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“I’m fine,” she said, this time, her voice even. I dropped my hands from her shoulders, and I watched her take another deep breath. “Honest.”
After a few seconds, I asked, “Do you have a few minutes?”
The look that she gave me would have leveled a lesser man. “You know, that’s the stupidest question that a boss can ask an employee,” she retorted. “No employee in their right mind is going to tell their boss no, even if they don’t have time to spare.”
I gave her a terse nod. “Fair enough.”
“As it happens, I was just finishing my break-”
“This won’t take long,” I lied.
“Fine,” she sighed, her fight leaving her rigid shoulders.
Taking that first step to crossing the line between us, I placed my hand on the small of her back, then escorted her down the hallway, stopping when we rounded the corner and found a nook near the server rooms for the third floor.
After glancing around to make sure that we had a semblance of privacy, I asked, “What’s going to be your next move?”
Posie’s head jerked in surprise. “My next move for w-” Her doe eyes widened as she realized what I was referring to. “You heard,” she stated in a whisper.
I nodded. “Yes, I did.”
She didn’t say anything for a long while. She just stared up at me, her teeth nibbling on her lower lip, and all I wanted to do was kiss the fuck out of her. I knew that I couldn’t, and I knew it even more now that I knew about what had happened to her. If this thing with me and Posie happened, I was always going to have to let her lead in the bedroom, but I found that I was okay with that.
Finally, she said, “My next move is to make sure that I avoid Laurie in the future. I think that Brenda and Janie have learned their lesson. Besides, it’s obvious that they’re followers.”
“And may I ask why you’re choosing not to report them?”
Posie snorted. “You know, asking if you ‘may’ do anything is just as stupid as asking me if I have a minute. You’re the boss,” she repeated. “You can ask anything that you want.”
“Not anything,” I corrected.
Posie snorted again. “That’s not true.”
She was unknowingly giving me the opening that I needed to get sued. “So, if I wanted to ask you what color panties you had on, that’d be okay?” Her entire body froze as her eyes grew wide. “What if I wanted to know if they matched your bra?”
Her head started swiveling around, looking for help or more privacy, I wasn’t sure. When she finally looked back up at me, her face was pink with something, and I could only hope that it wasn’t embarrassment but something more.
“Point taken,” she finally muttered, her face really turning pink now.
“So, why are you choosing not to report them?” I asked again.
“Because I want to focus on the big picture and not this one unpleasant encounter,” she answered. “Brenda, Janie, and Laurie were all hired to work here for a reason, and I’m assuming that they must be relatively good at their jobs to still be working here. The help that they provide for our callers matters more to me than an offensive conversation. If you want to reprimand them or fire them over what you heard, then that’s your right as our boss. However, I want no part of it.”
I gave her a nod of understanding. “I agree that Janie and Brenda have probably learned their lesson, but I can’t look the other way on Laurie, no matter how good she might be with our callers,” I told her. “I will not allow anyone to jeopardize what I’ve built here, and her wild theories and suppositions have the potential to do just that.”
“Not my business,” she quickly rushed out.
“Yet, you defended me and my foundation,” I pointed out. “If it’s none of your business, then why bother?”
“Her discipline isn’t any of my business,” Posie clarified. “As for defending you and the foundation, any decent person would have done that.”
“I disagree,” I replied. “Especially, since Janie and Brenda did the opposite.”
Her eyes narrowed a bit. “You can’t fire Laurie without disciplining Janie and Brenda,” she said. “You know that, right?”
My lips twitched a bit. “I’m very well aware of the labor laws, Ms. Tinley,” I informed her. “And I have a good team for anything that I might not know.”
“I don’t appreciate being mocked, Mr. Warrick,” she drawled out, a little daring in her voice.
