I was sitting at my desk several hours later when Angela walked in. She seemed hesitant as she slowly closed the door and sort of just paused there, watching me.
“What?”
“We had a staff meeting.”
I sat back and chewed on my bottom lip. “And?” I said when she didn’t immediately continue.
“I knew the company was struggling, but…”
“Who all was at this meeting?”
“Just those of us who work on the executive floor. But they said there will be meetings and memos sent out on Monday announcing the changes to everyone with the company.”
I nodded slowly, anger building in my chest. He should have waited for me. Should have asked me how to handle…and then I realized he was in charge here now. He could do whatever he wanted.
“Are you okay? Kevin explained to me the other night that you and his brother have a history. Neither of us knew that before.”
“I know. It’s not your fault.”
“What are the chances I would get involved with the brother of the guy who bought out the company I work for?”
I sat back and regarded her for a moment. “Have you told Kevin much about what we do here? Did you tell him we were in trouble?”
Angela blushed. “I might have mentioned a few things in passing, but nothing in detail. I wouldn’t do that, Addison.”
“But you told him enough that his brother figured out we were going under.”
“No!” Her face suddenly reddened and she pushed away from the door, charging my desk. “I never would—”
“Maybe not on purpose. How could you have known?”
“Really, I didn’t say that much to Kevin. Just that I was worried about you because of the stress you were under.”
I sat back and held up a hand. “Don’t worry about it.”
“I don’t want you to think—”
“I understand, Angela. Really, I do.”
She looked absolutely devastated. I got up and went around the desk to offer a consoling pat on her shoulder. “Everything’s going to be okay,” I said softly, trying to make myself believe it, too.
“He asked if you were still here. I think he wanted to talk to you.”
“Okay.”
She handed me the file folders she’d been holding when she came in. “He also said you’d want to look at these. And he asked that you be here at seven on Monday so that you can work out the details for the employee announcement.”
I was already glancing through the paperwork she’d brought in. The first two file folders were the contracts we’d signed this morning. And then there were financial documents that I quickly realized were connected to the trust fund he’d promised. I leaned back against my desk and studied them, still confused as to why he chose to handle things this way.
“Is there anything I can do?” Angela asked.
I’d forgotten she was there.
“Why don’t you head out.”
“Really?”
I touched her arm lightly. “Go have a nice weekend, Angela. I get the impression we’ve got a lot of work ahead of us.”
She nodded. “Thank you.”
I watched her go, then buried my nose back in the paperwork. It still wasn’t making a lot of sense to me. Why was the bulk of the money placed in a trust fund? Shouldn’t it have gone to my dad? And why would my dad agree to take such a small sum? I realized the sum was symbolic to Grant, but why would my dad agree to it? It was, after all, his company. He should have been entitled to most of the money, if not all of it. My ownership in the company was inconsequential, just a bit of compensation for the lack of salary I drew as COO. I hadn’t expected much from the sale. But my dad…everyone thought he was this wonderfully wealthy man. In truth, most of his money came from my mother’s estate. All the money he’d made with Berryman Construction had always gone back into the company. I wasn’t sure that he had enough to fund a long retirement, especially after this. He was only fifty-two.
There were so many questions that I simply couldn’t get my mind around all of it.
I could feel eyes on me as I stepped out of my office and made my way down the long, maze of hallways that led to my dad’s office. I knew he wouldn’t be there, but it was still something of a shock to push through my dad’s office door and find Grant standing there.
“I thought you went home.”
“Something tells me you knew I was still here.”
He smiled even as he turned away, his concentration returning to organizing a pile of papers on my dad’s cherry-wood conference table.
“Angela says you made an announcement to the employees.”
“Just those on this floor. I felt like it was only fair, considering they were the ones packing and watching your father’s belongings going out.”
I hadn’t even noticed until that moment, but he was right. My dad’s personal things—pictures of him and me, ceramics my mother once collected, and the crystal decanter that sat on the bar—were all gone.
“Did you really have to rush him out of here?”
“The company is no longer his. It hasn’t been since he signed on the bottom line early this morning.”
I crossed my arms over my chest, feeling as though I was rooted to the floor. “What about the other employees? How do you plan on announcing this change to them?”
“We’ve called for a sort of community meeting on Monday. All employees are required to be downstairs in the lobby at nine o’clock on Monday morning.”
“All the employees? Even the construction crews?”
“Yes.”
“That’s over four hundred people.”
“Four hundred and thirty-two.”
This really felt wrong. I turned from him and walked around the room, this place so familiar to me that it was like a part of my family. My father practically lived in this room during most of my childhood. I remember sitting on this low, leather couch, doing my homework while my father made conference calls and filled out paperwork. And that desk. I remember how I felt like a grown-up whenever I sat in that chair. This place was my father’s and he’d stolen it away.
“I was wondering if you’d be up to taking me around to the active construction sites tomorrow,” Grant said.
I turned and let my eyes move over him, so conflicted at the sight of him that a part of me wanted to absolutely refuse.
“I suppose so.”
“I’d like to see where we stand on our current projects and get them all back on schedule before we start concentrating on new projects.”
“Of course.”
“Have you gone over the financials?”
“Some of them.” I sighed, trying hard to focus on the business at hand. “I’ll need to talk to Joseph, cue him in on what’s going on.”
“Joseph?”
“Joseph Christopher. The head of accounting.”
“Of course. Do what you need to do to get us back where we need to be.” He turned toward me, setting down the handful of papers he’d been holding. “I’ll need you to personally speak to some of the less conventional suppliers.”
“Less conventional?”
“Like Burt. He still does the cabinets, correct?”
I nodded slowly. Burt was a retired cop who hand carved the cabinet doors we used in some of our projects. But we hadn’t worked with him personally in almost a year because we were unable to pay him in full for the last job he did.
“And there are others. The plumbers, the roofers. Anyone who might have cut ties when you ran into financial problems.”
“I’ll take care of it.”
“If you run into any problems, feel free to inform me.”
“I’ve known most of these people all my life, Grant. I don’t think I’ll have any issues.”
He sat back against the edge of the table, studying me in that way he had. “I understand all this is difficult, Addison. We’ll find a rhythm fairly soon and it’ll be better.”
“And if I don’t want to find a rh
ythm?”
His eyebrows rose slightly. “You signed a six-month contract.”
“I’m aware of that. And I’ll do the best I can to help you pull the company out of the fire. But I can’t promise this will all go as smoothly as you thought it would.”
“Nothing is ever as smooth as we hope.” He smiled at me. “I already have a few potential clients lined up for possible projects. I want to have a party at my place to sort of introduce them to our new management, if you know what I mean.”
“At your place?”
His smile widened. “I realize my place lacks a bit of—”
“Furniture? Decorations?”
“Homeyness.”
“It’s not the ideal place to have a party.”
“Yes, well, I was hoping you could help with that. My assistant has already contacted several interior decorators in the area, but I thought it needed more of a personal touch. I was hoping you’d be willing to work with Rebecca on that.”
“Rebecca?”
“My assistant. You didn’t meet her when you came in?”
I shook my head, wondering why it bothered me—the idea that he had a personal assistant. I watched him move as he crossed the room and stuck his head out the door, talking to someone in those soft tones I’d always thought he saved for me. But then it had been seven years since we last knew one another. I knew in my head that there had been other women. It was my heart that didn’t want to understand that fact.
She was beautiful, this Rebecca. She had Nordic traits—the sort of blond hair that was almost white and the gorgeous bone structure that photographers go nuts over. She walked toward me, her hand outstretched, a smile on her thin but well-painted lips.
“It’s nice to meet you, Ms. Berryman.”
If God truly made a perfect woman, it was probably this woman. She was taller than me, too, but just the right height to fit against a man like Grant and still be ultra-feminine. A part of me wanted to smack her, even though she was polite as a woman in her station could be expected to be.
“You, too,” I said, shaking her hand somewhat stiffly.
Her smile faltered just the slightest bit. Then she turned and smiled widely at Grant.
“Is there anything else, Mr. McGraw?”
“No, Rebecca. Thank you.”
He held the door for her and watched her go.
“Has she worked for you long?”
“Four years.”
“And she was willing to uproot her life to follow you to Texas?”
Grant shut the door with a definitive click of the latch and turned to regard me, his eyes dancing with amusement. “I’m a generous boss.”
“I’m sure you are.”
I stormed toward the door, intent on getting the hell out of there. But Grant held the door closed with the weight of his body as he stood leaning against it.
“I wasn’t finished.”
“I can’t imagine there’s much more.”
“We’re completely revamping the way the company runs and we haven’t even begun to talk about it.”
“Revamping? It sounded to me like you were perfectly content to continue with things the way they are.”
“You meant the suppliers? Of course I am. How many construction companies can offer handcrafted cabinets or specialized plumbing? I hear Manchester Construction offers heated floors in their luxury apartments, but not in their lower-end places. That’s something we can compete against with the plumbers and electricians we have on the payroll.”
“Then what revamping are you talking about?”
Grant gestured toward the table and the reams and reams of paper sitting there. “That has to go. It would save the staff hours upon hours if all the paperwork was digitized. I want everyone in this building to have a smartphone and a tablet, as well as foremen on the construction sites. There’s no excuse for sloppy or missing paperwork if it’s all uploaded to a special server at the end of the day.
“And there are so many positions here that are redundant. We could save thousands if we reduced the redundancies and cut some of the staff.”
“You said—”
“I said I wouldn’t fire anyone without your consent. But even you have to realize it would be better to let a few go in favor of using that money in other places that are in the best interest of everyone working for the company.”
I knew that. It was one thing my dad and I had argued about when I first came to work here. But it wasn’t something I was eager to discuss with Grant. Not now. Not this soon after he barged into my dad’s office and took it over.
“We have to be careful about how we go about doing something like that.”
“I know. That’s why I want you to make me a list of the employees you would be most comfortable with letting go. Those close to retirement that we can offer an early pension to. Those who just started here and have a good chance of finding something else quickly. I’m no more interested than you are in putting people out on the street who won’t be able to take care of themselves without this job.”
I wanted to believe that. I did. But it was so hard to know from day to day which Grant I was getting—the one who had a kind heart and always wanted to do the right thing, or the one who left me sitting alone in a diner because my father had paid him off.
“Anything else, boss?”
He studied my face for a long moment. Then he touched me, his fingertips moving slowly over the curve of my jaw.
“We’re in this together, like it or not. Is it really necessary to build up this wall between us?”
“I don’t know,” I said, speaking the most honest words I could possibly offer him. “I really don’t know. All of this is happening so fast…”
“I never lied to you, Addie. I just never told you the entire truth. I didn’t know how.”
“You walked away from me. No note, no phone call, no good-bye. You just left.”
“I didn’t want to do it that way, but your father—”
“I don’t really want to know.” I touched his chest, unable to help myself. “I’d rather have been the one to walk away this time, but you’ve tied my hands. But that doesn’t mean that whatever happened between us in the past, or even this past week, has to continue. You’re my boss. I’m your COO. That’s all.”
Pain danced in his eyes, but he simply nodded.
“Pick me up at six tomorrow morning. I want to hit all the sites before noon.”
“Okay.”
I walked out, aware of Rebecca watching me with naked curiosity. The childish part of me wanted to turn around and stick my tongue out at her. But, of course, I didn’t.
I was a grown-up. It was time to act like one.
Chapter 12
He was waiting on the sidewalk in front of his building when I pulled up ten minutes late. I’d been up half the night going over the financials he’d sent to my office, still trying to figure out what he was up to and how to use his accounts to pay up what the company owed all its suppliers. Joseph camped out at my office for hours trying to help me, but in the end it proved to be easier to do it myself.
This morning, money had been sent to most of our creditors’ accounts. On Monday, we should be up to par on everything, and there should be no delay in construction supplies for our ongoing projects. It was the first time in over a year I could actually say that.
He climbed into the cab of my truck dressed in jeans and heavy work boots that looked a lot like the ones he wore when we first met. In fact…was that a paint stain on the side of that boot?
“You have the same boots you wore seven years ago?”
“I don’t throw things away.”
“But they look…”
I remember staring at those boots on our first date. He was running late because they were behind schedule on the site and the foreman made everyone stay until they’d gotten done what he laid out for them to do that night. Even broke out the floodlights so they could work in the dark. I was upset because I’d thought he s
tood me up, then I was embarrassed to have gotten so worked up over something so stupid. So I stared at those boots, imagining the dozens of different ways he could have gotten that stain on the toe of the left one.
“Where to first?” I asked before he could follow my train of thought and figure out what I was doing.
I could tell by the way he looked at me, though, that he knew. Much to his credit, he let it go.
“How about the south side first?”
I put the truck into gear and pulled out slowly. It was so early on a Saturday morning that most of the city was still asleep. We hit some traffic, but not as much as we might have later in the day. A few joggers, too. But, mostly, it was just him and me and the news on the radio.
“I made a list of those employees,” I said when I couldn’t stand the lack of conversation a moment longer. “I e-mailed it to the address on your business card.”
“I got it. We’ll go over it together on Monday after the meeting.”
“And I made payments to most of our creditors.”
“Good.”
“I have a meeting with Burt tomorrow afternoon.”
“You don’t have to report your every movement to me, Addison,” he said, dragging his fingers through his hair with this weary movement that suggested he got as much sleep last night as I did.
“You’re the boss. I just thought—”
“I trust you. I’m sure you’ll do what I asked you to do.”
He sounded weary. Distracted. I glanced at him, but he was staring straight ahead as though he was more interested in where we were going than who was in the truck with him. It shouldn’t have, but it bothered me.
We pulled up to the first site and went to work. I showed him around, introduced him to the foreman, and stood back while he asked all the right questions. Mr. Philips had said that his client knew very little about running a construction company. But Grant clearly remembered what it was like to be on a construction site, and he had obviously done enough research to know what he was looking at, what he was talking about, and what was going on around him.
It was that way at all five of the sites. I just watched, grudgingly admitting to myself that if we had to sell the business, if we had to walk away, we’d done well selling it to Grant.
LUCI (The Naughty Ones Book 2) Page 90