Page 67 of Her Intense Protector

“How soon can you get a driver here?”

She listened to the promise of twenty minutes and knew that could be ten to thirty minutes. She was well and truly screwed.

She bit her lip and then realized she’d screwed up her lipstick. This was the final presentation of the designs to the Billingham hotels. Everything needed to be perfect, and that meant she needed to be on-time with the samples.

She grabbed her laptop bag and her portfolio, then rushed through the kitchen and opened the door to the garage. She slammed the button to open the garage door, and there sat her little red compact. Except for the color, it was practically invisible. She threw her stuff in the passenger seat and started it up, and was soon on the highway to her apartment. It was seven-thirty in the morning, three weeks after the poker fiasco. Ezio and the others were blowing this out of proportion. But just in case they weren’t, she drove around to the back of the complex and went through the walkway through the middle of the buildings until she hit her apartment. There was no way they would have someone actually watching out for her, but if Ezio ever found out about this, at least she could tell him she’d been safe.

There was the package, behind her dead potted plant.

“Oh, for God’s sake.” The corner was dented in, right over one of the ‘Fragile’ stickers. Please say the glass hadn’t broken.

“Stop it, Brooks, it’ll be okay. Concentrate on getting to the meeting.”

She called Fabiola from her cell phone on the way from her apartment. God bless the woman, she already had the copies of the presentations ready for everybody, as well as the IT equipment set-up for the video presentation. When she talked to Kyle, all the refreshments were available. He’d gone to three different bakeries until he’d found the lemon donuts that Mr. Billingham liked. Kyle scored brownie points for that one.

Pam had all but the stained-glass samples available for everyone. “We’re just missing a tall blonde woman to pull it all together.”

At that point Samantha had finally been able to laugh. Yep, her team had gelled together nicely.

Finally, she got to the skyrise that housed her design firm. She drove into the underground garage and ended up on the lowest level since she was so late. She parked her car, grabbed her stuff, then hiked over to the elevators that would whisk her to her design firm. She checked her phone—fifteen minutes to spare.

Double dang.

When she got to reception, she said hello to Zsa Zsa.

“Wait!”

“What?”

“You have lipstick on your teeth.”

Zsa Zsa pulled out a compact and showed Samantha and she wiped it off with a tissue. Zsa Zsa then proceeded to straighten out her suit for her and align her triple strand of faux pearls for Sam.

“There you go, now you’re presentable.”

God love the nineteen-year-old fashionista. “Thanks, Zsa.”

“Knock ‘em dead.”

Sam made it to the conference room seven minutes early and handed the stained-glass sample package to Pam, who tore it open and gave her a thumbs up. Okay, that was good. The door opened and the design firm principals and the clients were ushered in. Kyle made sure to slip the lemon donut in front of Mr. Billingham, who grinned at Samantha. “Love your attention to detail, Kiddo.”

After the normal fifteen minutes of small talk and glad handing, the presentation began. As usual, Samantha was impressed by the Billingham team. They were very thorough in their questions. This was a renovation project of an historic building, thus tying the hands of the Lawton architects. As such, the design team was going to be responsible for hiding some things that were better off hidden, and highlighting things that were gorgeous about the old building.

“You’ve actually found someone who can replace the stained glass?” the VP of Resorts asked.

“Absolutely,” Kyle answered. “Samantha sourced a man in Maine whose great uncle did the original work. He actually has the original drawings.”

“That’s incredible, Miss Brooks,” one of the firm’s principals said. She was beaming.

There were another forty minutes of questions and answers before Mr. Billingham was satisfied. “You’ve knocked it out of the park, Samantha. I knew you were the right one to handle this Virginia project.”

Mr. Lawton, the head of the design firm, cleared his throat. “We couldn’t be happier to have her on board. Thanks for the suggestion, Ned.”

“Just so you know, there is no way I could have pulled this off without Kyle, Pam, and Fabiola. They have been my three right hands.”

“Keep it up, Kiddo,” Mr. Billingham smiled. “We’ll be out here again to view the first part of the installation. Can’t wait.”

Sam watched as Kyle put another lemon donut in a napkin for Mr. Billingham and slip it to him as he walked out of the conference room. Yep, she had an outstanding team.