First Love

by Natalie Ann

  “You didn’t know who that was you bought lunch for?” she asked.

  “Nope,” he said. “I do it a lot. I’m not always here to eat or Katy goes down and gets me what I ordered. But when I do come down, I’ll do what I did today. I’ll buy a few lunches.”

  There’d been no one but the three of them in line at that moment. “That’s nice.”

  “I can be nice,” he said.

  “I didn’t say otherwise. Did I?” Had she given off that impression? She was trying to think back to all her comments and actions. Just another thing to like about him and push aside the comparisons to his father.

  “No, you haven’t. I like that you’re pretty upfront and to the point. You aren’t afraid of me like so many others are.”

  “Why is that?” she asked.

  “I don’t know. You’ll have to tell me why you aren’t afraid of me.”

  “I didn’t mean that. I mean I’m not really afraid of you. You’ve given me no reason to be other than you control my job.” She paused. “Since I really need my job maybe I should be afraid of you.”

  “Then why are you smiling right now as you say that?”

  “I’m just teasing. Well, not really the part about needing my job.”

  “So then let me ask you—why do you think other people are so afraid of me?”

  He looked serious and she found it odd. “You’re the CEO,” she pointed out. “That’s just natural. I’m guessing you’ve never had to worry about whether you’d lose your job before or not. That you’ve always had a safety net here.”

  He frowned. “I guess. It’s not like I’m going to go around firing people.”

  The elevator dinged on the sixth floor and they got out. “Have you though?”

  She’d heard whispering and received questions from the employees that were part of the business Jace just acquired. They wanted to know what he had planned for them and she honestly could say, “I have no idea. I’m new.” Sue was right—it was the perfect position to be in.

  “Since I’ve taken over? Of course. Sometimes it has to be done, but it’s not often. Or as often as I’m sure people think it happens.”

  She held her tongue until they passed Katy and went back into his office. “The fact that you can probably makes people nervous though. I’m sure it’s nothing more than that.”

  She’d heard that his father was much tougher, so maybe people thought Jace was the same way. Since she didn’t know Jace’s father, she had nothing to compare it to and wasn’t about to make assumptions either. No reason to bring it up and possibly insult him.

  “I suppose you’re right. Why don’t we eat first and then we’ll go over some more of the things in the binder?”

  “We can,” she said, following him to the conference table at the other end of his office. She hoped to God she didn’t spill anything on her shirt like a bumbling fool. She couldn’t remember ever tripping up this much around someone.

  She wasn’t sure if it was the fact he was her boss, or that she was really developing one hell of a crush on him.

  Jace had been watching Lauren for the past twenty minutes. He wasn’t stupid and knew she was going to try to sneak in line and get her own lunch. She was obviously skittish about drawing attention to herself. Or was it being around him?

  He hadn’t lied when he said he’d bought others’ lunches before and would have bought everyone’s in line in order to make her feel more comfortable. He was just happy there was at least one other person in line as it was.

  “Tell me a little bit about yourself,” he said, unwrapping his sandwich.

  She’d just put a bit of her salad into her mouth and quickly put her hand up to cover her unpainted lips while she chewed fast. “Sorry. Why?” she asked.

  “Just passing the time before we talk about work. You can ask me questions too if it makes you feel better.”

  “What exactly do you want to know?” she asked.

  He liked that she agreed to it when not many would have in the past. Or they would just start rattling off a million things he couldn’t care less about.

  “You went to SUNY Albany. Are you from this area?”

  He’d pulled up her address and education in the HR software. He didn’t bother to look at her uploaded resume, but he’d seen she’d just graduated so he was guessing she was around twenty-two. Thirteen years or so younger than him. That alone should be enough to turn him off, but surprisingly she didn’t act it and it didn’t seem to matter to him.

  “I’ve lived around here my whole life. I grew up in Troy and commuted to college.” She didn’t elaborate. “I’m assuming you’ve lived here your whole life. Or at least in this area.”

  “I grew up and still live in Loudonville.”

  “That’s a very nice area,” she said.

  “It is,” he said, realizing that they were almost neighboring cities.

  Considered a suburb of Colonie, just outside of Albany, Loudonville boasted plenty of beautiful million-dollar homes with the peace and tranquility of living outside of the big city, but having the convenience of it a short drive away. His father lived in one of the multi-million- dollar homes. Jace had an apartment in a converted manufacturing plant. Costly, but low maintenance and it fit his lifestyle for the moment.

  “Where did you go to college?” she asked.

  He hesitated since he really wanted to know more about her. “Clemson.”

  She nodded and went back to eating. Guess that was all she was going to ask. “So you’re still close to family then?” he asked, not sure why he couldn’t just drop it and continue to eat, then get back to work.

  “Location or relationship wise?” she asked. Before he could clarify either of them, she said, “No to both.”

  He decided to let it drop. She obviously didn’t want to talk about it and he shouldn’t be pushing her either.

  “How do you like working here?” he asked instead.

  Her face lit right up and she smiled. When she did that, he realized that was part of the draw he had toward her. The innocence of her reactions at times. Her willingness to be honest when very few people were around him.

  “I love it. I love the building and the atmosphere. Everyone has been so nice and helpful.”

  He was glad to hear that. “You’re not lonely up here by yourself? Or at that end of the hall? I plan on bringing more staff on soon to that division.”

  “I’m a different division?” she asked, looking confused.

  “I’m trying to keep it separate at the moment. The lease is up on the building all the admin staff are in in four months and I’ll be switching them over here for the franchises. In that time, I’ll probably weed some staff out too.”

  She got quiet after that and he wasn’t sure the cause of it, so they finished eating in silence. Then he told her they could work at this table instead.

  “Can I ask you something?” she said before they started to look back through her binder.

  “Of course.”

  “Do you plan on laying off everyone in that division?”

  “Not at all. Why would you even ask that?”

  “Just curious.”

  But there was more to it than that. “What have you heard?” He figured he better get to the bottom of it now.

  “Not much.”

  “But something,” he said, pushing.

  “I don’t want to pass on rumors or information that has no merit. But I have been questioned.”

  That honesty again. “So noted. What have you heard and I’ll determine if it has merit or not.”

  She hesitated some more and finally said, “The few I’ve talked with in the accounting department over there are nervous they’re all being let go. That the business has been failing for years and they’re afraid it’s going to come back on them.”

  “Do you think there have been a lot of mistakes there that should come back to them? I’d like your honest opinion.”

  “I haven’t found any mistakes from the accoun
tants or assistants. They’re just being told what to do, and are not part of the decision-making process.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind. So what you’ve found so far are issues from decisions made higher up?”

  “I don’t want to make any definite statements. I’ll present all my findings to you and then I figured you and Skip would go over them and make decisions from there. Or am I wrong thinking that?”

  That had been part of his plan, but now he’d like to get a different perspective on things too. He’d think on it more before he brought it up to her, maybe getting more input and assistance from her directly.

  “That will be one step,” he said. “Now tell me what else you’ve discovered as a trend, even if you don’t have all the facts.” He had a feeling if he didn’t add that, she wouldn’t say much.

  “Off the bat, one of the things I noticed was the food orders. It seems they order a lot of times during the week and in small quantities, rather than planning a full week out with only two to three deliveries. Or even following upcoming deals. I remember when I worked in fast food, we always knew ahead of time what the next special or ad campaign was going to be and could plan the orders around that. But it seems to me that with the subs, they’re just ordering the same quantities every Monday, then when they get low just order what they need. It’s almost like they aren’t planning for any deals that are going to come down from the top.”

  “Interesting,” he said. Last week he’d spent some time at the headquarters as a new franchise owner for the subs. He had to get “training.” It was a crash course of things he knew he’d have to go back over again. He wasn’t leaving anything up to the current senior managers there until he had a better understanding of their performance levels.

  He’d gotten an earful when he was there that he’d have to clean house if he wanted to make this profitable and all the changes they knew would have to be made just from what the main headquarters had seen in the past year.

  “What is?” Lauren asked.

  “That it was brought up that some of our locations have gotten complaints from customers for not running the specials or running out of the specials.”

  “I’m sure it’s from the way they order.”

  “Okay. Can you focus on that for me the rest of this week? This is something we’ve got to nip in the bud. I don’t want any negative publicity at all going forward or any complaints.”

  “I can do that,” she said, looking eager over having a task to do. He’d have to remember that.

  They finished up their meeting a few minutes later. Then he watched her walk out of his office and knew he was going to be trying to find any excuse he could to spend more time with her.

  She was refreshing to be around. Someone who wasn’t afraid to tell him her thoughts or question him. He couldn’t remember the last time he felt so at peace around someone in this building.

  6

  His Father’s Shoes

  Another week had gone by and Lauren realized that nothing she’d heard about Jace seemed to be true.

  He wasn’t a dictator. He wasn’t out to just cut jobs to make a profit at any cost and she was surprised to hear that.

  Even Sue had told her not to believe the rumors. That Jace wasn’t like his father, even if people said he was. That the grocery stores weren’t showing the same profits as they had years ago because the big box stores were coming in and undercutting prices.

  That competition meant less profit, which meant less money for salaries and bonuses. She knew that. She understood it was just basic math. But she was thinking those that received the big salaries and large bonuses for years were coming to depend on them as part of their income when they shouldn’t have.

  That shouldn’t be Jace’s problem or even the elder Mr. Stratton’s, but she also knew she thought of things a lot differently than most since she never counted on a penny in her life until it was actually in her hand.

  Jace had a lot of pressure on his shoulders and even if the bonus program had been cut, it was done to save jobs, not to cut corners to put more money in his pocket. And from what she’d heard, it was cut a good year before Jace stepped into his father’s shoes.

  She figured most wouldn’t understand that. Maybe if she was used to receiving big bonuses each year and they were cut, she might feel negatively toward it too, but since she was new, she didn’t know any better and she was more realistic.

  She’d spent almost five days going over all the food orders and cross referencing them to deals from the main headquarters for the past three years and what she suspected had been true. The ordering was a mess at each location for Jace’s sub franchise.

  The funny part, the ordering was done at each location by each manager, rather than someone at the main office to oversee that. When she brought that to Jace’s attention, he’d spent a half a day making phone calls and finally got back to her to say he’d be calling a meeting of the four sub managers and the head of operations this week and presenting that information.

  That had made her nervous, thinking it’d come back to her, but he laughed and said all she was doing was her job and she was excelling at it.

  It was nice to be told that, especially when it contradicted that others said Jace rarely did or said anything nice. But he bought her lunch and another employee he didn’t even know the other day. So another contradiction.

  They’d spent an additional afternoon together, going over her reports and focusing on the sub franchise rather than the frozen yogurt one since that was the one with the most complaints and the biggest loss.

  When her phone rang, she just reached over and grabbed it without looking. “Yes.”

  Laughter on the other end. Deep and masculine. Jace. She really had to start paying more attention when she answered the phone. “Sorry. Hello, Jace.”

  “Don’t be sorry. I’m sure I pulled you out of some number cloud you were floating in.”

  “That makes me sound boring.”

  “There is nothing boring about being focused on your job,” he said. “Anyway. I only called to ask if you could spend some time on the ordering for the yogurt stores now. I’m going to be out of town for a few days next week to go to a training for that franchise and I’d like to have an idea of how they order there too.”

  “I can do that. When are you leaving?” she asked, pulling up her calendar on the computer and marking down some notes.

  “Monday. So that should give you three days to look things over. I’ve already made a call to have all the records delivered to you this afternoon and I’ve got IT working to get you into their server. They’re going to put you in remotely, but this weekend we’re transferring everything onto our server and you’ll be able to access all files. Keep that between us though. No one needs to know you’ll have open access to the finance end of it there.”

  “Okay. I don’t have anyone I could tell anyway.” She really didn’t talk to too many people here. Now that she thought about it, she only talked to Sue or Jace.

  “Why don’t we plan on meeting Friday afternoon and you can present me with what you’ve got by then. Even if it’s not complete, it will be more than I had going in.”

  She hung the phone up after telling Jace she’d get right on it. She picked up her keys and made her way to the storage room at the end of the hall that some of her files had been moved to.

  Jace gave her several locked filing cabinets to store files in that she’d moved from the boxes. He’d said there was no reason for them to go back since everything would be transferred here to that room soon enough.

  She was just walking out of the room when she heard voices coming from an office next to it.

  It was Katy and someone else talking. Maybe Skip’s assistant? MaryAnn had been nice to her, was older and had been here for years, but she ate up gossip like she did the free bagels that were left on the conference table every Monday morning. Not only that, she was good at filling in gaps about how things “used to be.” In Lauren’s eyes,
the past shouldn’t matter and only agitated people more.

  “I don’t know about her,” Katy said. “She sits in her office hitting keys all day long. I’ve tried to talk to her, but she can’t be bothered. I think she’s kind of boring.”

  “There is nothing wrong with doing your job,” MaryAnn said to Katy. “She’s new and is probably trying to show her worth to Jace.”

  “She spends a lot of time in Jace’s office.”

  “What is your point?” MaryAnn asked her. “Do you know what she’s working on?”

  “I checked out some of the binders in there. Just invoices and stuff. A bunch of numbers that she carries around like it’s a Bible. She brings that stuff to Jace’s office too.”

  MaryAnn laughed. “That is her job. Do you think there is anything going on between them? I mean I know she’s young, but she’s only been here a few weeks. Jace has never shown any interest in any employees. Now his father, on the other hand. He’d been known to have a lady in his office now and again. That’s probably why his wife up and left all those years ago.”

  “I hadn’t heard that. Really? I doubt it with Jace. At least right now,” Katy said. “Lauren’s too plain. I mean I’ve been flirting with him and he doesn’t seem to care one way or another. I wonder if he’s gay.”

  MaryAnn laughed and Lauren felt her face flush. She knew she was dull and boring, but to say Jace was gay. That was pushing it.

  She wanted to rush away and go back to work, but heard MaryAnn say, “I don’t think Jace is gay. Jason used to brag about all the women Jace went through in college. I guess he was a ladies’ man there for a while. Or maybe Jason was just saying that because he wanted everyone to know his son was just like him.”

  “There hasn’t been any whisper of a woman concerning Jace since I’ve been here,” Katy said. “It’s been almost a year since Carol hired me. Are you sure he isn’t gay?”

  “I think Jace is just private. Not only that, he’s not around much and he’s busy. Sorry, Katy. I don’t think you’re Jace’s type, so you might as well hang it up.”