Fitting In

by Amanda Radley

“Heather? Yeah, since she ended things with her ex three years ago.” Ravi flipped through a stack of homemade greetings cards on a stand on the counter. “Doesn’t seem to be interested in dating, and she’s married to her job.”

  “Oh, I’m not interested in her like that,” Nico explained. “She’s nice to look at, you know, from afar. Just don’t want to be knocked out by her girlfriend, if she had one.”

  Ravi shook his head. “Now, if I said that about a woman I would probably be in trouble.”

  “Yep, you’d be a pig.”

  “But you can?” Ravi chuckled.

  “Yeah, of course. I’m adorable and harmless,” Nico told him with a grin. “I’m delightful.”

  “That you are,” Ravi agreed.

  Ravi had met Nico at a bar one night many years before when he was accompanying his newly out cousin to his very first gay bar.

  They’d hit it off immediately, both working in retail and sharing stories of crazy customers and unreliable suppliers.

  Nico had established the raggedy bookshop when her grandmother had passed away and left her a small inheritance. The store didn’t make much money, so Ravi did what he could to publicise and help the small business.

  When Heather had mentioned a project working with the local council to bring small, independent stores into Silver Arches in temporary pop-up stores, Ravi had instantly thought of Nico.

  When the project approvals had come through, Ravi knew he had to let Nico know in person. Mainly because if he’d done it via telephone, the scream of excitement may have permanently deafened him.

  Ravi tapped the lollipop box. “Won’t be able to bring these. No free lollipops.”

  Nico looked shocked. “Really?”

  “Yep. Health and safety. We’d need you to be certified to handle food, and then—”

  Nico held her hand up. “I get it, no lollipops. Fine. But you’re not taking away my stickers.” She grabbed a large reel of rainbow stickers and held it to her chest. “Over my dead body.”

  Ravi laughed. “You can keep your stickers, I promise.”

  * * *

  An hour later Ravi drove into the main car park of Silver Arches. The rain had started falling hard not long after he left Nico’s place, and his windscreen wipers were struggling to keep up with the deluge.

  “What on earth…”

  Someone was standing in the car park in a neon-yellow, high-visibility jacket and trousers. On busy days, a team of parking assistants would guide traffic through the large parking spaces that surrounded Silver Arches. With a mixture of parking garages, underground parking, and surface parking, the centre sometimes became congested on busy days, and assistance was needed to keep everything safe and in order.

  But it was the middle of the week and there was no need for a parking assistant to be out.

  Whoever was hidden by the large hood was gesturing for him to turn left, down the only path available to him. It seemed like a pointless endeavour.

  He slowed the car and opened the window as he pulled up alongside them.

  “Scarlett?” he asked, barely recognising her. She may have been wearing the high-visibility jacket complete with hood, but that hadn’t stopped the torrential rain from soaking her face. Her glasses were fogging up, and strands of blonde hair were stuck to her face.

  “What are you doing out here?” Ravi shouted over the sound of the rain hitting the ground.

  Scarlett stepped closer to the car. “Richard thought I could do with some work experience with the parking team.”

  “Okay, and who sent you out here in this weather?”

  “Luke,” Scarlett said, referencing the parking garage manager.

  Ravi cursed under his breath. “We don’t need you out in the car park today, especially not in this weather. Head back to the parking office. I’ll meet you there.”

  Scarlett gave him a quick nod and started walking back towards the building. He was sure he could hear squelching from her boots and belatedly realised he should have offered her a lift in the car. He looked up, but she was too far away on the pedestrian path to call her back.

  He closed the window and hurriedly drove towards his spot. The pedestrian path meant that Scarlett would have to go the long way around and Ravi had a direct route.

  Grabbing his umbrella, he hopped out of the car and rushed into the parking office. Luke and two of the parking attendants were sitting around, drinking coffee and laughing.

  “Why is Scarlett Flynn outside in this weather?” Ravi demanded.

  “We’re inefficient,” Luke said, his arms wide in a gesture of incredulity. “She’d been down here for all of ten minutes. I explained to her how we feed the car park during busy periods. She said I was wrong. I asked her to elaborate, and she, who has never done this before, says she has a better way. Ten years I’ve been in traffic management. Ten years.”

  “It’s torrential rain out there,” Ravi pointed out, not at all interested in the office politics that had led to her being sent outside.

  “She’s got protective clothing on. If it were a weekend, we’d all be out in this weather. She’s not getting special treatment from you because she’s the boss’s daughter, is she?” Luke challenged.

  “Of course not. No one needs to be out there today,” Ravi argued. “If I saw Pete out there, I’d send him in.”

  “I didn’t technically order her out there; I just asked her to explain what she meant,” Luke said, a cocky smile on his face.

  Pete burst out laughing. “You should have seen her, Ravi. She was trying to explain to us a better way to do things. Saying that we should do this. We’re inefficient. That kinda thing. So, we play dumb. Pretend we don’t get what she’s saying.”

  Luke started to laugh. “She’s getting more and more frustrated, so I said to ‘go out and show us.’ She got her all-weather gear on and went out there. Idiot.”

  “What’s she doing here anyway? She’s meant to be with Richard,” Ravi said.

  “He got sick of her. Something about Post-it Notes. I said I’d take her for the afternoon in exchange for a beer,” Luke said.

  Ravi ran a hand through his hair. Heather was going to flip out when she heard. It wasn’t lost on Heather that a lot of the operational aspects of the business were dominated by men who had been in their roles for a very long time. Many of them didn’t want to change their ways and a ‘boys’ environment’ had definitely developed.

  Ravi and Heather were working to try to change things, but without mass firings it was a slow process.

  Scarlett entered the office and pushed her hood back.

  “As you can see, allowing traffic to cross departing lanes is inefficient. Using lane one as an exit instead of as coach parking would clear any potential overcrowding,” she said. “As well as improve visibility on what otherwise would be a blind corner.”

  “Where do we put the coaches?” Luke asked smugly.

  “Lane thirty-two,” Scarlett replied immediately. She tilted her head towards Luke, inviting his next comment.

  Luke opened and then closed his mouth a couple of times, seemingly unable to come up with an appropriate response.

  “We’ll revisit this later,” Ravi said. “Scarlett, get out of those clothes and get dry and then go back to facilities. I’ll tell Richard to expect you.”

  Scarlett looked like she was about to argue but instead offered a clipped nod and walked out of the room.

  “No more pranking the new person,” Ravi told Luke. “I don’t care who they are or how annoying they are. And certainly not in exchange for a beer. I’m going to have to report this to Heather.”

  Luke rolled his eyes.

  Ravi didn’t bother to say anything else; he knew his words would be lost on Luke and his staff. If Luke wasn’t interested in adjusting his ways and keeping his job, then Ravi wouldn’t be able to help him anyway.

  8

  Where Next?

  Heather exited the conference room and walked to the exit with the prop
erty team from Happy Senses Perfumes. It had been an excellent meeting, and Heather was reasonably confident they would choose to rent the empty shop space.

  She said goodbye to them in the reception area, aware that Ravi was conspicuously hanging around. It was clear that he wanted to speak to her once she was alone.

  The only time he did that was when there was an issue that he needed to discuss with her; rarely was it good news.

  Once the meeting attendees had all left, she turned to look at her second-in-command. “Problem?”

  “Scarlett Flynn,” he said softly so people didn’t overhear.

  Heather resisted the urge to roll her eyes and gestured for him to follow her to her office, where they could have a private discussion about their newest member of staff. They entered Heather’s office, and Ravi closed the door behind them.

  “I got back from delivering the paperwork to Nico and saw Scarlett in the car park,” Ravi said.

  Heather sat down and looked at him with a raised eyebrow. “What do you mean?”

  “In full hi-vis, in the pouring rain, guiding traffic. Which was only me because it’s a quiet period.” Ravi took his customary seat in front of her desk. “Richard had exchanged her for a beer.”

  Heather felt her anger bubbling. “Say that again.”

  “I don’t have all the details—I suspected that you might want to deal with this personally—but as far as I understand it, Richard got fed up with her and asked Luke to take her for an afternoon. Scarlett seemed to think she was getting work experience with the parking team. Richard just wanted an afternoon of peace and quiet, and Luke agreed.”

  “For the price of a beer?” Heather clarified.

  “Yes. Apparently, Scarlett has a thing about efficiency. She immediately told Luke that they were doing things wrong, had a much better idea on how to run the whole operation.”

  Heather smothered a smile behind her hand. “Oh. I bet Luke loved that.”

  Ravi grinned. “Not much. But he got his revenge by sending her out in the rain to prove her point.”

  Heather shook her head. “You’re right, I do want to deal with this myself. Are you really telling me that two grown men can’t cope with a young woman? That they have to trade her for beer?”

  Ravi removed a slip of paper from his inner jacket pocket and handed it over.

  “What’s this?” Heather asked as she unfolded the paper.

  “Scarlett’s CV. I managed to get a copy from HR. I don’t know why Leo wanted her in facilities, but I’d say she might be a better fit in security.”

  Heather looked over the résumé. It appeared, as Ravi had suggested before, that Scarlett had moved from school straight into the army. No explanation was given on the CV for why she left her military career.

  Following that, she had rapidly gone through a number of departments in Intrex Investments.

  “Why does she keep getting moved on?” Heather wondered out loud.

  “From what I understand, she’s difficult. She doesn’t want to do things the way people ask her.”

  “You said she told Luke that he was doing things wrong?” Heather clarified.

  “Yes. She seems to like calling people inefficient,” Ravi said.

  The phone on Heather’s desk rang its specific tone, indicating an internal call. She sat forward and noticed it was Yasmin calling from the outer office. She picked up the phone.

  “Richard from facilities is here to see you,” Yasmin said.

  “Send him in.” Heather hung up the call and looked at Ravi. “Richard’s here. Let’s get some answers.”

  Richard entered the office. He looked as grumpy as ever; he also looked like a man who was about to defend his actions, which Heather found laughable, considering she already had the insider knowledge on what he had done and why.

  “We were just talking about you,” Heather said. “Come in, close the door, and take a seat.”

  Richard grumbled under his breath but did as he was told.

  “As her manager, I think I have the right to choose if she needs extra training in a certain area,” Richard complained. Rather boldly, Heather thought.

  Ravi laughed. “Nice try, Luke already told me you got sick of her and exchanged her for a free drink at the pub.”

  Richard’s eyes widened, and he snapped his head towards Heather.

  “You don’t know what she’s like; she’s a nightmare,” he explained. “She will only answer the call on the third ring. Ever. She complains about how sticky Post-it Notes are. She doesn’t get the most basic thing, like if a light is flickering in the elevator it needs to be replaced immediately before some poor sod has a seizure. She has the audacity to try to change the way we do things when she doesn’t even understand half of what we do.”

  Heather held her hand up to silence him. “Why didn’t you come to me, or Ravi, with this? Why trade her like a commodity?”

  “If I came here and told you I couldn’t handle a little girl—”

  “Fully grown woman,” Heather corrected tersely.

  Richard shrugged. “Well, yeah, that. It wouldn’t look good, would it?”

  “Neither does this, to be honest,” Heather said, punctuating her sentence with a sigh. “Where is she now?”

  “Getting a new kettle,” Richard said.

  Heather narrowed her eyes and gave Richard her iciest stare.

  “She wanted to get one!” Richard defended himself quickly. “She said ours was only ‘achieving a minimal boil,’ and it meant her cocoa was cooling too quickly.”

  “Cocoa?” Heather blinked.

  “That’s what she said. Anyway, she was whining about it, so I told her to get a new kettle with money from petty cash.” Richard folded his arms across his chest. “I don’t like having a spy in my facilities office.”

  “She’s not a spy,” Ravi said.

  “Isn’t she? All this talk about efficiency makes me think she is,” Richard argued.

  “Maybe you’re just so inefficient she can’t help herself?” Ravi teased.

  Heather tuned out their bickering and thought about the woman at the centre of all of this. It was clear that Richard couldn’t cope with her. And Heather couldn’t begin to imagine the toxic environment that Scarlett was currently being asked to work in.

  Whether she was a spy or not was still up for debate. Scarlett didn’t act like a spy. Spies fitted into their environment in order to gather information and report back. They didn’t stick out and loudly complain about kettle boiling temperatures.

  Heather knew that Intrex had its own efficiency monitors. The team were sent into new acquisitions to find issues with working practices and decide what fat could be cut. If Scarlett was one of them, surely Leo wouldn’t have been so sneaky about deploying her.

  But if she wasn’t a spy, she could still be a test. Was Leo using his notoriously difficult daughter to see if Heather’s leadership skills were up to scratch? And, if so, what would be seen as weakness?

  Would pulling Scarlett out of facilities be viewed as not being able to control Richard and his archaic management style? Or would it be seen as identifying a mismatch and being brave enough to fix the problem regardless of what it looked like from the outside?

  And that was all if it was a test. Which Heather didn’t know for certain.

  All she did know was that Scarlett was quickly turning into her problem.

  “Okay,” she said, interrupting the two men and their squabble. “I’m pulling her out of facilities. It’s obviously not a good fit. For either party.”

  Richard looked unbearably smug. Heather itched to do something to wipe the grin from his face, but she wouldn’t. He could think he had won; it wasn’t relevant in the grand scheme of things. Picking her battles was essential to good management.

  “Put up with her for the rest of the day,” Heather instructed. “Clearly she’s bested you after a few short days, so I’ll have to place her with someone who can cope.”

  “Now, wait a minute
,” Richard argued. “No one said I couldn’t cope with he—”

  “You did through your own actions,” Heather told him firmly. “Now, I won’t discuss it anymore. Go. Ravi will come and see her later and discuss the details of the situation with her.”

  Richard looked like he wanted to defend himself further, but one glare from Heather had him rethinking that choice.

  Once he was gone, Ravi raised an eyebrow.

  “What’s the plan, boss?”

  “You said she might fit better in security,” Heather said, picking up the CV and glancing through it again. “I’m inclined to agree. And Tara will no doubt be able to cope with her better than Richard or Luke can.”

  Tara Manning had been the head of security at Silver Arches for just over twelve months. She was a force of nature, disciplined, efficient, a great leader, and someone Heather had complete faith in.

  If she’d had sight of Scarlett’s CV beforehand, she probably would have put Scarlett in security anyway. She couldn’t fathom why Leo had suggested facilities unless it was simply to keep her out of the way. Maybe Leo employed an ‘out of sight, out of mind’ mentality when it came to his daughter.

  “Sounds like a plan,” Ravi agreed. “Will you speak to Tara, or shall I?”

  “I’ll do it,” Heather said. “I have some things to discuss with her anyway. You go and see Scarlett and let her know to report to Tara first thing tomorrow. Oh, and try to… I don’t know, get to know her. Talk to her, use some of your charm to figure out what she’s about.”

  Ravi chuckled. “My charm?” He looked like he had no idea what she was talking about, but Heather knew better. Ravi was known for his good looks and his charisma.

  Heather pointed at his face. “Yes, use that cheeky smile. Try to get through to her. We need to know more about her if we’re going to make this work, for her and for us.”

  “I’ll do my best,” Ravi promised.

  “Do. We don’t want to find out she is a test… after we’ve failed it.”

  9

  A Problem Solved