by Lara Hunter
I shrugged.
“My innately rebellious nature, which just screams of restless youthful insolence?” I offered.
“Women,” Harry corrected me, and quick. “If you spend all of your time chasing around every pair of surgically enhanced breasts you see, then how can you concentrate on your work?”
I shrugged.
“Well what do you expect?” I looked him straight in the eyes. “I’m young, I’m healthy, and women happen to be drawn to me.”
Harry nodded.
“Indeed they are,” he allowed, adding as he shook his head slowly from side to side, “I’m finding, though, that our colleagues and clients at Clark Industries are not quite so drawn to you. I’m beginning to hear complaints about your apparent lack of interest in our projects as demonstrated by your tardiness and inattentiveness during meetings and work sessions.”
I shook my head.
“That’s just not true, Dad,” I objected, adding as I lifted my chin to prideful effect. “You saw our colleagues at that meeting today. They were eating out of the palm of my hand.”
Dad sighed.
“I did some follow up calls after the meeting, Son, and while our clients and co-workers do adore you as a person, they really didn’t learn all that much from the presentation,” he revealed. “And what little they did learn, came from the information that Lily provided.”
He paused here, adding with a heavy sigh, “You’re the vice CEO of my company, son, and you approach your job with all the dedication and seriousness of a lackey just hired in the clerk’s office. Now, Oliver, I know that I’ve been going a little soft on you since your mom died five years ago. And believe me, losing my dear Irene took an incredible toll on my life as well…”
I had heard enough.
“Mom has nothing to do with this, leave her out of it!” I ordered him, adding more softly, “I’m just having some fun, that’s all.”
Harry sighed.
“I’m not saying that you should live like a monk,” he told me, adding with a shrug, “You just need to give up all the bimbos and find one good woman; someone who can help you get on track, who can give you focus and purpose in your life. And to help you along this new and sure to be difficult path… I’ve arranged for you to see a relationship counselor once a week.”
I rolled my eyes.
“As thrilling as that sounds, Dad, I do believe I’ll take a pass on that idea,” I told him, adding as I rose from the table, “I will make an effort, though, to make it in earlier each morning, and to concentrate more on our goals and projects.”
Harry shook his head.
“I’d love to believe you, Son, but unfortunately I don’t,” he sighed. “I’ve heard so many of your empty promises, and you manage to break them every time. So this time I’m going to have to force the issue. I’m going to have to insist that you see the relationship counselor, a wonderful lady named Ann Goldman, once a week. And until you get your personal and professional life in order, I’m also going to have to insist that you give up your late nights and your wild overnight dates.”
Clutching the back of my chair with frustrated hands, I looked my father straight in the eyes and said, “And what if I don’t?”
Breaking our gaze, my father cast his gaze to the table and said, “If you fail to comply with my request, son, then I’m afraid I’m going to have to take it all away from you. Your job, your inheritance, your future in our company… I will strip you of your job title and all of your benefits, including your credit line. It will all be gone.”
I looked at him for a long moment, then nodded.
“Fine,” I said finally. “I’ll talk to whoever you want, and I’ll show up for work on time, every day, and ready to work.”
And when I go home at night, I added silently. I’ll continue to lead my life exactly as I damned well please.
Chapter Three
~
Lily
After a fairly uneventful weekend, I trekked back into the office at 9 a.m. Monday; my mind already formulating a comprehensive to-do list that would carry me through the week.
When Oliver comes in at 10, I’ll have to remind him yet again to file that report on the McKenzie account and to return those phone calls to Ms. Fisher and Mr. Bingham; otherwise we just might lose those accounts. I rolled my eyes heavenward. Of course, the very assumption that Oliver Clark will arrive at work any time before noon may in itself be overly optimistic, if not downright far reaching in scope.
As I cleared the entrance to my office space, I started to hum just a few relevant bars of that old chestnut ‘The Impossible Dream’; pondering as I did just how many items on my comprehensive to-do list would actually get ‘to-done,’ so to speak; and sometime in the next century, preferably. Honestly, I was just about to give up on that man; and judging from the reports that I was hearing about his performance, or lack thereof, at Friday’s meeting, his father was about to surrender the cause as well.
When will Oliver ever learn? I mused, shaking my head from side to side in a show of sheer resignation. When will he learn that life isn’t a game and that his foolish actions, that is, when he even bothers to ‘act’ are putting our jobs and his company in danger?
My musings were disrupted by the sound of a loud, sharp bump resounding from an adjoining office; one that just happened to be the private office of my previously mentioned boss, Oliver Clark.
Of course, calling the place an office is only cautiously optimistic. I gritted my teeth as I considered just a few of the sights that I had witnessed upon scaling the confines of those four walls. The room more aptly could be defined a napping or, upon occasion, a trysting spot.
One thing was for sure; no one opened the door to Oliver’s inner sanctum much before 10 a.m. at the earliest; and even this was an optimistic prediction for a Monday morning, given the usual, downright chaotic state of his weekend social schedule.
On Monday mornings, from what I understand, he generally doesn’t make it out of bed by 10, let alone into the office, so unless the cleaning lady is making her rounds early this week, I’m guessing that the person currently rustling around in his office is not, in fact, him.
So just who is making that noise? I pondered, freezing in my place as yet another loud bump resounded from the confines of Oliver’s office.
Fearing the worst, I grabbed hold of a cast iron, silver polished horse statuette that sat at the edge of my desk; hoisting it high in the air as I walked with slow, cautious steps in the direction of Oliver’s office.
My breathing suspended as I stepped through his doorway; and when I saw Oliver Clark standing at his filing cabinet, clearing the cabinet of dusty old folders and tossing them on the floor, I was pretty darned sure I’d never breathe again.
“Oliver,” I sputtered, shaking my head slowly from side to side in a show of complete and utter disbelief. “What are you doing here?”
Oliver shrugged.
“I work here, Lily,” he replied, pinning me with another one of his dazzling smiles. “And since I managed to net us a new account this morning, I thought I’d better make some room in our cabinet for some new client files.” He paused here, those dark eyes narrowing in what seemed to be a quizzical look. “It turns out I have a question for you, as well. Why are you standing there with your favorite horse statue poised oh so gracefully above your head?”
Glancing upward, I wondered at the vision of my own outstretched arms; holding up a statue that I’d obviously intended to double as a deadly weapon.
“Um,” I bit my lip, adding as I began to wave and shift the sculpture back and forth in the air, “Actually I just washed and polished The Sterling Stallion here, so now it looks even more, um, sterling. Now I just have to air dry it.”
Oliver nodded.
“Well when you’re done, please take a moment to step into my office so we can have a bull session,” he asked, using a phrase that I’d only heard pass the lips of his father. “I have to discuss this new account
with you, as well as update you on the status of some of our other projects; we really need to get moving on a few of these cases. I know I have a billion phone calls to make, e-mails to answer, and memos to write, so I need your advice on what to do first, so I can catch up as quickly as possible.”
I froze in my place, my mind reeling as I fought to reconcile the words I was hearing with the person that spoke them.
“Oh, well certainly,” I sputtered, casting a suspicious glance in his direction as I turned from his door. “Right away, Oliver.”
Within minutes, Oliver and I sat in his office, discussing our current clients and projects as Oliver pressed me with a million questions; most of which, much to my amazement, actually made sense and were pertinent to our work here at Clark Industries. Even more shockingly, he actually took notes as we spoke and asked pertinent follow up questions; what was the flippin’ deal?! And he even made some surprisingly valid observations and suggestions regarding our company, its endeavors and its future.
On this day, and on each day following, Oliver and I conducted additional ‘bull sessions,’ as he liked to call them; and I was utterly amazed to see just how little bull these sessions actually featured; quite the contrary, it was evident that Oliver had been doing a lot of reading, studying and actually thinking in the past few days—much to my continuing shock and unabated amazement.
By the end of the week I was passing convinced that my boss had been abducted by aliens; and that said aliens had dropped an uncanny and equally striking duplicate of said employer square in his office chair.
This very realistic Oliver clone returned his phone messages, answered his e-mails, attended all work-related meetings on time, and actually offered solid ideas and constructive advice during the course of these meetings. I no longer had to nag him into doing his job; and the only phone calls he refused to answer came, not from clients, but from various ladies who once had been objects of Oliver’s fleeting attentions, judging from their basic telephone manners.
Then at the end of the week, Oliver did something truly unthinkable and totally out of character; something that seemed to confirm the idea that he’d been overtaken by alien forces or, I dunno, perhaps he’d suffered a stroke or similar attack that affected his mind and morphed his behavioral patterns.
Coming to stand before my desk on Friday afternoon, he charmed me with a dazzling, white toothed smile and asked, “Any chance you’d like to have dinner with me tonight?”
Doubling over behind my desk, I unceremoniously coughed up a stream of steaming hot coffee I’d just recently consumed, all over the surface of a memo I’d just drafted in reference to a new account.
“I’ll just hop on my computer and retype that memo,” I murmured, shifting my office chair in the direction of my computer.
Oliver chuckled.
“And while you’re doing that, Lily, could you please consider my offer?” he asked, keeping his gaze trained on me as I hammered my keyboard with rough, distracted strokes.
“Well, before I answer,” I shot him a wary glance over my sturdy shoulder, “I guess I’d just like to know why you’d like to have dinner with me.”
Oliver shrugged.
“I have no ulterior motives here, Lily. I’d just like to spend more time with you to get to know you a bit better,” he insisted, raising his hands before him in a defensive stance. “I’d also like to celebrate your two year work anniversary with an evening out at Le Jardin, my favorite French restaurant downtown.”
“Le Jardin?” My fingers paused on my keyboard as I heard the name of an exclusive eatery that had always lingered slightly out of my price range; the type of place where they actually have ladies room attendants to hand you your soap and the servers monitor your eating experience with expert precision, lest you be in need of additional breadsticks. “I’ve always wanted to sample their menu, but I never could afford to… that is, I never could afford to take the time to go. So, yes, I’d be more than pleased to accept your invitation.”
***
How long had it been since I’d actually been out to dinner? And with a man?
It had apparently been quite some time since this bizarre combination of circumstances had touched and affected my life; seeing as how I had to clear the mothballs from, and hand wash, the basic black dress that had hung too long near the back of my clothes closet in direct proximity to the Frankie Says Relax T-shirt I hadn’t worn since the dawn of my teen years.
Even so, I admired the way that this ebony frock flattered and accentuated my curves and I seeked to enhance the effect by running a brush through my sensible bob and applying just a touch of rarely worn lipstick.
Not bad, Ashton, I winked at myself in the mirror, but only briefly.
Why, I wondered, was I making such a big fuss over a date with Oliver Clark? An appointment that, for all intents and purposes, probably wasn’t even a real date?
Oh, sure, he’d invited me to a formal dinner at a nice restaurant and since he was a single man and I was an oh so available woman, and no one else was expected in attendance at this evening appointment, I guess it could for all intents and purposes be considered a date. I was sure, though, that the motivation behind this occasion was not even remotely romantic in nature.
As I’d noted many times before, I was not exactly the type of gal that Oliver tended to date, and if he had any semblance of romantic interest in me, surely he would have expressed those feelings long before now..
He probably just wanted to pump me for more information about the way we do business at Clark Industries. Or maybe he’d finally come to realize my true worth and endless value to his company and really just wanted to find a way to say thank you in the form of a grand and impressive gesture that took the form of a gourmet dinner.
Oh, does it really matter? It’s a free dinner with a passing handsome man, one that probably equals two months rent, at least at the dump where I currently reside, and is going to taste really, really good. I shot myself a sly smile in the mirror’s reflection before turning to answer the brisk knock that resounded from my front door. “I’ll be right there, Oliver!”
My eyes flew wide moments later, as I swung open my front door to reveal a distinguished grey-haired man in a sleek black suit and matching cap.
“Ms. Ashton?” he beamed.
“At this point I’m sure of nothing,” I replied, tone blank as I looked over my visitor’s shoulder to see a shiny black limousine pulled up at my curb. “Is that ride mine? Or did someone in my neighborhood pass away?”
The man laughed.
“Rest assured that all of your neighbors are in very good health,” he told her, adding as he tipped his cap in her direction, “The car you see before you was rented by one Mr. Oliver Clark, to see you safely to Le Jardin restaurant where he will meet you for your dinner date.”
I shook my head.
“Oliver hired a limo?” I gasped out, voice barely above a whisper. “For me?”
I got my answer soon enough, as my swanky hired ride swept me across town to the door of Le Jardin; a classically designed restaurant that boasted pure, gold-tinted sandstone walls, stained glass windows, and a domed roof that shone pure scarlet in the light of the setting sun.
Stepping through the brass-handled doors that fronted this impressive structure, I gaped outright at the vision of splendor that lurked within; a spectacle accented in grand style by lace-covered tables, crystal chandeliers, assorted floral arrangements brimming over with scarlet roses, ivory orchids and pearl pink carnations, as well as lush examples of Impressionist art lining the walls of gold brocade.