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“I’m not even sure this is a crime. It’s not as though the person doing this is threatening you in any way,” he says, standing again. “Just delete the pictures and put it behind you… okay?”
I nod my head and watch him walk away into his office. It’s the first time since I started working for Lucian that I’ve felt disappointed in him. It’s also the first time I’ve wondered whether this is really the place for me. If profits mean so much more than people, I’m not sure I belong here.
***
Hunter
“Hunter?”
I look up from my computer screen as Doreen comes into my office and I try not to smile. Everything here is very informal. So informal that I’m sitting here on a Wednesday morning in jeans and a white button-down shirt, with not a suit or tie in sight. Which makes it even more strange that I still can’t get used to my secretary calling me by my first name. That says a lot more about her than it does about me, though.
Doreen has been here almost since the beginning. She was my father’s first full-time employee. Even when he was still using freelance artists and copywriters, Doreen was a permanent fixture. She still is, and although I’ve got my doubts, I keep hoping she always will be. I’d be lost without her. She knows the advertising industry inside out, and just about everyone who works in it, too. She also knows what they’re doing, and usually who they’re doing it with, and while I’m no gossip, a little inside information can sometimes go a long way.
I save the file I’m working on and focus on her. “Yes?”
She comes and stands opposite me. “I need to speak with you.”
I nod toward the chair that’s just behind her, and she turns, sitting down and straightening her skirt, before she looks up at me again. She’s a very attractive woman. I know from her personnel file that she’s fifty-six, although she looks a lot younger. She always dresses smartly and wears her blonde hair in a neat bun behind her head.
“How can I help?” I ask.
“I ought to have put this in writing, I know… and I will do later today, just to make it official, but I wanted to tell you in person first that I’m leaving.”
I feel as though I’ve entered an entirely different realm, where nothing feels quite right, and I know it never will again.
“Y—You’re what?”
I sit forward, hoping I heard her wrong.
“I’m leaving.” My shoulders sag as she dashes my hopes. “I’m sorry,” she says. “But after your father died, I knew I wouldn’t be able to stay on forever.”
“It’s been a year, Doreen.” If she wanted to leave, why has she waited until now to do so?
“I know. And I feel that’s long enough for you to have settled in.”
“And for you to have done your duty to my father?”
She doesn’t answer, but she doesn’t need to. I’ve always known her loyalties lay with him, and not with me.
It’s still his name above the door… Theodore Bennett Associates. In the sixteen months that I’ve sat behind this desk, first as acting CEO while Dad was in the hospital, and then permanently after his death, I’ve made a few changes. I’ve had the company logo and website re-designed, altered the ethos of the business quite drastically, re-modeled the office interiors and hopefully made this a more pleasant place to work. But even I know some things never change. Doreen is one of them. And, while I might have been lulled into a false sense of security by her having stayed for so long, I know there’s no point in trying to dissuade her. As much as I value her, I don’t need someone working for me who doesn’t want to be here.
“I’m supposed to give you three months’ notice,” she says, biting on her bottom lip, and I wonder what’s coming next.
“I know.”
“The thing is, my daughter is due to have my first grandchild in just over two months, and I’d really like to be there.”
“Right…”
“Only she and her husband live in Plymouth.”
I’m not sure what her problem is. “So… about an hour away?”
She smiles. “I don’t mean Plymouth, Massachusetts,” she says. “I mean Plymouth on the south coast of England.”
That puts things into a different perspective. “Oh… I see.”
She sighs. “I—I was wondering if I could leave in six weeks. I know it’s a lot to ask, but I want to fly out to the UK before the baby’s born, so I can help my daughter, and then stay there for a few weeks afterwards.”
