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Chapter Thirty-Three
Tamsyn
Daddy said she shouldn’t use the wordhatebecause she didn’t really mean it and little girls should be very careful with such strong language. It was a good thing Daddy couldn’t literally read her mind because she used a lot of very strong language. Mostly when she was being grown-up Tamsyn, but not always.
Maybe because she’d found herself feeling little more often at work these days and she hated that too. It was that icky, vulnerable, sensitive kind of being little, not the warm fuzzy way.Hate, hate, hate.
Tamsyn wrinkled her nose and wrenched her mouth to the side, feeling grumpy and mad like a goat under a bridge. Everything had been so close to perfect and then it had gone to absolute shit. That was another word she wasn’t supposed to say when she was little, but she’d fucking well say it in the privacy of her own office.
“Shit, shit, shit,” she muttered, and was more than a little embarrassed when an intern who’d been walking past her door made a face and walked a little faster.
Shit, for real. At least it hadn’t been Grant Surry, who’d been a bit cool to her since the Stinson debacle. Ugh, it still turned her stomach to think of it. Especially since that asshole subhuman Pete had stopped by her office a couple days ago to tell her that Grant had asked him to tackle a portfolio that Stinson needed looked at ASAP. That had just been adding insult to injury, not to mention fear of losing her job.
She loved her daddy so much, and she knew Hux was doing the very best he could and that Lolo leaving was hard on him too, but her anxiety was through the roof, she was a nervous wreck all the time, and when she wasn’t tied up in knots over work, she was so, so sad about Lolo. She didn’t hate Lo, exactly. She loved him too much to really hate him, but she was really mad at him, and sad too. But she couldn’t think about Lolo right now because she had to focus on these numbers for the Hadid project. If she couldn’t get this right, Grant was going to fire her for sure.
What she wanted was a nice long walk out in the sunshine with her daddy and Lolo, holding hands with both of them someplace where they wouldn’t get funny looks. Maybe when Lolo came back—because she’d been assured he was coming back—she would suggest they all take a trip to Rawhide Ranch. She’d had a ton of fun there with Maddie, and it could only be better now that she had daddies of her own.
That was a fantasy for a lot of reasons though, and what she actually had time for was a trip to the coffee pot down the hall.
When she got back, her phone was ringing, and she plopped down at her desk so fast to answer that she spilled some of the hot coffee over her hand.
“You fucker,” she hissed at the cup and was completely mortified to realize the person on the other end of the line would have heard her.
If it was Hux, that was fundamentally fine. He’d spank her when she got home, and that wouldn’t be terrible. A good excuse to cry, actually. But he wouldn’t use her office number. If it was Grant—
“You’re the first woman to call me that in years besides Mrs. Stinson. I have reached Tamsyn Yates, haven’t I?”
Shit, shit, shit.At least that was in her head.
“I am so, so sorry, Mr. Stinson. And yes, this is Tamsyn. You caught me right as I was sitting down at my desk after getting a cup of coffee and I spilled some on my hand. I hope you’ll accept my apologies.”
“No matter,” the older man said airily. Which of course it wasn’t, to him. He ran a business that was worth billions, who cared if some swamp rat from Ohio called himyou fucker? “And please, call me Harvey.”
Huh. She hadn’t gotten the sense that he was impressed with her the last time she’d seen him, and she couldn’t blame him. She wouldn’t have been impressed with her from his vantage point either. So what was he doing calling her? Not Grant, not even Pete, but her?
“As you like, Harvey. What can I do for you?”
“Well if you burned your hand, you should go take care of it.”
“Oh, no, I’m fine, really. It was hot, but not scalding and I’ve mopped it up. Thank you for your concern, though, I appreciate it. I’m sure you called about something else.”
“I did. I called because I owe you an apology.”
What? She wasn’t used to getting apologies, and especially not personal ones from men like Harvey Stinson.
“Can I ask what for?”
“The last time we met, I understood that you were the one who had been careless in the presentation and no one corrected me. I was impressed with the tenacity you showed to get the corrected numbers done while you had a roomful of unhappy people waiting, but when we needed more work done in a hurry, I asked Grant to assign someone else to the task.”
To be fair, she probably would have too. It still rankled that it had been Pete, but no sense crying over that spilled milk.
“However, it’s become apparent to me over the last forty-eight hours that Pete Surry is an obsequious sycophant whose parents should ask Wharton for a refund since the only things he picked up at Penn were a few rowing trophies.”
Whoa. Her eyes had gotten so big, she felt like they might bug out of her head. She could only hope they wouldn’t land in her coffee.
“I understand why you wouldn’t have felt comfortable calling him out at the time but I hope you won’t hesitate to in the future. I’ve asked Grant to take Pete off the project and give it to you. You’re under no obligation to take it on after the way I’ve treated you and I extracted a promise from Grant that you won’t be penalized if you turn down the task. Since I hope you’ll accept, I thought it best to call and personally extend my regrets.”
“I…I’m not really sure what to say. Besides thank you, and I accept.”
