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“That was exhausting,” I said, staring at the door. “If I didn’t know you actually loved each other, I’d be very confused.”
Theo grunted. “He’s a pain in the arse. How did you get Cassidy on your side like that, anyway?”
I smiled. “That’s a secret.”
“She remembered her birthday four years ago and baked her a chocolate cake as a thank you for helping her out with something. Cassidy is weak to chocolate and cake, so Chloe hit her in her weakest spot,” Alastair explained. “Ever since then, Cassidy has acted like her mother.”
That was about it. “I never knew cake was such an effective weapon.”
Theo frowned. “And here we thought Gramps would be the one to smite anyone who said anything negative about our relationship. They may have to get through Cassidy first.”
Alastair looked between us. “Are you going to make it known that you’re together?”
“That’s why I came with her,” Theo said, pushing away from his perch at the window. “We wanted to ask your advice.”
Alastair raised his eyebrows. “You? You’re asking for my advice?”
“You’ve worked with your wife. Weren’t you worried about what people would say when Gramps gave her a position at the company?”
“Of course.” Alastair rubbed his hand over his jaw. “We were both young—younger than you two are now. It didn’t matter to many people that your mother had the necessary qualifications for the position she was given, and she did have to fight hard to be respected at first. She didn’t have too much experience, and that was her greatest struggle, but she was determined to see it through.”
Theo glanced at me. “She only moved here after you got married, right?”
He nodded. “She also took a lower position than she was necessarily qualified for. It was her choice, because she thought it would balance out her lack of experience.”
“Did it?”
“Theoretically. Many people thought she only got the job because she married me, but the reality was that she’d taken a slight demotion from her previous position.” Alastair looked at me. “Just like you did when Pa retired. You went from the President’s office to the Vice-President’s, even though you’re arguably skilled enough to hold an office of your own at this point.”
“It’s nice of you to say that, but I don’t think that’s true,” I said quietly.
“Isn’t it? You’ve been managing the secretarial teams for over three years now, and you had a team switch halfway through when you moved down to Theo. You’re already technically in a management role,” he explained. “You have a degree in business management, and you’ve assisted in numerous projects throughout the years, including the relaunch of Adair Travel.”
He… was right.
I was so used to thinking of myself as ‘just’ a secretary that I rarely focused on how wide-ranging my skills actually were. What I did was so much more than answering phones and arranging schedules—I put together reports, gathered data, managed staff, co-ordinated projects. And that didn’t even scratch the surface of everything I’d spent the last few years doing.
“To be honest, Chloe, when Pa said he would help you find another job after you resigned, what he meant was that he would offer you one.” Alastair perched on the corner of his desk and looked down at me with a smile. “One of the reasons you were sent on that business trip was because Pa wanted to offer you the position at the top of the Adair Travel team.”
I jerked my head around and stared at Theo. “Did you know about that?”
He shook his head. “I found out this morning when we arrived that was what he was looking at for you. I honestly thought he was going to offer you a position at one of the subsidiaries, because this position means you’re technically still working directly under me for now.”
“And escaping your tyranny was the reason I was going to resign anyway,” I said.
“Exactly. Wait—tyranny? Isn’t that a bit strong of a word?”
“No. Henry the Eighth had more patience than you do, and he chopped off the heads of two of his wives.”
Alastair chuckled. “Back to the matter at hand.”
I pressed my lips together and nodded.
“Theo is right that the Adair Travel team would technically be working under him, but the team will be operating as a separate entity. There’s also the caveat that the director position was never intended to be long-term for him.”
Theo nodded. “Two years maximum, then we were going to hire someone else so I could focus fully on my actual job.”
Alastair looked at me.
