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CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Valerie felt nauseated and upended, and she couldn’t blame the condition on condom failure or bad deli meat. “Leaning in” sounded like a great professional advancement strategy in theory, but executing it required brass eggs.
She was trying to find hers.
She sat in her boss’s office in D.C. with her computer case across her lap, drumming her uncapped pen against the leather.
Theodore was keeping her waiting. She knew the trick. The longer she sat there second-guessing herself, the more nervous she’d get—the more likely she’d think to herself,“You know what, never mind. I didn’t want that anyway,”and he didn’t even know what she wanted. She’d been vague enough in her meeting request that he couldn’t possibly know what she was going to say. All he knew was that he was going to give her twenty—she glanced at her watch—fifteenminutes to do it.
She scoffed and gave her head a shake. “Oh, fuck. I can’t believe I’ve been playing these games for going on ten years.” At least when Tim played games with her, there was a glimmer of hope her prize at the end of it all would be a sound fucking.
Even thinking about him made her heart ache. He’d said when she’d stepped off his boat Sunday evening that he didn’t want to call whatever they were “broken up,” but she knew that was going to happen sooner or later. Some woman would work hard enough to get his attention and show him that she had all the right credentials—and none of the wrong kinds of attachments bogging her down—and he’d have to let Valerie go. It was inevitable, and it was for the best, but for the moment, she didn’t want to give up any chance of being able to touch him or be touched by him. She craved his attention even more than she wanted her first cup of coffee in the morning.
“Sorry to keep you waiting so long. Got a real shit storm I’m dealing with.” Her boss, Theodore, breezed in and Valerie somehow managed to suppress her eye roll when she saw he wasn’t alone. He’d brought a tagalong tohermeeting.
How fucking disrespectful.
If he wanted to play that game, though, so would she.
She remained seated, tapping her pen against her laptop bag, and raised her eyebrows in greeting.
“So, how are things down in Shora?” Theodore asked.
His sidekick, Neil, plopped onto the sofa along the wall near the door, crossed his legs at the knees, and didn’t even bother putting on the pretense he wasn’t listening.
She glared at him, leaving no room for doubt that her mood was anything but unfriendly.
“Oh, don’t mind me,” he said blithely. “Ted and I have a meeting right after this, so he said to just come along.”
“Did he?” she murmured. “How efficient that he’d cut into my meeting—not even knowing what it was about and how much time it might take—with yours. No chance for me to discuss anything of a personal nature or even comfortably hash out projects you’re not involved with. And why aren’t you in Miami? That development was supposed to be built on an aggressive timeline. Done already? I’m impressed.”
Neil’s smug grin fell away.
She looked at Ted and stopped drumming her pen. “You know, for the amount of time I’ve been working for this company—which has been since right after my apprenticeship—I’ve never endured so much disrespect. Instead of me gaining more clout and benefits within the company, you and everyone else here offend me more and more with each passing day.”
Ted furrowed his brow. “Are you asking for a raise, or…”
“Are you really going to ask me to discuss that in front of Neil, who obviously either lacks decorum or enough common sense to exit the room to allow me a private conversation in the meeting timeImade?”
“I’ll just…wait…in my office,” Neil said, and finally stood. He waited there in front of the sofa for a moment as if he expected someone to say “Oh, no worries. I’ll be done in just a moment,” but Valerie wasn’t going to make that offer. He got special treatment just for being Ted’s nephew, so the very least Valerie was going to demand wastimeto let her boss knew how she felt about it.
Neil padded away but left the door open.
Valerie shrugged.Whatever.
“I’ve been getting some calls asking if you were leaving the company.” Ted shuffled some papers atop his desk.
“Oh yeah? Tell me about them. Maybe I’ll entertain them.”
“So, youhavebeen looking?”
“I’ve been doing my job, Ted. Down in Shora for the past seven-and-a-half months, dealing with permits and plans. Pushing paperwork through to get things built to Lipton’s specifications and to make the community attractive for future retailers who’ll want to lease in the area. And what have I had, huh? One pointless roadblock after another because the developer is too inflexible to concede that cookie-cutter doesn’t work for every community, and especially not a Southern community where people are going to want to personalize and individualize their homes. That’s important to them.”
“What are you getting at?”
“I’m glad you asked,” she said with false enthusiasm. “That’s part of the reason I’m here. I need to be able to offer customizations to the people buying lots in that development. And I’m not just talking about getting Carine to throw in a refrigerator upgrade when the clients are unhappy that we can’t move the kitchen island a foot to the left.”
“It’s semi-custom housing. They know what they’re getting.”
