All Mine: The Complete Series Box Set

by Lauren Wood

  “Give her a few more minutes and if she doesn’t show up, keep looking.”

  “Of course, Sir.”

  I went to the front of the long table and sat down. I was clearing my thoughts, trying to figure out what I was going to say first, when the side door opened and a young blonde walked in. She was tall and petite, nothing special in my world. Her eyes were a blazing blue that really stuck out to me and it was hard to look away when I met her gaze. That was a little different and made her unique.

  Caroline introduced her to the group and while I thought she was pretty, she was also almost fifteen minutes late. She tried to give an excuse but I stopped her. I just didn’t want to hear why. I wanted to hear that it would never happen again.

  “Just sit down Miss…”

  “Claire Adams.”

  “Well Miss Adams, find a seat and try to keep up.”

  I was slightly irritated by the new employee being late on her first day. I was sure it was to make sure that her shoes and her black bag matched, or that her makeup was perfect. I didn’t think she was going to last long.

  The meeting went as expected. There was a lot to cover, namely several new clients that had set up consultations. It was more than I could take on and that is why I was building the consulting team. I eyed the young blonde that was staring wistfully out the window.

  “Am I boring you Miss Adams?”

  Her name jolted her up from her seat and she shook her head that I wasn’t.

  “This is where I give out assignments. Do you think you are ready for one?”

  I expected her to get a nervous look on her face, wide eyes, but she just nodded her head that she was ready. I was surprised, shocked even, but I had to begrudgingly admit to myself that I liked her spunk. She looked me right in the eyes, accepting the challenge. I had thrown down the gauntlet and that didn’t seem to bother her one bit.

  Caroline interjected that it was literally her first day and I remembered her saying she was fresh out of college with no experience, but I couldn’t back down from a challenge any more than she could apparently.

  “I think that if Miss Adams wants to give it a shot, we should let her. Our reputation is not so fragile.”

  I wasn’t even going to pretend that I had faith in her. I didn’t have much, but I wanted to see how it would all turn out. My aggravation had turned to intrigue. I usually knew what was going to happen next, but this time I was left in the dark. It was a nice change of pace from everything that was so predictable.

  “You can have Baker’s Food. I will need a report on my desk by the end of the week. Since it is only three days away, I suggest you get started.”

  She thanked me, but didn’t budge. “Now Miss Adams, you need to get started now.”

  “You want me to leave the meeting?”

  The exasperated feelings were coming back and I shook my head up and down slowly like she was an idiot. I don’t know what possessed me to, but there was something about that woman that put me on edge. I didn’t like inconsistency and surprises and she was both.

  ***

  “You were kind of harsh on her, don’t you think?”

  I shook my head that I didn’t know what she was talking about, but we both know that I did. She was talking about Miss Adams. Caroline didn’t usually say anything to me in this way, but she seemed to have a protective feel for her.

  “She was late. You know I don’t tolerate tardiness.”

  “Her only cat died this morning. She had to dispose of the body before she came in.”

  Still I didn’t see what had caused her to be so late. “As cold as it is outside, you would think she would have just chucked it in the bin.”

  “That was even worse.”

  I tried to look innocent. “What? I don’t like cats.”

  Caroline just shook her head at me like there was no hope for me and I had to admit that she could have been onto something. Was I that rough on her?

  “Well, be a little nicer. It took me weeks to find her. You keep scheduling all these consults and it is going to be me and you doing them all.”

  “You aren’t going to leave me because I am too mean?”

  She nodded that she wouldn’t. “You are like a little puppy. Your bark is worse than your bite. They just don’t know it yet.”

  I watched the young woman leave and I had to admit that she made me pause. I didn’t look at what I was doing all that much, not really. There wasn’t a lot of time for self-reflection and I can’t say that I really liked it all that much. I didn’t want to think about how I was perceived by the rest of the world.

  “Well you will just have to wait and see.”

  I had a feeling that I was going to be proven right. I don’t think the young girl was going to be up to snuff. Caroline had faith in her, but I didn’t. I think for all of her bravado, I would have to go back over the numbers and find out where Baker’s Food was bleeding money. It is what I did after all.

  The idea that I would be wrong, never actually crossed my mind.

  Chapter 4

  Claire

  “Ugh, you should have heard him Amy. I swear that if I didn’t need this job, I would have walked out right there. I can’t help it if I was late. What was I supposed to do with Rosco?”

  “Did you tell him what was going on?”

  “He didn’t want to hear it.”

  I felt close to tears and I was so very glad that Amy was off and available to listen to my rant that switched to tears several times. I had one of the worst first days of my life. In less than two hours, I had lost all hope for Future Plans being in my future. The owner was a jerk.

  Rosco died, still not sure how. I found him when I woke up and even though my alarm clock had been set early, it had taken me a considerable amount of time to get myself together. I did my best, but to have heard Rick talk about it, I was the lowest form of scum for being late.

  “Then don’t go back.”

  “Oh I am going to, just to prove it to him. Caroline told me that Baker’s Foods is huge, I mean really big and they are losing a lot of money. It is a big client and Rick thinks I am going to fail. I won’t though and then I will show him.”

  Amy sat back in the patio seat and just shrugged. “There is always a spot at the diner. It is a lot less drama than your job already is. You take orders and give out food. The living is okay.”

  “No, it wouldn’t be enough. I have student loans.”

  Amy told me that she was just throwing it out there, but I really wasn’t ready for that. I know that I made it sound like it was a horrible job and maybe it would turn out to be, but really it was just Rick. He had been so rude that I still wasn’t sure what I was supposed to do to handle him. All I could do was do the best job that I could and prove him wrong.

  “I don’t know. Sorry I am bitching so much. You just should have seen it. The sad part is that the guy was really hot. I mean rich and handsome, so of course he is a total jerk. Caroline talked about Rick like he was this great guy, but I just don’t see it.”

  “What did he look like?”

  “Tall, dark and handsome with the greenest eyes I have ever seen. They look like little emeralds or something.”

  She looked at me a little queer, so I shut up. Okay, he was really hot and even thinking about him got me a little warm under the collar. It seemed like a waste that he was such a jerk because he was just so damn cute.

  “That sounds like it has some potential.”

  I scoffed. “He was just named the richest man in Atlanta. I don’t think he is worried about me and there is certainly no potential there.”

  Amy was a dreamer, but one of us had to keep their feet planted firmly on the ground. It wasn’t going to be her.

  “I am just saying Claire, could you imagine?”

  I couldn’t and I ignored the next five minutes of conversation that came out of her mouth. I didn’t need help thinking about him in that way. It was literally the first thing that I thought of when I saw him.
Now she was helping me fill in some details and that was not helping at all.

  When Amy left that night, I was a little tired but I couldn’t sleep. She had put more crap in my head and it wasn’t helping my state of mind. I didn’t want to think of him that way, but I knew when I saw him next I was going to check out a particular part of him, just to see.

  I giggled to myself thinking about what Amy had said earlier. “What, you haven’t bulge-checked him yet!?”

  She was incredulous and all I could do was laugh. Amy was a little crazy, but man she made me laugh.

  ***

  Caroline gave me a file about as thick as my arm and told me to have at it. “I know this is a lot, but I am sure you will do fine.”

  We went over briefly what they were looking to find and I sat down to do just that. It was Wednesday and I only had a couple of days until I had to turn in my report. I was supposed to somehow find where the company was bleeding money and profits.

  It didn’t take long to conclude that I was going to need more time. The sheer volume of paperwork to go through was too much for such a short time. I tried to categorize and go through the numbers like I had learned in all of those college classes, but in the end I decided to go about it another way. This was a challenge and so was the time line. I had a feeling that they had given me till Friday to figure out, so there would be ample time for someone else to go over it.

  I wasn’t going to let that happen. I was going to surprise them all, namely Rick that thought so little of me so far. I wanted to prove myself, still thinking that if I did, he would see me more as an equal, than a lemming that he can turn his nose up at.

  So instead of going over the numbers until I was blue in the face, in an amount of time that wasn’t going to be sufficient for the kind of report I wanted to turn in, I decided that I would do something a little unconventional. I found out where the closest factory was a few hours outside of Atlanta and I called to set up an appointment. They sounded surprised that I wanted to come there, but the factory manager was actually on site and eager to talk. He was eager to help in any way that he could. The stockholders were not happy with the last quarter earnings and the whole year had seen far too much in waste and labor. Something was going on and I promised him that we were going to get to the bottom of it.

  When I got off of the phone, I was feeling a little more optimistic than before, but I still wasn’t sure what was going to happen. I felt like it was a now or never kind of situation and I wanted to make sure that I was able to rise to the occasion. I just had to.

  I made my way down to the factory and met with Johnson Grey. He was a nice man, but he wasn’t sure where to start. I wasn’t either, but I had made some notes of certain product lines that were suffering the most. It had to be somewhere and since the factory was tens of thousands of square foot, I decided that it would be easier to check there, than needle in the haystack style.

  “Are you going to look at the books?”

  “I have Sir. Now I wanted to get a sense of how everything works here and see if I can spot any areas that can be changed to give you a better result. That is why I’m here.”

  Johnson smiled at me and asked me again if I was single. This wouldn’t happen if I was a man, but I just smiled and told him that I wasn’t. I didn’t want to lie, but I needed time to get productive. I didn’t have time to make goo-goo eyes with the factory manager.

  I started with a couple of the production lines that showed the most loss. I didn’t know much about all of it, but soon I had several helpful gentlemen helping me understand everything. Scott walked me through every machine that he worked in the area of French fries. I would never have known how much went into making a fry. I would never look at them the same again, that much I knew for sure. Apparently there was an art to them.

  “So where do you think the waste is coming from? This area was the highest percentage wise.”

  He shrugged and told me that all of the waste was the same as before. “We have tons of scraps left over, but the boss isn’t interested in trying to use it. If we chipped it up in the T-32, we could make tater tots or even hash browns.”

  “Introducing another product to use up the waste is a great idea Scott. I will make a note of that.”

  Scott blushed a little and his face almost was the same color as his shirt. I thanked him for his time and went on to the next area that was causing trouble. There was a strange amount of maintenance going on in one area and there were several wrecked fork lifts that were years from scrapping.

  It didn’t take long to see why that was. The man driving one almost ran me over. He was smoking a cigarette and talking on his phone. He wasn’t paying attention at all and once I noted his name on a notepad, I knew that he was going to be the name I found on the incident reports.

  Maintenance in general was an issue, but I saw that by the lack of maintenance on some machines, the ones doing poorly, they were actually losing money from losing the machine way before it was supposed to become useless. This was due to a low labor cost in that sector. The loss of production made it impossible for the same amount of people to keep up. It was all starting to make sense to me.

  I found Johnson and asked to see his journals for the last year. He didn’t ask any questions, but he did seem anxious when he handed them over. I don’t know why he was worried, but I had a feeling that if he was audited right now, there would be a lot of discrepancies that would be found.

  “Is there any problem areas that you would like me to look at?”

  He shook his head and I had to wonder how he seemed to know so little about his factory all of a sudden. I talked to him about the labor costs, but again he was very ambiguous with his answers. He only made me look harder, though I am sure he was hoping for the opposite to occur.

  I left the factory and instead of going straight back to Atlanta I took the evening off in a hotel close by. I had found some things in their accounting that was questionable at best, but I didn’t know what I was supposed to do about it. I couldn’t tell the boss that he was getting reamed by his own employees, but yet that was very much my job to do that very thing.

  So I spent most of Thursday pouring over everything that I had gone over and then I made another trip to the factory. Caroline called me about mid-day, worried that I had already quit, but I told her where I was. She was surprised, but happy to hear that I would be back in the morning with results.

  “Did you find the problem?”

  “I found several that will save them close to one hundred and fifty thousand dollars or more with very little changes. There is also an opportunity to turn three hundred from waste into about a half a million in useable product. I think I have everything I need here.”

  I sounded a little more sure than I really was. I wasn’t sure if all of those things were going to be enough. I told Caroline that I was going to check all of my numbers again. She sounded happy to hear that it went so well. I had a feeling that she was just happy to have some help. She had made that clear before when I was being interviewed.

  I just hoped I had enough to prove Rick wrong. I wanted to see his face when he saw my report, so I had to make sure that everything was perfect. I was not going to be able to prove my point if it wasn’t perfect. My reputation in the firm and maybe even my job was on the line. It was a lot of pressure as I drove back to Atlanta. I called Amy to see if she was working. She was, so I took the rest of the night in to write the report. Tomorrow was going to be a big day.

  Chapter 5

  Rick

  When I got into work Friday morning, I didn’t have as many expectations for the day. What I did find was a report from our newest consultant and as I sat down to read it I knew then that she had knocked it out of the park. It was uncomfortable to think about it, but the fact was that she had found things in one factory, that none of us would have found. She went the extra mile and found not only efficiency savings, but production savings as well.

  I didn’t have to check t
he numbers to find out if she was right or not. I knew she was. The amount of time that was put into the work was clear and it took me a minute before I was able to pull myself together. I had a lot of crow to eat this morning.

  Caroline stopped me in the hallway. She asked about the report and I had a feeling that she was nervous about how Claire had done. There was an expectation because she had brought her into the mix. It was going to be fine though and I didn’t let Caroline hang too long wondering.

  “I have seen the report and it is brilliant. You caught a good one Caroline. I am sorry that I didn’t see it sooner. Claire is going to be a great addition to the team and I owe it all to you.”

  Caroline blushed from my words and it made me smile. Her reaction made me realize that I needed to give them praise more often.

  Making my way to Claire’s office, she was on the phone, her words really low as I walked in.

  “Am I interrupting anything?”

  For a moment, I could see that I was and she was irked by my pop in. I was the president of the company she worked for and I got a look that a normal person would give the janitor using a vacuum next to them.

  “No Sir.”

  “I will call you back Amy.”

  Claire set the phone down and smiled up at me. It was one that didn’t reach her eyes and I had to wonder what conversation she was having that was so important.

  “I wanted to talk to you about your report.”

  There was a flicker of nerves that made me relax finally. It was strange if I was the only one nervous about what was going on. I found myself in a moment of time where I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t know how to congratulate her when I had been so sure that she was going to crash and burn. The worst part of that was that she knew it as well. That is why she had that grin on her face. She knew that I was here to tell her the report was good, great even.

  “Yes?”

  “Don’t look at me like that girl, we both know that you did a good job.”