Page 5 of Open To Negotiation

I glanced at the clock on the wall to his right, it was already ten, he didn’t give me much notice. “I have the meeting with the new designers about the social media push for—”

“Move it to someone else,” Richard cut me off before I could finish. “Do you know who the Kane Group is?”

“One of our investors?”

Elevate had grown from the ground up and caught the interest of multiple investors early on. It was money well spent considering we were one of the top marketing firms in the country now. We worked with everything from chain businesses launching new locations to celebrities.

“Yes, well one of their board members, Warren, do you know him?” He didn’t wait for my answer. “He just called and his son is in town.” Something on his computer caught his attention and I lost him. I waited for a few moments while he was distracted.

“Okay…” I said when he kept on ignoring me.

He finally looked back at me, frowned and then his eyes lit up. It was like he forgot that I was there. Wonderful.

“You need to take him and a few of his business partners to lunch.”

I frowned at his serious expression. “I’m sorry. You want me to go to lunch with an investor?”

“It’s not an investor.” Annoyance was bleeding into his tone. Like he thought I wasn’t listening. “It’s his son being pawned off on us. I’ve got plans that I don’t want to change, he’s not worth my time. You can smile and laugh, show him around the office and have a nice time on us. Do you have another shirt?” he asked with a thoughtful expression on his face that made me want to barf.

I looked down at my modest T-shirt assuming he was asking for something with more cleavage. “Umm… no,” I said, trying to hide my disgust. Mostly because I didn’t want to get fired.

“Oh well…” He sighed with a disappointed shake of his head.

I kept a straight face even though I wanted to roll my eyes.

This was not the first time that I’d been tasked with something like this. Although Richard had other females on the team, he always gave me the crap jobs and the things he decided that needed a ‘woman’s touch.’ Like taking men out for lunch. Most of the time it was old men making inappropriate comments at me as I sat there watching the clock.

“Margret has already booked you a table at Ruby House and she will let you know when they arrive.” Richard smiled at me and winked. It made my skin crawl. “Make sure they have a good time.”

With no other information, I was dismissed with a wave of his hand. I made my way back to my desk, slumped in my chair and rubbed my temples.

“All good, West?” James asked as he leaned over the arm rest of his chair. He had started calling me by my last name his second day here, most of my coworkers did now.

“Just being used as eye candy again.” I sat up and moved my mouse to pull up my color-coded calendar.

I was overly organized. It scared some people, but I couldn’t think straight if everything wasn’t like this.

“Richard is a dick,” James huffed in my defense. He hated the guy as much as I did. I wasn’t sure anyone who reported to him actually liked him.

“He lives up to his name,” I muttered. “Any chance you can take my eleven o’clock?” At least if someone was going to take credit for my work, I was happy to let it be James. We weren’t competitive with each other, didn’t try and one-up each other like some people here did.

“Yeah, I can do it.”

I sent him the calendar invite along with the information he would need and dug back into my work. I was in the middle of drafting a client email to send to Richard for review when my office line started ringing.

I was surprised to see it was already eleven twenty-five, time had flown by and I was already an hour behind on my day. Having this lunch was going to put me even more behind, I hadn’t planned on taking a lunch at all. It looked like it was going to be another late night. I sighed and ran a hand through my hair, giving myself a moment.

“Hello.” I pushed down the annoyance as I picked up the call. It wasn’t Margret’s fault that I was sacked with this lunch.

“Mr. Knight is here for you,” Margret said.

I’d totally forgotten to ask for names.

“How many am I having lunch with?”

Richard wouldn’t have likely remembered if I had asked him anyway. The executive assistant kept this office running.

“Yes, all three of them are ready for you,” she answered smoothly on the other end of the phone.