Tess shook her head, her brazen smirk back in place as if it had never budged. “Oh, don’t be. I’m glad all of you yahoos have found your bliss”—she flicked a hand across the bar to the spot where Jonah stood talking to Quinn and Luke, with Isabella and her husband, Kellan, right beside them—“but I’ve got a feeling that my happily ever after is never going to involve anything other than my job and my kiddo. And I’m actually good with that.”
“It might be my bliss talking, but I hope you’re wrong,” Connor said. “You’re a pretty cool woman, not to mention a true badass of a friend. I’d love to see you knock some guy for a loop one day, if you ever decide that is what you want.”
“Satan will be handing out ice skates and mittens when that happens. But as for the here and now? I think you’ve got bliss covered. Happy looks good on you, Ginormica.” Tess sent her gaze to Harlow, who was making her way back to them, drinks in-hand.
“Hang on to it as hard as you can.”
27
The last four days of Harlow’s life had been a total blur. She’d been totally immersed in work, having only stopped to eat (at Connor’s insistence) and sleep (at her body’s insistence). Even then, she’d done both as quickly as possible, scarfing down a breakfast burrito and power napping for no more than four hours before springing out of bed—or in one case, off a gurney in the clinic at 3 A.M.—and returning to her desk. But with the work came the reward, and she had to admit, if ever they’d had a chance at balancing the budget once and for freaking all, it was now.
Finding the perfect donor was their only hope of keeping the clinic’s doors open. They had a bulletproof pitch that represented an incredible business. No, not just a business—a clinic, where people got the care they needed, just as her mother would have wanted. Okay, the plan was still a Hail Mary, and God knew she and Connor would have to throw every last ounce of what they had into getting one of the four potential donors on their pitch-list to even listen carefully, let alone bite. Still. This plan was the only hope they had to keep the clinic open.
It had to work.
It would work.
“Hey.” Connor’s voice slid Harlow back to the office, making her smile despite the fatigue that had climbed into her bones like a houseguest with no intention of leaving. “I brought you some lunch.”
He held up a paper bag from the deli up the street, and holy crap… “It’s lunchtime already?”
“No, sweetheart.” He closed the door behind him and crossed the room to place the bag on the one corner of her desk that wasn’t slathered in papers, her laptop, or to-go cups, half-full with coffee that had long since cooled. “It’s actually past lunch. Fourteen hundred, to be exact.”
Surprise popped through her chest. “I guess I got caught up in finishing the last-minute details on the report for the board.”
“Are you sure you don’t want me to go to the meeting with you? The staff here can hold down the fort for a couple of hours,” Connor said, prompting Harlow to laugh.
“You want to leave the clinic to attend a meeting with the hospital’s board of directors? There’s an offer I bet you never thought you’d make so enthusiastically.”
His hazel eyes rolled a little before crinkling at the edges. “Okay, fair, but the business side is part of the deal. Not my favorite part,” he added, grinning for emphasis. “Or even in my top ten, really. But you and I are a team, and if you need me to stand by you in the meeting, I will. Getting the board to agree to the strategy we’ve come up with is the first step in finding a donor who can get our budget balanced so we can keep this place running.”
“Once they hear the plan, they’ll agree to it, Connor,” she said, certain. He didn’t need to rush into a boardroom he admittedly hated just to hold her hand through this part. He’d be up to his beautiful biceps in the business end soon enough, once the budget was right side up and she transitioned back to Davenport Industries in a month or two.
A thread of something odd and mildly unpleasant expanded in her belly, and Lord, she really had blown right past lunch.
Harlow reached for the bag Connor had brought, taking a bite of the apple that accompanied the ham and Swiss sandwich and bag of chips also inside before continuing.
“We’ve exhausted all of our other options, and we’re making progress with operations.” Slower than the board would probably like, but then again, good change—true change, the sort that stuck—always took more time than thrilled any board of directors. “I know the board wanted to see more forward movement at this point, especially with regard to the budget. But I’ll convince them this pitch will work. I’ve got the meeting covered. I promise.”
Her phone buzzed before he could reply, her gut dipping behind her dark red pencil skirt at the sight of her father’s name and number flashing across the screen.
She tapped the icon to send the call to voicemail, but not before Connor’s auburn brows had taken the slingshot route toward his hairline.
“Everything okay?”
“Of course.”
Connor’s pointed look said he wasn’t buying it, though, and to be honest? His skepticism wasn’t misplaced.
“Everything here is okay,” Harlow said. “I’d never keep anything like that from you. But my father has been blowing up my phone over the last few days, asking for progress reports.”
Ever since she’d emailed him the details of her and Connor’s plan, to be precise.
“Have you talked to him?” Connor asked, and Harlow shook her head.
“We’ve emailed, of course. He is my boss. But I’ve been so busy with this that we haven’t actually spoken. He keeps pressing for details and ‘expressing concern’ that we haven’t made enough progress.” She captured the word in air quotes while simultaneously frowning. “He’s always been shrewd, which is fine, because so have I. But he’s taking it to a whole new level, pointing out all the challenges the clinic is still facing and reminding me how time sensitive our budget issues are.”
As if she wasn’t already painfully aware of how bad things were in that regard. How she hadn’t been able to fix things. How they were still in danger of closing the doors.
Nope. Don’t go there. You have a plan. You have hope.
She scraped up a solid breath. “I keep telling him that we’ve got things under control, especially now that we’ve got this plan worked out and ready to pitch. But I don’t think he believes me. He’s left me three voicemails already today, telling me he wants to talk about this board meeting. Like I’m not smart enough to be prepared.”
Whether it was the pressure of everything they stood to lose or her suspicion that her father found her sorely lacking, Harlow couldn’t be certain. But tears pricked, hot and fast behind her eyelids, followed by a hard stab of emotion.
Harlow, please. Good business is born of strategy, not emotion, her father’s voice reminded her sternly. But then Connor had erased the space between them, moving to the desk chair he’d left right beside hers this morning and planting himself smack in her field of vision.
“If you think you’re not worthy of this job, you’re wrong.”
“Connor—”
“No.”
He didn’t touch her; they were, after all, at work, and it was a hard line for both of them. His stare moved through her as palpably as if he had cradled her face between his palms, though, and oh, she felt it in the very deepest parts of her.
“Listen to me, Harlow. You are smart. You are ambitious and sharp and God, you are fierce. But you’re also beautiful and pure and good. And you deserve to know it. No matter what.”
“Thank you,” she whispered.
“You’re welcome,” he whispered back. “Now do me a favor, would you? Go into that meeting and kick ass so we can find a donor and celebrate. I know we have plans for the clinic, but I have plans for you.” His smile grew dark and edged in the sort of intensity that made her realize just how far gone she was for him. “And I can’t wait to take you home and share them with
you.”
Harlow did her level best to make sure she looked cool to the point of dispassion, even though she felt as if someone had just rehomed a fleet of butterflies directly behind her breastbone. She measured everything around her with covert glances, slid across the waiting room outside of Dr. Langston’s office as she pretended to competently check her phone. She’d hoped to catch him a few minutes before the board meeting (read: now) in order to take his temperature a bit on the idea of a donor search. He’d always seemed fair, along with being extremely smart. He had a love-thing for the rules, sure, but he’d certainly always appeared to have the hospital’s best interests at heart.
He also appeared to be irritated beyond measure, if the muffled voices coming from behind his closed door were any indication.
Harlow checked the time stamp on her phone, frowning. Only nine minutes remained between now and the start of the meeting. Strategy dictated that she ensure an early arrival in order to choose her seat, along with making a subtle yet real showing of her dedication to the matter at hand. Langston was usually the first to arrive, but—Harlow eyed his office door again—he was obviously busy. His mood sounded less than stellar. That, with the dwindling time, made a last-minute fly-by of her idea an increasingly bad idea. Better to simply head into the board room and make her presentation to the board as planned. They’d always been a bit of a stodgy lot—hell, Langston was the most liberal among them, and if that didn’t say something, Harlow didn’t know what did. But the members of the board were conservative for a reason; namely, they were in charge of the decisions made for an entire freaking hospital. People’s care, the services they received, their lives? All of that was in the board’s hands.
Your clinic is in their hands.
Pressing up from the couch, she swallowed back the unease that had knotted her throat. Stowing her phone, she shouldered her laptop bag, elevating her chin and infusing confidence into every step she took toward the board room. She still had enough time to settle in and probably beat most of the directors to the table. Greet them levelly. Show them how much she believed this plan would work. Sure, it was as much mind game as it was power play, but it was a strategy she’d learned before she’d even graduated from middle school. It was business. She was damned good at making it happen.
You are smart. You are ambitious and sharp and God, you are fierce.
Connor’s words echoed through her head, and Harlow realized that wasn’t quite accurate. She’d been here, in this position, negotiating deals and going toe to toe with executives who wanted nothing more than to prove her wrong a thousand times. She wasn’t just good at this. She was made for it. For Chrissake, business was her birthright. She might be presenting a long shot of an idea, but the board would see reason.
Her heart thrummed with the familiar adrenaline of a big deal about to go down, and she put her hand on the knob to the conference room door…
And the door swung open to reveal an already-full room, deflating her confidence like a party balloon, the day after New Year’s.
“Oh!” Harlow’s adrenaline chilled without waning as the low murmurs everyone had been trading died instantaneous deaths. “I apologize. I didn’t realize everyone would be here so early.”
“Ms. Davenport.” The greeting might as well have been spray starched, and for a second, she was tempted to return it with enough frost to make her own personal tundra. But then she thought of Connor, of the way he remained so loose and sure even when people were bleeding out beneath his hands, and she took a slow breath and smiled.
“Dr. Kellerman. So lovely to see you.”
The head of cardiology blinked in clear surprise. It was, sadly, Harlow’s only win. All of the seats around the glossy conference table were taken, except for the last one on the left that had been stuck at the end of the row like an afterthought, and she claimed the spot reluctantly before removing her laptop from her bag. Setting the machine up for her presentation wasn’t difficult, but it did require that she squeeze between several still-silent members in order to gain access to the port built in to the center of the table, which proved more than a little awkward.
Not as awkward as their stares and deafeningly loud cleared throats, though, and seriously, she’d known she’d lose some ground with them in her leave of absence, but this was crazy.
Something wasn’t right.
Finally, after five excruciating minutes of tension and traded glances, Dr. Langston came into the room, followed by the hospital’s healthcare director, Joanne Nimitz. Twin pangs of dread unfolded behind Harlow’s blouse at the sight of Langston’s stress-loosened tie (file that under: never happens) and Joanne’s loftily raised chin. But her mettle was made of some pretty strong stuff, so she set her shoulders firmly and let the familiarity of the meeting’s Call to Order calm her.
“Well,” Langston said, nodding his thanks at the board’s secretary after the minutes from their last meeting had been read and they were officially underway. “I know we had an agenda set for today’s meeting, but it seems we’ll need to alter that a bit.”
Since all eyes had moved to her anyway, Harlow said, “I’m sorry?”
Langston looked at her for the first time since he’d entered the room, and—Harlow’s gut clutched—he looked sorry, too. “A few hours ago, Ms. Nimitz and I received a phone call from the hospital’s CEO regarding the clinic.”
“A phone call,” she repeated, although getting any words past her pounding heart was pretty damned difficult.
“The CEO expressed concern about the clinic’s continued lack of profitability, as well as the excessive outstanding debt we’re carrying there, and the money the hospital is putting out to pay Davenport Industries to fix a problem that, frankly, seems unfixable,” Joanne said evenly.
She’d deal with the “unfixable” part of things in a minute. For now, Harlow had a matter of higher priority on her I-call-bullshit agenda. “I see. And why wasn’t I brought up to speed when this concern was raised a few hours ago?”
“Because it’s a conflict of interest.” Joanne’s tone was all head-pat, silly-girl, and Harlow spoke her next words very quietly, but only so she wouldn’t scream.
“I’m the business director. Of anyone, I’d think my interest in the CEO’s concern would be paramount.” They could’ve called her and Connor in on this earlier, and Joanne knew it.
The woman dug in her heels, though. “You’re no longer on the board, therefore, we had no obligation to bring it to you in advance of this meeting. Anyway, the hospital’s agreement with Davenport Industries was in question, so I’m sure you’ll see why we felt it best to proceed with discretion.”
A whole new brand of unease hit Harlow like a Mack truck going downhill, fast. “Have you spoken with Mr. Davenport?”
“We spoke briefly a few minutes before this meeting began,” Joanne said. “He’s been apprised of the situation.”
“Okay.” Harlow sent the word through her teeth. As much as she wanted to go rounds over being blindsided and tattled on, she had a goal, and she wanted that more. She could skewer Joanne for the rest later. “Then why don’t we bring both him and the CEO into our meeting right now via video conference so I can clear this up? Mr. Bradshaw and I have come up with a really innovative idea for the clinic, and we feel—”
“I’m sorry, Ms. Davenport.” Langston sank back in his chair, only by a fraction, but it might as well have been a hundred miles. No, no. No. “We’re past that point. The CEO’s concerns are based not just upon the clinic’s absence of financial solvency, but upon the ripple effect of the overall lack of progress in the given timeframe.”
Harlow would not lose it. She would not. “We discussed the timeframe when I joined the board, then again when you hired Davenport Industries to come in and consult. Change of the expected magnitude takes time, and—”
“You were given plenty of time,” Joanne interrupted. “Months, to be precise. And it took ages just to get the directorship sorted.”
“That wasn’t my decision,” Harlow shot back, and okay, maybe she’d lose it just a teensy bit. “If you’ll recall, the board collaborated with Davenport Industries on who would fill those roles.”
“Nevertheless, too much time has passed with little to no results. Your own reports show that the clinic is losing money by the day, which only makes the deficit at which you started more overwhelming.”
Joanne gestured to the three-inch thick folder in front of her that bore the hospital’s logo, and was she kidding? She’d printed all of Harlow’s emails and the clinic’s budget reports, just for show?
“I’d argue the claim that we haven’t see any results at the clinic,” Harlow said, choosing the battle she could win. “We’ve made strides in operations, implementing procedural changes that have led to greater efficiency and providing staff training at no cost to the hospital.” Not to mention care to people who’d desperately needed it, like Evie. But the CEO—and, it seemed, now the board—was only focused on the bottom line.
“That progress is commendable,” Langston said, and funny, his expression seemed genuine. “But I’m afraid it’s no longer enough.”
Harlow had to buy time to meet with the potential donors on her list. She’d get the board to agree to a week. She and Connor would pitch their ever-loving hearts out, and someone would say yes.
“I understand that the budget is of concern. In fact, addressing these very problems has been our primary focus over the past weeks. If Mr. Bradshaw and I could just have a little more time—”
“There’s none left,” Langston said quietly. “Several of the hospital’s more esteemed donors have gone to the CEO with their concerns. They find the mismanagement of funds troubling. To the point that they’re considering withholding future gifts unless we cut our losses.”
Between Me & You: An Enemies to Lovers Workplace Romance (Remington Medical Book 3) Page 27