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“You still jet-lagged?”
“A little. I was crisscrossing the country for most of last week, but I got a good night’s sleep last night. I just need decompression time.”
“Hey, I don’t blame you. I’m just the guy who knows how to follow the instructions and delegate making stuff happen. You’re the one who gives me the instructions.”
She rolled her eyes. “Which in the case of Shora are always heavily modified plans drawn by someone else who never spent more than a cursory few hours in the area and doesn’t understand it so I have to break every house to make it fit.”
“Shitty that you don’t get credit for what you. It’s not fair and you’re not paid well enough.”
She shrugged. “Hey, it’s like my boss said. I’ve got to pay my dues, right? And this is a great opportunity, right? I get to finish what I started.” She scoffed and followed Carine toward the office.
When she was out of earshot, Tim sidled up to Frank and nudged him with his elbow. “Talk.”
Frank cleared his throat, covered his mouth as if to disguise the movement of his lips, and said in an almost-whisper, “Lipton was supposed to install her at a new project in Florida, right?”
“Did it fall through?”
“No, it’s still happening. They assigned some don’t-give-a-damn architect on his way out of the biz whose name has got some clout to it. They paired him with some junior guy who doesn’t his elbow from his asshole.”
“Nepotism.”
“That’s what it seems like. The junior guy’s profile will rise because he’s on record for the project with the old guy.”
“And he’ll be able to command better gigs afterward even if he isn’t technically qualified for them.”
“Exactly. They asked Valerie to consult on the plans—”
“I bet I know what that means.”
“Yep. And I’m sure you know Valerie well enough to guess what she told them. So, she had two choices. Come back here, or pick up another project just like this one in some other state.”
“Is that why she’s been crisscrossing the country? Shaking out her options?”
“Yep.”
“I guess she decided this was the least of the evils.” Bad news for her, maybe, but a silver lining for Tim. She’d had a damn good reason to ignore him for weeks. If his career had been on the rocks, he probably wouldn’t have been feeling especially social either. Dating? Out of the question.
What a fucking mess.
“Yep. I don’t imagine she’ll stay on long, though, if some other firm snaps her up,” Frank said. “She wasn’t open to being headhunted before, but she’s wide open now. She’s got two phones. The personal one won’t stop ringing. The other one, she only turns on a couple of times per day to check in with her bosses.”
“Ah.” Tim was guessing that was the phone he had the number for. “Interesting.”
“What are you gonna do about it?” Frank asked.
“I don’t know. I was pissed. I still am, but now I don’t know who I’m pissed at anymore.” Tim started walking toward his truck, cutting his gaze over to the office as we went.
“Well, it’s like you always tell me when you’re instructing me on dominance and submission stuff, right?” Frank asked. “You don’t need to know what every move is going to be as long as you have a general plan and an expectation that it could end whenever the lady likes.”
“The plan is the easy part. Letting herendthings without communicating with me what her adversities are is the problem we have.”
“Maybe y’all need to have a talk.”
“Yeah,” Tim snarled, angrier at the circumstances than at her. “Talking is the very least we can do.”
