining her surprise. Time seemed to suspend and slide away, as if it didn’t matter as much as the two of them standing there, hand in hand, connected in their own way.
“Thank you,” Harlow whispered.
Connor tightened his fingers over hers, knowing he should probably let go, yet not willing to do it for all the fucking gold in Fort Knox. “Sure.”
He did loosen his grasp a few seconds later, partly because Harlow needed to tuck her laptop into her bag and grab her coat, and partly because Macie and Alejandro were still closing up shop in the front of the clinic. Connor didn’t care if their staff clapped eyes on a little hand-holding, but he knew enough to realize that Harlow sure as hell would. Plus, he’d have plenty of time to hold her after they got out of here, and he damn well intended to.
They made their way down the hall, then past the empty curtain areas and quiet exam rooms. Macie and Alejandro stood at the intake desk, both bundled up and looking ready to head to their respective homes.
“Oh, hey,” Macie said with a broad smile. “We just released our last patient and shut down the system for the night.”
Between Me & You: An Enemies to Lovers Workplace Romance (Remington Medical Book 3) Page 20