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Chapter Nineteen
Tamsyn
Tamsyn Yates didn’t shrink from a challenge. That was part of the reason she’d gotten so far so fast at Lloyd Surry. She was, however, human, and that was really fucking annoying.
She’d been eating and breathing the Stinson project for a couple of weeks now. Hell, when she hadn’t been fantasizing about Hux and Lo, she’d been dreaming about it too, numbers and recommendations dancing around in her brain.
Unfortunately for her, no matter how hard she worked and no matter how much she’d very carefully delegated, this project should have been allotted at least a month instead of the fortnight she’d been given to make it happen.
If she had it to do over again, she might have told Grant Surry that it simply couldn’t be done and given an impassioned speech about how it was part of their responsibility to their clients to sometimes tell them no. If she would’ve been just one level higher in the org chart, she might’ve. Instead, she’d signed her life and her sanity away.
On the plus side, she’d had her daddy and Lolo to mind her when she dragged herself out of the office at night. Hux and Lo. Or Huxley and Lowell if she really wanted to maintain her distance, but she was afraid that ship had sailed. After this, she was going to need them more than ever.
First, though, she had a presentation to get through. Evening meetings with clients weren’t standard by any means, but nothing about this project had been standard. She tugged at her suit jacket, checked her earlobes to make sure the pearls her parents had given her as a high school graduation present were still there, and strode into the conference room where everyone was waiting.
The sight that greeted her was enough to make anyone’s head explode. While she’d been toiling over this presentation until the very last second, the conference room they only used for clients looked more like a country club or some other place rich white dudes hung out. She’d have to ask Hux and Lo because she sure as fuck didn’t know. They didn’t have cigar bars or yacht clubs or anything like that in Penshaw.
There were a dozen men standing around, all with double old-fashioned glasses in their hands, laughing and talking like this was some Ivy League reunion weekend and not a project that could make or break her career. Whatever, it wasn’t something she could change now. Maybe once she’d climbed a few more rungs of the corporate ladder and hauled other people like her up behind her on the way.
Until then, she squared her shoulders and walked up to the small knot of people that included Grant Surry.
“Ah, Tamsyn, you finally decided to join us!”
Mostly she liked Grant. A lot, actually. He was a brilliant guy and despite having been born into a shit ton of money and following in his father’s footsteps to get where he was, he actually worked hard. And aside from a soft spot for his obnoxious nephew, Pete, he seemed intent on making sure Lloyd Surry was a place where merit and talent mattered more than your family name or where you’d gone to boarding school. Sometimes, though, like now, he had an irritating habit of reminding her that he was one of the boys and she really wasn’t.
She gave him what she hoped more closely resembled a smile than a murderous rage face—fuck she couldn’t wait to tell Maddie about the epic self-control she’d be displaying tonight—and said, “Just putting a few finishing touches on the presentation, Grant.”
Somebody had to, she thought to herself, noting Pete was standing with another group of men in their expensive suits that probably cost more than her car and clapping some old white guy on the shoulder. Yep, boys club all around. They were probably talking about their favorite brand of caviar or best place to summer. Assholes.
“Well, someone has to work around here,” Grant joked, and the other men laughed.
It was all she could do to not reach over for the crystal decanter of brown liquor and apply some blunt force trauma to his bald, liver-spotted pate. Instead, she marshaled all her patience and smiled again, holding up her laptop.
“I’ll just go ahead and get this set up and then we can get started.”
“Excellent.” Grant turned his attention to the man next to him. “By the way, Harv, this is Tamsyn Yates. She’s one of our up-and-comers. Have to get the next generation up to snuff before we retire to the Caymans, am I right?”
Harv? As in Harvey Stinson? Now Tamsyn really hoped she had a pleasant face on instead of looking like a righteously ticked off ghoul.
She stuck out a hand and gave her best shake when “Harv” took it. “So nice to meet you, Mr. Stinson. I hope you’re pleased with the work we’ve done on this project. Please feel free to follow up with me at any time.”
Twenty minutes later, she was standing in front of a room full of men who looked like they could be the parents and grandparents of the kids fromGossip Girl. She was also killing it, and could tell that Grant Surry and Harvey Stinson were impressed. Good. She’d worked herself to the bone on this project and it was going to pay off.
Except when she pressed the clicker to flip to the next slide, something was off. Way off. And it wouldn’t take someone who had her head for numbers to see that. The spiel she’d so carefully practiced ground to halt and she stared at the screen.What the fuck…
Heat prickled at the back of her neck at the same time her blood turned to ice. This couldn’t be happening. Everything had been going so well, and now—
Shit. This was the portion of the report she’d reluctantly handed over to Pete at his uncle’s urging. Pete was supposed to update the numbers today and link them to the presentation. It looked like the placeholder data was still there.
Shit on a stick, she was going to kill that fucker. If it was just a matter of him not linking the numbers, it was a simple fix. If he hadn’t updated them though…
“I’m so sorry,” she said, her stomach feeling like it was churning a mixture of sand and rocks and broken glass. “It looks like this slide didn’t get updated.”
Her mind raced, desperately trying to outrun this error. What she wanted to do was run over Pete’s stupid face and his preppy ass tie, but she didn’t think throwing him under the bus was going to win her any friends in this crowd.
Normally she wouldn’t give a crap because she had the best friend a girl could ask for, but the fact was that she couldn’t give these old money assholes reason to talk shit about her at the polo grounds on Sunday. Until very recently, she hadn’t realized that people who weren’t royalty played polo. She didn’t need friends, but tattling on Pete wasn’t worth tanking her career. This time.
“If you’ll give me a minute—go ahead and refresh your drinks, stretch your legs—I’m sure I can get this sorted out and we can get back to the presentation shortly. Again, my apologies.”
