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Smirking now, she said, “I’ll make a full recovery.”
Releasing her hand now, he grinned at her and said, “I’m going to head in there now. See you later, gorgeous.”
Jim made his way to the ball room, where he saw most of the company sitting at the tables scattered throughout the room. He moved to the front of the room where Deacon and Chris both sat at the table with some of the managers.
Looking around him, he asked Deacon and Chris, “Who’s going first? Pretty sure I did last time.”
Deacon reluctantly stood and said, “I’ll bore them to death with the financial stuff first.”
Jim listened as Deacon went over the quarterly revenue reports and changes in the travel reimbursement process. Chris spent a few moments going over the new acquisitions and some of the new contacts they’d made in the media world.
Watching them both speak, you’d never be able to tell that they hated public speaking. There really was a certain irony to the fact that the three of them ran a PR agency and they all hated public speaking.
Chris passed the microphone off to him, and he talked briefly about the sales figures, the expansion of the legal and sales teams, then wrapped up by going over some of the new industries they planned to target in the next few months. Finally, he invited everyone to head over to the buffet tables on either side of the room and get food.
Turning off the microphone, he watched them all stampede over to the tables. He sat down with Deacon and Chris, waiting for the crowd to die down a little bit before he tried to get food. Once the ballroom had descended into silence because everyone had started eating, Jim moved over to the buffet table that Elle was manning.
When he reached the front of the line, he asked, “So what should I have?”
Elle studied him for a moment and then asked, “How hungry are you?”
“I skipped breakfast this morning. Starved,” he said, grinning.
“Tomato soup to start, chicken, mac and cheese, and chocolate cake if you have room,” she said decisively.
“If everyone eats like that, we’re not going to get anything done this afternoon.”
“Deacon approved the menu,” she said. “Blame him.”
“Noted. You gonna be home tonight?” he asked.
When she nodded, he said, “I’ll give you a call about Saturday night then.”
“Talk to you soon.”
He moved back to his table and sat down after he snagged a bottle of water, some cutlery, and napkins from the end of the table. Over the next twenty minutes, he proceeded to eat everything on the plate. By his calculations, he’d probably only need to spend an extra six hours working out tonight. Every bite had been worth it though.
Looking up at Deacon and Chris, he said, “So much for brown rice and vegetables.”
“Dude. I’m gonna have to swim so many laps tonight,” Chris said. “Can you tell Sara to do low-fat stuff next time, Deacon?”
“Hah! You think I can tell her to do anything?”
“Do you think,” Jim asked, “that if I went to take a nap on the couch in my office anyone would notice?”
Chris snorted and said, “Probably not. The company pretty much runs itself, right?”
“I walked right into that,” Jim said, sighing deeply.
They rose from their chairs, and circulated around the room, stopping at each of the tables to chat with employees before they took their exit. Jim pulled his phone out of his suit pocket and realized he was going to be late for his two o’clock conference call with the New Orleans Jazz.
If rumor was to be believed, their star player, Tyrell Jackson, had cheated on his wife with one of the cheerleaders on the team and gotten her pregnant. His wife had gone ballistic and was talking to every media outlet that would listen. He didn’t anticipate that this was going to be a fun phone call.
* * * *
By 4:00 p.m. he was exhausted. He’d wrapped up the phone call pretty quickly then managed to book Tyrell on what he liked to call the apology news circuit. He’d wrangled an interview in the New Orleans Ledger, another with Sports Incorporated, a sit down with Jon Thompson on TSN, and a few sports radio shows.
