Red Hot Rival

by Cat Carmine

Trent shakes his head. “Not yet. We just need a big win — something to put this publicity behind us and get the investors focusing on something positive instead. I have a couple of ideas in mind.”

  My shoulders relax again.

  “Let me know if I can do anything,” I tell Trent. “Anything at all. Just tell me.”

  He nods. “Sure. Let me think on it a bit.”

  He sounds more positive than he has in weeks — and thank God for that. Maybe it’s because he likes being the one in control again. And maybe, just maybe, it’s because I haven’t completely tanked everything for us yet.

  Now I can only pray that there’s also still a chance for Bree and I.

  By the time I get home, it’s close to ten. Hannah had convinced me to join them for dinner, and then we’d all had a drink together after she put Libby to bed.

  I still hadn’t figured out what to do about Bree, but it was nice to just hang out with them and not worry about it for a couple of hours.

  Now that I’m home again though, my worries are back. I know there’s no chance I’m going to fall asleep anytime soon, so instead of going into the house, I head straight out to my workshop. It’s the only place that really relaxes me.

  Except now it’s filled with memories of Bree. Most of the time I’ve spent out here lately has been on the weekends, and then she’s always with me. If I listen hard, I can almost hear her humming.

  I walk over to the little office space I’d given her and see her sewing machine on the workshop table. Her supplies are spread out everywhere — spools of thread and bobbins and scissors and measuring tapes. I’d been proud about picking up materials for her that first weekend, but the one thing I’d neglected to do was get her something to put all her supplies in.

  Suddenly I get an idea. I whip my phone out of the pocket of my suit jacket and do a search for sewing boxes. I find exactly what I’m looking for right away — a multi-compartment cantilever box perfect for storing all her little bits and bobs. I open a few pictures to get a better sense of the dimensions, and how the legs are attached. The construction is fairly intricate, but nothing I can’t handle. The ones I see online are all plain-looking, but I know I can do something nicer. Maybe a little contrasting inlay work on the top, some nicer handles …

  I start to get excited. I shrug off my jacket and throw it over the workbench, not caring that it’s going to get full of sawdust. I roll up the sleeves of my dress shirt and then unknot my tie — don’t want to risk that getting caught in the table saw. Just another reason dress clothes are seriously fucking overrated.

  I root around through some of my wood stash and find the perfect piece almost immediately. The weathered barn wood I’d been puzzling over the other day. I finally know what to do with it.

  My excitement builds. Time to get to work.

  29

  Bree

  My fingers fly across the keyboard as I catch up on my emails. Work has been a good distraction lately. In fact, it’s the only thing I’ve found so far that takes my mind off Luke.

  Luke.

  God, how could I have been so stupid? I pound out an email to our head of distribution, banging furiously on the keys. It’s just a follow-up about a meeting we had earlier today, but by the way I bash in the keys, you’d think I was writing a ranting screed.

  Thoughts of Luke still run through my head, only now they’re tinged with anger. I’d been right all along that getting involved with him was a bad idea, yet he’d pushed me at every step. Well, okay, I hadn’t always needed that much coaxing, but still. He’d been sweet and funny and charming and sexy as hell, even when I didn’t want him to be. And somehow, along the way, he’d made me fall —

  No. There’s no point in even thinking it. Luke is putting work first, and I will too. Breaking up had been the right thing for both of us. I didn’t need the distraction, and clearly that’s what Luke was.

  Still is, apparently.

  I fire off one more email just as there’s a soft knock at my door. I rub my temples. It must be Rich. I haven’t seen him in a couple of days, and to be honest, I’m shocked that he hasn’t shown up to lecture me on how irresponsible and bad for business it is for me to be sleeping with someone from Loft & Barn. That seems like just the kind of thing that he’d take great pleasure in doing.

  “Come in,” I say, trying to steel myself. But when the door opens, it’s only Geetika.

  “Hi,” I say, as I force a smile. “It’s nice to see a friendly face.”

  Geetika smiles, but hers looks as forced as mine feels. I notice that her eyes are rimmed in red.

  “What’s wrong?”

  She shakes her head. “I just came to say ... well, to say what an honor it’s been working for you.”

  “Working for me? What do you mean?” My mind is already racing. Rich can’t fire me, no matter how pissed he might be. Dad left me in charge of the company, and even though I’ve been relying on Rich’s advice, I’m still the one in charge at the end of the day.

  Geetika is still hovering at the door. I gesture at the seat across from my desk. She walks softly over, hesitates, and then slumps into the chair.

  “What’s going on?” I ask again.

  “Since Friday will be my last day, I’ll make sure to put together a report on everything that’s outstanding” she says finally. Her lip quivers and I can see she’s on the verge of tears. I push a box of tissues across the desk towards her.

  “Thank you, but — I’m sorry, I had no idea you were leaving,” I say, as she dabs at her eyes.

  Geetika is still shaking her head, not looking at me.

  “Did you get a new job?” I try.

  Now she looks up at me, surprised.

  “I’ve been laid off,” she says, as if this should be obvious to me.

  “You what?”

  “I assumed you knew.” She stares at me and even though she doesn’t say anything else, her thoughts are perfectly clear: I’m the CEO — I should have known about any layoffs.

  “Who told you you were being let go?” I ask, trying to remain calm. “And when did this happen?”

  “This morning,” she says. “I was called into HR.”

  “Bonnie talked to you?” Bonnie is the HR director, and she’d always struck me as a fair and thorough person, and definitely not one to do something like this impetuously. There’s no way she’d be issuing lay-off notices without receiving orders from somewhere. And if she isn’t getting them from me, there’s only one other person who would have given such an order.

  Rich.

  Anger bubbles in my blood. I can’t believe he would go behind my back and do something like this.

  Geetika is still dabbing at her eyes. I want to say something to comfort her, but I don’t want to make any promises until I figure out what’s going on. But I can’t just let her sit here thinking I let her be fired.

  “I’m going to look into this,” I promise. I’m already standing up, smoothing down my ruby red shift dress and putting my game face on. I put a hand on Geetika’s shoulder and give it a squeeze as we walk out of my office together. “I promise you I’m going to look into this right now.”

  She returns to her desk and I head down the hallway to find Rich.

  I see Sasha right away, sitting at her desk and clicking away at her keyboard. I brace myself for another round of Unhelpful Assistant Bingo.

  “Hello Sasha,” I say sweetly. “Is Rich around?”

  “No,” she says, without looking up.

  “Do you know when he’ll be back?”

  “No.”

  “Please have him call me the moment he gets in.”

  She blinks. I fight back a scream.

  I storm back to my office and close the door. I have to speak to Bonnie in HR and I don’t want Geetika to overhear our conversation.

  She answers on the first ring.

  “Bonnie Thompson.”

  “Hi Bonnie, it’s Bree. What the hell is going on?”

  “I’m sorry
?” She sounds flustered.

  “Geetika just told me she was laid off.”

  “Yes — as per your request.”

  “My request?” I sputter.

  “Of course. I have the signed report right here.”

  “What report? Who signed it?”

  “The HR consulting report. You signed off on their recommendations.”

  “No, I didn’t.”

  “I’m looking at your signature right here.”

  Shit. I rub my temples. What the ever loving fuck is going on?

  “Bonnie, I’m going to come down, okay?”

  “Sure, Bree. Of course.”

  Five minutes later, I’m one floor down and striding into HR. Bonnie’s office is one of the more welcoming in the building, filled with plants and two comfortable chairs across from her desk. Maybe she finds it puts people at ease when they’re here to have difficult conversations. Like I am.

  “Bonnie…”

  She hands me a stack of papers immediately.

  “Rich brought it down a couple of weeks ago,” she says. “He said you’d signed off on everything and that I should get all the paperwork in order and move on it as quickly as possible.”

  I flip through the documents until I get to the page at the end. Sure enough, there’s my signature, big and loopy. It’s not a fake — or if it is, it’s good enough that even I can’t tell the difference.

  I turn back to the front and leaf through the pages more slowly, trying to see if any of this looks familiar to me. There’s a consulting company logo in the bottom corner of the pages and I stare down at it, trying to remember where I’ve seen it before.

  “When did you say you got this?” I ask Bonnie.

  “A couple of weeks ago. Rich dropped them off.”

  “Right.”

  “Is anything wrong?” She looks nervous, even though I can tell she’s trying to keep her expression composed.

  “Bonnie, I never signed off on this. Well, actually I did, but it was only because I was mislead about what I was signing.” I get a clear picture of Rich in my office that day, being so strangely helpful as we worked through the paperwork.

  “Fuck.”

  The expletive coming out of Bonnie’s mouth — when she’s usually so staid — almost makes me laugh. I flop down into the seat across from her.

  “Yeah. Fuck.”

  “What would you like to do?”

  “Well, for starters, I’d like to give Geetika, and anyone else was laid off, their jobs back.”

  She nods. “I’ll gather my team immediately and start reversing the paperwork and setting up meetings with everyone. I’m so sorry. This is highly unorthodox, and frankly we don’t have a protocol for un-laying people off, but we’ll figure it out, I promise.”

  “Thank you. I really appreciate that. I also need something else from you.”

  “Anything.”

  I take a deep breath, but I know what I have to do.

  “Tell me how to fire someone.”

  An hour later, I’m standing in front of Rich’s desk, with Bonnie standing behind me. I had wanted to do this myself, but she felt it was better for the company if I had an HR representative with me when I did it, so that he couldn’t try to twist anything that happened. Plus, to be honest, I think she’s more than a little bit pissed at him herself and is looking forward to this.

  Rich looks back and forth between us. For the first time since I’ve known him, he looks nervous.

  “Yes, Bree? What can I help you with?”

  “You can start by explaining why you went over my head to lay people off from my father’s — from my — company.”

  Rich puts on a surprised expression. “Bree, I did no such thing. You signed off on those recommendations yourself. Surely you remember …”

  “I certainly remember signing a number of documents with you. But I would have remembered signing off on an order to lay off ten percent of our staff.”

  “Well, Bree, if you can’t remember, surely that’s not my fault —“

  “Here’s what I think happened. I think you snuck that report in to the pile and brushed it off as something minor when we were going over the files. I think you purposefully let me believe it was just a consulting report, when in fact, I was signing off on a set of orders you had decided were right for the company. Am I warm?”

  My voice is surprisingly calm, even though my hands are shaking. Rich doesn’t say anything, just stares at a spot on his desk.

  I take a deep breath.

  “You’re fired, Rich.”

  The words are a shock to my system, and they seem to be for Rich as well. His eyes widen as he looks from me to Bonnie.

  “You can’t fire me. I’m the Vice President.”

  “I can. In fact, I just did. Bonnie here will walk you through your severance package and non-disclosure agreement. I think you’ll find we’ve been more than generous.”

  Rich stammers something else but Bonnie’s already stepping forward with the paperwork. I put my hand on her arm to get her to hold off for a second, and then I turn back to face Rich.

  “Rich, I know you never respected me very much, but I have to believe you had some respect for my father. I hope that out of that respect, you’ll behave professionally and walk out of here today without incident.”

  Rich casts his gaze down, and I breathe a sigh of relief.

  I’d like to stride confidently out of the room at that moment, but I have to stay while Bonnie goes over the agreement and be on hand to sign everything with her. The process is painful and goes on forever. Rich keeps shooting me icy daggers. When we’ve inked the last page, he stands up before we do.

  “Bree, you were right about one thing,” he says, pausing at the door of his office. “I don’t respect you very much. I think that you’re childish and apparently boy crazy, and I think that your father would be very disappointed to realize he’d left his life’s work to a silly little girl who seems hellbent on destroying it.”

  I double over as if I’ve been punched. Bonnie immediately puts her hand on my shoulder, but I shrug it off. I draw myself into a standing position, even though what I really want to do is curl up into the fetal position.

  “If there was one thing my father respected, it was integrity,” I say, through gritted teeth. “So I believe he would join me in saying this: get the hell out of our building, and if I ever see you here again, this silly little girl is going to kick your sorry little ass.”

  When I get home from work, I peel off the shift dress I’m wearing and pull on a pair of stretchy pajama pants and a tank top. All I want to do is crawl into bed and sleep for a hundred years.

  I had expected firing Rich to make me feel good. And for a moment, in his office, watching him sign those papers, I did. I didn’t relish the idea of firing someone, but he’d become toxic and it was the best decision.

  But his words had gutted me — because I knew he was at least partially right.

  Putting me in charge was a terrible decision, but it’s the one Dad had made. I’ve been trying to do what I can to honor that, but I don’t know anything about the furniture business or about running a huge company. All my business experience is in the soft stuff, like social media and marketing. For God’s sake, when we first got started, Margaux and I were hand-selling our clothes at craft fairs and flea markets. I don’t know anything about activity-based costing, or payroll and benefits processing, or even the difference between a Cavendish headboard and a Finsbury headboard.

  I’m not letting Rich off the hook — after all, he intentionally misled me. But I can’t help but think that he wouldn’t have been able to do that if I had actually been focused on learning my way around the business.

  If I hadn’t been so distracted by things with Luke.

  Luke.

  Just his name is like a sharp poker to my heart. But I can’t go there. I can’t.

  Seeing him the other day had made me realize that moving on is the right thing to do. Aft
er all, Luke has already done it. He put work ahead of me.

  And he was right to do it — in fact, I should have been doing the same thing. If I’d put Bailey Living first, maybe I wouldn’t be in this position now. I got distracted, and it almost cost people their jobs.

  I wander into the kitchen to make a cup of herbal tea. I purposefully avoid looking at my sewing machine as I pass by. Sewing is just another distraction I don’t need right now. I’ll finish off the charity piece I’d offered to help Margaux with, and then I’ll talk to her about stepping back even further. Maybe altogether. It’s the right thing to do, even if it makes me feel depressed beyond words.

  I set Dad’s electric kettle to boil and root around in the cupboard for the box of peppermint tea I’m sure I saw in here the other day. I finally unearth it under a bag of brown sugar — Dad’s cabinets are not exactly organized, and I haven’t done anything to improve on them — when I hear the doorbell ring.

  I drop the box of peppermint tea on the counter and head downstairs to the front door.

  I don’t know who I think it’s going to be — Girl Scouts selling cookies, maybe? — but I fling the door open without bothering to look through the peephole.

  My heart stops.

  “Luke.”

  “Hi.”

  His voice is soft and it immediately heats my blood as quickly as the electric kettle going upstairs.

  He runs his hand through his hair. The gesture is so familiar that it gives me goosebumps.

  “Can we talk?” he finally says.

  30

  Bree

  “I was just making some tea,” I say as I lead him upstairs to the living room. “Would you like some?”

  “Tea?” He sounds confused for a second. “Uh, sure.”

  I leave him standing in the living room while I retreat into the kitchen. As I get mugs out of the cupboard, I try to control my breathing. And my heart rate. And my beaded nipples. This was such a mistake — I should have never let him in the front door.

  I drop tea bags into each of the mugs and then top them up with hot water. I take one last deep, steadying breath, and then take the steaming mugs into the living room.